athens, greece

As usual when we have to take an early morning train, we just barely made it. This one was kind of important though because it was taking us to the Rome airport where we were catching a flight to Athens, Greece. Bless his little heart, as hard as he tries Mike is NOT a morning person and pretty much all of these close calls have been his fault. Yes that's right I'm blaming him, lol. After getting stopped at airport security for having a knife in my carry on bag (darnit I forgot to pack my travel cutlery in my other bag!), we were on our way! It was only a short two hour flight, then we took the metro into the city. We went for a little walk that afternoon and had some awesome chicken souvlaki. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and doing our laundry (for the last time before we're home!).

In the morning we did our sightseeing, going to the Acropolis first. Our hostel was practically right across the street from it, and it was funny because one of the things we thought was cool when reading about that hostel was that it "had a great view of the Acropolis". After walking around Athens we realized that you can see the Acropolis from pretty much anywhere in the city! (which was kind of the point of it I think?) hahaha... The Acropolis is the name of the whole site up on the hill, and they were doing some major preservation works on the structures within it: on the main entry gate, on Parthenon itself, and on the Temple Of Athena Nike (goddess of victory). Again, it was amazing to think of how old these buildings were (5th century BC)! Our ticket to the Acropolis also included some of the other ancient sites, like the Agora (marketplace and administrative centre of ancient Greece), Roman Agora, Keramikos(sanctuary and cemetary), Temple of Olympian Zeus (largest temple ever built in Greece, and the Theatre of Dionysus. The exit of the Agora took us to the area of Monastiraki where there were a ton of little shops and where we found some really good chicken souvlaki pitas. Turns out it's way cheaper if you just take the food to go! Each pita was only 1.70, whereas we paid like 8 Euros each the day before when we went to that other restaurant. We also made our way to Syntagma Square where the Parliament building is and where we watched the changing of the guard. The guards outfits were so cute, with little pleated skirts and pom-poms on their shoes, hehe.. That night we just hung out at the hostel and watched Gladiator on Mike's laptop. We had just come from Rome and it was cool to watch and pick up on details or historically significant things that we might not have the first time we had seen it!

The next day we went to the National Archaeological Museum which turned out the have free admission that day.. saved us 10 Euros each! They had the grand-daddy of all collections of Greek artifacts there.. it was pretty cool. Afterwards we headed back to Monastiraki and the big flea market they were having that day. I don't think we did much else that day! At night we grabbed a couple of chicken pitas and Mike led us to a place on a big rock he had pre-scouted out that had a great night-time view of the city and the Acropolis. We had a nice little picnic and afterwards went to the hostel bar for a bit and had some ouzo and a couple beers. Something Mike insists I blog is that while skipping down the steps of the Acropolis on the way back to the hostel I tripped, went flying, and slid across one of the landings. apparently it was rather amusing! I was fine though! hehe.. Anyways, at the hostel we actually ran into two guys that had been staying at the same hostel as us in Naples.. crazy! When the hostel bar closed at midnight everyone went a few doors down to another bar. We were talking to this guy from Ontario and he was telling us all about how he had just come from Turkey on like a 24 hour bus. It sounded so cool (not the bus part!) and if we had more time we would probably look into a side trip to Istanbul. That's another trip though! Time is a really tickin down for us, we'll be home in about a week now! We had been a little lazy with planning where we would go from Athens, so we stayed one extra night there and did some figuring thinbs out. We changed rooms though because I had a crap bed whose mattress kept crashing through the boards that were always coming lose under it.

On our extra day we went to the Olympic Park where they had the 2004 summer games, then went to a shopping mall that was close by. Mike looked for some jeans again, but all the ones he tried must have been "European fit" hahaha.. aka really tight, especially in the crotchal area. It was so funny. I guess he'll have to put up with ripped jeans until we get home! We also watched a movie in a theatre, Casino Royale. It was really good! We originally had big plans for Greece, travelling all around, island hopping and laying on beaches, but in reality it is winter here too, and pretty cold in Athens. Rail travel is limited between a few main cities, and ferry services are really cut back in the winter as well. I really wanted to go to the islands of Corfu and Santorini, but we weren't sure if we would even be able to do that. We settled on just a few other cities, but then a guy that worked at the hostel convinced us it would be worth it to go to Santorini. Sure it wouldn't be as bumpin as the summertime, but it would still be sunny enough and beautiful. There was still one daily ferry service there at 7:30am, so we decided to go for it.