Spring Break - Athens

I'm back! We got back from our trip at about 6:15am on Tuesday morning. As you could probably guess, I was exhausted. Vacation for 7 days and 12 hours of traveling back to Barcelona reallllyyyy took its toll on me. BUT! I had the most amazing spring break EVER! I didn't want it to end and I absolutely LOVE Greece.

The night before the trip I spent about 3 hours figuring how to pack 7 days worth of clothing into a small duffle bag. Now this is more complicated than it sounds. I had to pack a towel, a hairdryer, outfits for the day...and outfits for the night. I opted to go with the rolling method for my shirts because they were thin and the folding method for my pants. It probably weighed about 20lbs but I did manage to get all of my clothing in the small bag. I managed to get to bed around 1 am the night before we left and I ACTUALLY fell asleep. Around 4:30am I woke up to a HUGE thunderstorm and thought to myself...SERIOUSLY BARCELONA??!?! I was just talking with some of my friends that it's only rained in Barcelona once while we've been here and we've never had any thunderstorms. Of course, the night I need to get some rest, there is a two hour long thunderstorm. I tried to sleep through it but it was so loud. I ended up getting up around 5:15 and watching the end of the NCAA Championship Game online (UNC FREAKIN' WON!!!!!!!!! WEEEUUUU). When that ended I took my sweet ole time getting ready to leave, seeing as we weren't leaving til around 8am. When 8am rolled around, we rounded up the troops (just me, Jess, and Sara) and headed to the airport.

Flights went off without a hitch, thank goodness. We arrived in Athens, Greece around 2 and got to the hostel around 3. Walking around the city part of Athens, I was really kind of sketched out. It's very dirty and kind of scary, even during the day. I'm thinking to myself, I really don't want a crummy hostel. After walking around for about 10 minutes we arrived to the street that our little hostel was on, turn the corner, and waaaa-LA! Absolutely BEAUTIFUL neighborhood. Our hostel was in this little section of Athens that kind of seemed like "Old Athens". If I had to compare it to anything I would probably say like the street and small neighborhoods you always see pictures of in Italy. We checked into our hostel and found out we had one roommate, an 18 yr old boy, who has been backpacking in Europe since January. I was in total awe of him. Only 18 and he has gone to nearly every country in Europe, all by himself, just winging it as he goes. Definitely an experience of a lifetime for him. He was real cool and we talked for a little about his travels. He was only there for one night because he was leaving for Prague the next day. The following day we had a guy from Germany, who spoke English, and was in Athens to give a presentation for his PhD. He was nice too. We lucked out with our roommates, thank goodness.

The first day in Athens, we only had a few hours left of daylight after we settled into the hostel, so we decided just to walk around and explore. We walked by the Temple of Zeus but it was closed for the day. You could still see it from the street, so we were able to get some pictures of it. Traffic in Greece is CRAZY! We spent literally 10 minutes trying to cross a street to get back to our hostel neighborhood. We walked around there to find a place to get some dinner. This proved to be quite difficult because there were literally like 200 restaurants in that area. It was the perfect location. We got recruited by this flamboyant guy and decided to eat a meal at his place. I went with Pork Souvlaki for my first meal because they didn't have gyros. DELICIOUS! I know I'll say it again after this but Greek food is absolutely AMAZING. I have never eaten so much in my life. After dinner we walked around some more in our neighborhood and I did a little souvenir shopping. Stuff was relatively cheap for the most part. The really beautiful things were an arm and a freakin' leg though, but I still managed to get some good stuff for people. I have so many gifts I'm not going to be able to remember what I got for who. Oh well, there will be a time and place for figuring that out. Anyway, after walking around for a bit, we decided to get some dessert. I figured HEY, I'm on vacation, I can treat myself to some dessert. We went to a little gelato place and I had 2 scoops of gelato: cookies & cream and black berry. It was really good and I loved the way they served it. They brought the scoops out in this pretty bowl with sparklers stuck into the scoops of ice cream. I tried to get a picture. Naturally, with my luck, right as my camera took a picture, my sparkler went out. We decided to call it an early night because I hadn't slept at all the night before and we had a big day planned ahead for tomorrow. We got a map and made a plan of attack for our full day in Athens. Our hostel was in the PERFECT location; it was close to everything.

The next day we decided we wanted to be up and out of the hostel by 9:30. First, we decided to go to Acropolis, which was only a 2 minute walk from our hostel. I was so excited to visit Acropolis, it's really what I think of when I think of visiting Greece. We paid our admission and proceeded to hike up the freakin' MOUNTAIN. Little did I know, we would be doing a LOT of climbing during our vacation. The view was spectacular on the way up. When we got the top it was pretty crowded, but not too bad. I think it was smart to go early because I can imagine it being absolutely packed later in the day. Acropolis is basically the name given to the area that holds other ruins and the famous Parthenon. When I walked into the main entrance of the Acropolis I was just in awe. It wasn't the most beautiful thing I've ever seen but I just couldn't believe I was there. In moments like that, I can't help but think, how the hell did I get so lucky? The things I've seen, the places I've been, it truly is incredible. I paused for a moment before walking around, just taking everything in, and it sounds stupid, but I was just thinking to myself over and over...I'm standing infront of the freakin' PARTHENON! Woooo! So anyway, we walked around to the different ruins, saving the Parthenon for last. Unfortunately, there was a lot of scaffolding on the one main side of the Parthenon. You still could see it from other angles, but it would have been nice to be able to see it in its entirety without the scaffolding. The Parthenon is larger than life, and SO beautiful. I was walking around and looking at the detail on it. I find it fascinating to think of how this thing was built so long ago, and is still here today. We were up at Acropolis for about an hour, just walking around and taking pictures. We decided to walk down and head to the next point on our map; the National Garden.

The National Garden was only about a 10-15 minute walk from Acropolis. Walking around Athens, you notice very quickly that they have a stray dog problem. We asked someone about it and they said that its really common to see strays everywhere. The majority of them are well fed though. Apparently in Greece they will take strays and give them their shots. If a stray is wearing a collar it means they have their shots, if not, it means they haven't recieived them. After I heard that, I couldn't help but laugh because I had seen a bunch of dogs with collars up at Acropolis (as I mentioned before, its on top of a mountain) just hanging out in the sun. I wanna say to the dogs...little buddy, do you know where your sitting?!?!? Your chilling in the presence of greatness! Haha...but they really have no clue. I found it kind funny. We eventually got the National Garden and we were quite famished becaused we had not eaten breakfast before we went to the Acropolis. This guy was selling some pretzels and doughnuts outside of the gate of the park, so we decided to get these HUGE fried dough donuts to hold us off til lunch; they were only .70 cents. Probably the cheapest food I bought all week. Donuts in hand, we walked around the garden. I'm glad we went because it's a big part of Athens, but I really wasn't impressed. The Garden had a TON of potential and I can see it being absolutely gorgeous, but it really wasn't. It wasn't well kept, weeds everywhere, and just kind of messy in general. I'm thinking maybe because it's only April they hadn't really spiffed it up for the season. But like I said, I'm glad we went because you can't really go to Athens without seeing the National Garden.

After the National Garden we headed to the next stop on our own personal tour of Athens; the Olympic Stadium for Track. I'm not sure if I'm right, but I think the Olympics were held in Athens in 2004, so the stadium was relatively new. It was cool to see it and imagine all of the athletes there. I snapped a few shots and we moved on. On the way to our next stop, the Royal Palace, my dear friend Jessica got pooped on by a pigeon. We were just walking and talking and all of the sudden she just screamed. As you probably know, I'm a very easily scared and generally jumpy person. So when I heard her scream, naturally, I screamed too. Little did I know, she had only be pooped on...poor thing. I washed it off her arm, shirt, and bag with some water and a map so she could be a little clean until we could find a place where she could wash herself. We finally found a little cafe that gave her some napkins to wash up with. They kept saying, "It's good luck, it's good luck!". HAH! Maybe it's good luck, but it certainly sucked. Poor Jess. After she cleaned up we continued on toward the palace. Now, we thought this was a place you could tour and take pictures and what not. We couldnt finds the main entrance so we asked one of the guards which way to head and if admission was free. He pointed the way, said that admission was free and proceeded to laugh at us; we didn't know why. Turns out, the President of Greece lives at the Royal Palace. We probably looked like total idiots asking if we could get in for free. We had a little chat with another guard at the main gate. He was the one who told us about the President, who just so happens to be a she, and the fact that she is currently living in the Palace. We joked around with him saying, "Oh yea, she invited us for lunch". He got a kick out of us and eventually we decided it's probably not a good idea to just chill like idiots outside of the Presidents House. Interesting side note, you might think its bad that the poor guards at Buckingham Palace have to wear a giant fuzzball on their head...well the guards in Greece have to wear skirts, wools socks, and shoes with a giant PUFFBALL on the tip. STYLING!

After that we decided to head to Monastaki Square to find some lunch and this flea market. This is where I got my first REAL GREEK GYRO. Now, gyros just so happen to be my favorite food, bu they have to be GOOD gyros. The fake, gross ones they serve at school are a sorry excuse for a gyro. I'm very particular about the ones I eat, and as it stands, the only ones I eat and like are at the State Fair...aka I only get them once a year. So, as you can imagine, I was STOKED to be able to have real gyros. When my gyro came it was all on a plate, not on a pita, which kind of confused me. Apparently that's how gyros are really served when they aren't "To-Go". It was absolutely DELICIOUS! You'll be pleased to know I had 3 on the trip. After lunch we walked around the square, the flea market, and another some other streets. We were in the main part of Athens and I must say, it's really dirty. I wasn't really loving it, but I did absolutely love the area we were staying in. So I guess we kind of were lucky in that regard.

We decided to pick up our ferry ticket to Santorini the day before we left. We had to be there at like 5:30 in the morning and we didn't think the place would be open so wanted to make sure we had them in our hand the day before. We trekked out to the port and like total idiots, we did not bring the directions to agency we had to pick our tickets up from. We were all optimistic thinking, "Oh yea, we'll recognize it, there can't be too many". Right? WRONG! There were 56,824 ferry ticket sale stores on the main street. We spent about 20 minutes just pacing the street trying to see something that look familiar. We found this one store that suggested the store we needed was across the street, so we crossed the street to see. It wasn't the right store, but this store suggested we cross back to the other side of the street and try another store. Let me just say, we probably crossed that street 45 times in the hour it took for us to find the place. Finally, after a great deal of ridiculousness, we got our tickets. I'm really happy we got them the day before because we passed by the store early in the morning walking to our ferry and it wasn't open...aka we would have had no tickets to Santorini. That night, we got dinner and decided to go to this bar called Bretto's. It's pretty cool inside; all the walls have a light behind them and they are entirely covered with liquer bottles which are pretty colors. It's like this giant glowing, rainbow room when you walk in. I got a glass of raspberry liquer...it was disgusting. I've come to the conclusion I just don't like the taste of alcohol...oh well. After that we walked around a little more and did some more souvenir shopping. We had to call it a REALLY early night because we need to get up at 5am to head to Piraeus Port to catch our ferry to Santorini.

Sooo, what did I think about Athens? It was alot different than I thought it would be. I was picturing the whole city to be like the area our hostel was in. I was wrong. It's very big and very dirty, but there are some nice areas. I think spending 2 days there was the perfect amount of time. We were literally able to see all the big sites and do some exploring of the actual city itself. I was just in awe of all the history that is in that city. I always have this same cheesy thought at every destination I go to. When I see locals just walking around, and I think to myself...These people walk by the Parthenon everyday; they live in the shadow of the Acropolis. Do they know how awesome that is? Do they appreciate where they live? I always wonder. Then it makes me think about being home in the U.S. Ya know, what do I walk by everyday and not appreciate? It really makes you want to see things differently. Anyway, Athens was amazing; I loved it. I was definitely tired after the two days of non-stop walking. I was very ready for some beaches, relaxation, and adventure in Santorini. And boy did I get it.