Greece! (or Ελλάδα in Greek)

Oh man, where do I begin? The trip was crazy busy and exhausting, but it was AMAZING!!

Saturday afternoon we got to Athens and took a bus to our hotel. The mountains were dotted with white houses with red roofs. After we checked into our hotel we went and explored the city of Athens a bit. We were trying to find a certain restaurant, but ended up getting into a sketchy and dirty part of the town. There were no women on the streets and the atmosphere felt really strange (we later found out that we wandered into a bad part of the city, especially now because of the protests and riots against the government…oops!). Anyways, we finally found a different restaurant; it was really cute with traditional Greek food – stuffed grape/vine leaves, bread and olive oil, slovaki chicken, house wine, and flan – DELICIOUS!! We meandered back to our hotel, had the best baklava of my life!!! And watched Dennis the Menace on tv – we finally were able to watch TV! This first night I did not really like Greece, it seemed like a cleaner version of Egypt; it seemed dirty and not very European, but I assumed it was because of the neighborhood we were in.

Sunday we had a big European breakfast and went to the archeological museum. It was fairly interesting; our tour guide explained that they had found things in Greece that dated back to 15,000BC! We saw a replica of the statue of Athena that used to be in the Parthenon – originally it was 12 meters tall!! It wasn’t as grandiose as the Egyptian museum, but it seemed more symbolic and scholarly.

     Then we took the metro to the Acropolis

(which in ancient Greek meant “The tallest point in the city”). It was built in the 4th century BC as a temple for Athena. It had lots of construction going on when we were there, but I could still see some of the statues/figures carved into the top part. There was a couple other buildings/temples and an amphitheater also at the Acropolis.

    

     Afterwards, in the freezing cold rain, a couple friends and I took the metro to the Olympic Complex from 2004. We couldn’t go into any of the buildings, but we could see the outdoor pool that they used and the velodrome. There was an Athens football game about to start so we couldn’t get anywhere near the Olympic Stadium, but it was cool to see the sea of green. The architecture was also interesting to see. So now I’ve been to 2 Olympic Complexes - Munich and Athens (both in the freezing cold rain/snow).

     We changed out of our sopping wet clothes and went to dinner at a little traditional restaurant (chicken gyro for dinner), and walked around for a while. We could see the Acropolis/Parthenon lit up at night – it was BEAUTIFUL! I liked it more at night than during the day! We walked to this street that was basically like 1 big bar; it was awesome! We sat outside with everyone under these awnings with cool lights, candles, and heat lamps – it was the greatest set up and the atmosphere was awesome! We met some local Greeks and talked to them for a while until we were too tired from our busy day. As we were leaving to catch the metro back to the hotel, we were walking down the little cobblestone street with little shops and houses lining it, Greek music playing, and the lit up Acropolis in front of us – it was unreal!

     We basically mastered the metro this day because we took it everywhere! I was really nice though; it even had some of the ancient Greek statues in it! It was very easy, cheap, and exquisitely clean – not a speck of garbage, they even mopped the floors!

Monday was our free day. We were going to go to the flea market, so we left to take the metro. We stepped outside, and the city of Athens was sepia tone (I did not edit this picture at all)!! I was so bizarre, and it the whole atmosphere felt really weird and eerie. I've never seen anything like it. Anyway, we went to the flea market in the and shopped around. We were walking to take the next metro and realized that everything was covered in mud, cars, streets, umbrellas, everything - it had rained mud!! Some of our friends talked to a Greek man and he said that it does this sometimes in Athens, the mud/sand comes from the Sahara...so strange!

Anyways, we took the metro -> bus -> metro -> port, and took a 1 hour ferry to the Greek island Aegina. It was very pretty – but not like the movies/postcards you see of the Greek islands; no white houses with blue roofs. It was also March, so there weren’t many people there; I think it would be completely different in the summer, much more alive. We walked around the island, touched the water, and played on the playground! We had another traditional Greek dinner and took the last ferry back to Athens. I really enjoyed the island, but wish we could have been there in the summer and for more than 3 hours; by the time we got there, a lot of shops were closing.

The other girls we were with had went to the island before us and met the captain on the way there. So on the way home we all got to go up and meet the captain; he showed us all of the controls and how to drive the huge ferry. He was so nice and let us stay up there the whole ride. It was so cool to be up there watching as we approached Athens all lit up at night! I loved Athens much more after the first day!

Then it was off to Italy...