When Skye and I were living in Germany last year we traveled to as many countries within Europe as we could. Athens was on our list but we just never made it. However, at the end of our time in Trier we realized we could go from Israel, it was closer and probably even cheaper. We decided to go for our five year wedding anniversary. Our anniversary is June 7th, but we needed to schedule it at the end of our time in Israel, so we left on the 21st.
DAY ONE
Our flight left at 7:10am which means that the sherut (the airport taxi) came at 2:45am to pick us up. I think I got about 2 hours of sleep. That was rough. We have heard horror stories of the airport being difficult with security and we were especially concerned with our Jordan and Egypt stamps, so we were prepared for the worst. Luckily we only had carry on luggage and we just went right through. No questions, no problems, no special searches! Easy breezy! We couldn't believe it! We tried to sleep on the sherut, at our gate and on the plane. But we all know how that type of sleeping goes.
We arrived in Athens right on time and took the train to the hotel without getting lost at all! It was great! Yeah, that's right....I said trains. Skye and I miss trains so much! And Europe rocks at trains! We were so excited to get back to all things Europe! Our hotel is literally in the fruit market and as soon as we walked through, the vendors were shouting at each other. I had to look up, for a second I thought I was back in the shuk in Jerusalem!
Unfortunately our room wasn't ready yet and we couldn't shower or change clothes so we put our stuff in their luggage storage and headed out to explore. First stop: lunch. Gyros of course! AND guess what kind? PORK!!! This is our first taste of pork in 9 months! It was SO good! And extremely cheap. We got 2 pork gyros, a side of fries with cheese and one drink for 8 euros.
We decided to have a low key day at the acropolis museum since we were basically walking zombies. We would do the outdoor sites on the other days. That was a nice thought anyways, we got completely lost trying to find the museum! The lady at the hotel said it was only a 10 minute walk but by the time we winded in and out of different streets and up steep stairways, it was at least a half an hour if not more. Mostly up hill, half way up to the acropolis. We were sweaty, tired and frustrated, but finally we found it.
The museum with a student id was only 3 euros! It was great! Things are so cheap here compared to Jerusalem! It's fantastic!
The acropolis museum celebrated it's 4th birthday the day before we arrived. It's a really cool museum. It's built over the ruins of an ancient Athens neighborhood and the floor is clear glass so you can see all the ruins as you walk in. We got our tickets and started. It's laid out very well and you follow the signs for the path. The zero floor (aka first floor in America) was full of artifacts and pottery, the first level was a bunch of old statues and decorations from the temples on acropolis, and the 3rd floor had stones from the parthenon frieze, the big square stones with carvings lining the outside of the top of the parthenon. They had restored many of the statues, but you could clearly see where it was plaster. It was cool because you could see what was left of it but at the same time you could see it the way it probably looked.
We kept having to stop and sit because we were so exhausted, and eventually we just got so slap happy we were laughing at the weirdest things. We stopped on one of the floors to watch a replaying movie about the acropolis, and they rotated between Greek and English. When we stopped in they were playing the Greek one with subtitles. It took about one whole minutes before my head fell because I had gone to sleep. I quickly lifted me head and looked over at Skye to see if he noticed and he was laughing at me. I tried so hard, but it happened again! This time when I looked at Skye to see if he saw, he had fallen asleep as well! haha! It was so embarrassing! We decided to sit through it again in English thinking this would help if we didn't have to read the subtitles. We even moved to the very front row. Next thing I know...my head was falling again! We should never have moved up front. I look over....Skye's head was rolling! Neither of us could stay awake! It was pathetic! Finally I got some gum out for us which seemed to help.
We finished the last floor, checked out a couple more things and headed out. We found a Hard Rock Cafe! Skye collects Hard Rock pins from different cities, he has some from all over the world! We were so excited to find one here! It was basically on the way home, though we got lost again. Of course. Luckily we didn't go too far out of the way before realizing it, but unluckily it had gotten much much hotter outside. So the sweating began again. Only this time our legs felt like they could collapse any minute! Eventually we found the Hard Rock and guess what? THEY HAD NO PINS! What on earth! They were back ordered or something and they weren't getting more for a month. We were so disappointed. We settled on a keychain so there would at least be some sort of proof we went to the Athens Hard Rock!
We started going the wrong direction again, but some really nice guy saw us searching for street signs and pointed us in the right direction. We were suspicious of him at first because in Israel we've gotten so used to either being yelled at or ignored completely.
Bakeries. I had forgotten the heaven that is bakeries in Europe! How I could forget such a thing I'll never know! Skye and I grabbed a few hearty pastries and headed back to the hotel for the evening. They were delicious! We got two with sausage, one with chicken and cheese (the cheese was touching the meat! WOOO), and one with HAM AND CHEESE. Yes, it does deserve all caps. Yum!
We had a really good day, and an even better night since we actually got some rest! The good thing about being lost is that you get to see a lot of the city, and we passed some extremely cute areas! I love Athens! It's got everything! I love all the cute shops and cafes, and it doesn't hurt for them to be facing the acropolis!
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| Pretty islands from the plane! |
Exploring Athens
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| 2 euro pork gyro! |
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| Meat market |
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| Monastiraki square just below the acropolis with the flea market |
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| Flea market square again |
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| Flea market |
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| Cafes along the bottom of the acropolis |
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| Beautiful Athens! |
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| Acropolis! |
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| Part of Athens city center |
Acropolis Museum
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| Acropolis museum |
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| Floor at the acropolis museum with ruins underneath |
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| Outdoor part of the ruins under the museum |
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Replica of the pediment of the parthenon,
Athena and Poseidon flighting for the city |
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First Olympic trophy from 1896.
A Greek man won the marathon that was then officially 21 miles.
The Brits changed it to 26.2 miles so the runners could run from one royal point to another.
What's 5 more miles when you've already run 20, right? |
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Acropolis museum, this was on the top of the pediment.
The white part is the new plaster. |
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This was a cool display, the one on the far left is the original
and the other two are both replicas showing how it used to look.
All of the ancient statues and buildings were painted very colorfully, now they're all white. |
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| Pretty pottery from the acropolis |
DAY TWO
We slept in a little to try to catch up on sleep. Our hotel had a really amazing breakfast buffet. With ham. So much ham. And cheese. I was in heaven. We stuffed ourselves and headed out for the day.
We decided to book the city sightseeing hop-on-hop off tour. We did quite a few of those in Europe last year and really like them. It was so cheap! Greece is so cheap right now! I suppose it's not actually a good thing since their economy isn't doing well, but it's very refreshing after expensive Israel.
We found a system that worked well with the hop-on-hop-off. We rode the entire thing through, without hopping off. This way we could listen to all the commentary, see all the highlights and choose when to get on and off efficiently. Our hotel is right next to the last stop. This worked perfectly because most of the people got off, so we got the best seats--the front seats up top.
The whole ride was about 90 minutes. After this we rode again until stop #5, the Hadrian Arch and the Temple of Zeus. This was a HUGE temple whose columns were 17 meters high. It was originally 20 columns long, but the whole middle was missing, so it almost looked like they were 2 separate structures. One of the columns fell in the 50s, so it's still there but it's lying down. It's sad, but the cool thing about it is you can see the sections that make it up. The temple is surrounded by various other ruins. We were in a rather pleasant mood because we bought a multi entrance ticket for all of the major ancient sites. We both got the student discount so it was a total of 6 euro per person, including the acropolis, the agora, this temple and more! It was so exciting. Not only that, but at this site there were vending machines FULL of cold water for 35 cents. It was awesome! And to frost the cake, they had recycling for plastic bottles. Oh, Europe, I love love love you.
From here we walked to site #1, Syntagma Square metro station and #9 the parliament (the stops were on opposites sides of the street). On the way we came upon some ruins that they had found while building the new metro system for the 2004 olympics. The Syntagma Square itself was very pretty, but what was awesome was the actual station itself. We went underground to check it out. They had pottery and artifacts, but best of all they had a huge wall encased in glass showing the layers of the ground from different time periods. You could see an old road, and a few other things, but the coolest was a grave with the body (now just bones of course) inside! It was crazy! This person died over 2000 years ago! And this is just in a random metro station. It was so cool!
The parliament was nice also, it was rather plain compared to some of the other architecture around, but the soldiers were the exciting part. There were two soldiers guarding the tomb of the unknown soldier right in front of the parliament building. They were in traditional uniforms that sort of looked like a khaki skirt, white leggings and boots with puff balls! haha! They did all these fancy things with their legs as they switched places every half hour.
Then we hopped back on a bus and made our way to the ancient agora. Agora means assembly, and this is where the government assembled. One of the buildings is a replica and there was a little museum inside. They had found many many graves there and one was dug up and displayed in the museum, it was of a little girl. The rest of the agora was ruins. Unfortunately we took too long in the museum and the agora closed at 3 so we didn't get to go up into the temple.
After that we decided to hit the other major things the next day since the hop-on-hop-off was good for two days. I decided we would do a little shopping. I rarely go shopping on our little trips, and I didn't care for shopping in Jerusalem, so it was perfect. We went to a fancy flea market in Monastiraki square where I bought some leather made in Greece sandals and a pair of earrings.
Next we headed back to the hotel to clean up before dinner. For dinner we went back to Monastiraki square, right along the agora, and just below the acropolis where there was a string of cute restaurants. We had a recommendation for Diodos so we ate there. It was really good! This was our official anniversary dinner so we did the whole thing with wine, appetizers, main course and dessert. We both got pork. At this point we had had pork for every meal in Greece! haha! I got some delicious honey soaked cake for dessert. We sat and hung out people watching and saw the sun set over the acropolis. It was a pretty fantastic anniversary dinner. They also brought us a local liquor (a whole small bottle full) on the house. It's called mastika. It was the sipping kind of liquor. It was really good! It was extremely sweet and almost sort of piney, which makes sense because it's made from a mastic tree which is an evergreen tree native to the mediterranean. Yum!
Today we finished seeing most of the sites on the bus tour. We wanted to get an early start because it was Sunday and many of the sites close early on Sundays. Unfortunately the first bus leaving from our stop only left at 9:44, not as early as we wanted. We waited and the bus never came! We were so frustrated so we started to walk to one of the lower sites. It was already sweltering outside so this was annoying. And lo and behold, our bus passed us 4 minutes after we left the stop. Now we were even more frustrated because we were too far to be able to run back in time to make it. So, we just kept walking. We were headed to the Roman agora, but weren't exactly sure where it was because all of our three maps were unclear.
Instead we found another bus stop and decided to start over and just catch it there. Thankfully we didn't have to wait too long and we were off. It was sort of ridiculous, but if that's the worst thing to happen while traveling, we're doing pretty well. And taking the bus was so much better than walking because it meant we would start at the top, at the acropolis, and make our way down to the lower sites, rather than having to walk all the way up it (it's very very steap) and back down again in the 91 degree no cloud weather. It was SO hot.
A couple of our friends from Germany had gone to Athens last year and recommended that we download the Rick Steve's audio guide for the acropolis walking tour. It was free and very good! It was about an hour long from start to finish.
We started our Rick Steve's tour in the very, very crowded acropolis. We first checked out the Odeon Theater, the Propylaea, and Temple of Athena Nike. Those were all very cool, the Propylaea is just an entry way or gate way. It was very large and fancy.
Once we were through the Propylaea, we immediately came upon the Parthenon! It was so cool! For me this is one of the most exciting sites we've seen in all our travels. It's one of those things you continuously run into in text books, movies, magazines, etc, and to see it in real life was amazing! The Rick Steve tour took us on each of the four sides of the Parthenon and gave information.
Next we moved on to the Erechtheion. It's a temple dedicated to both Athena and Poseidon. It's the one with the six pillar ladies holding up the roof on the patio of the temple. There is an olive tree next to it (not the original anymore) said to be the first olive tree that sprouted as a result of Athena striking a rock with her spear rivaling Poseidon for the city. We also saw a mark by one of the doorways, a mark left by Poseidon when he struck it with his trident. In front of the Erechtheion there were very minimal palace ruins.
We also went to an overlook area with breath taking views of Athens surrounding us on all sides, and we could even see the sea. It was so pretty! There was a huge Greek flag on this overlook. During world war two the nazis made the guard remove the greek flag and replace it with a nazi flag. He wrapped himself in the greek flag and jumped to his death. A bunch of really young Greek men came and tore down the nazi flag and replaced it with the Greek one and there is a plaque on the overlook remembering them.
After that we went to another area overlooking Athens and listened to the end of the tour. When the tour finished we re-upped our sunscreen and roamed around a bit more.
Next we made our way down to the Theater of Dionysos where plays by Sophocles were performed. This was cool because you could see the old stone chairs in the front few rows that must have been the VIP seating. It also had perfect statue carvings in the backdrop.
We left there and caught our bus again to stop #14. We wanted to see the Roman agora, Hadrian's library, and we missed the temple in the Greek agora before so we wanted to go back to see that. The bus ride felt like it took forever! It was soooo hot! They have a/c but it comes out of this box that is facing one of the outdoor stairways to the second level on the bus. It's the most inefficient air conditioner ever. What a waste of money! We were melting! It actually felt good to get back outside.
Once we got off we first checked out the Roman agora which had this awesome wind tower that was used to tell time with a sundial, a wind vane and a water clock for cloudy days. It was so cool! How brilliant! They think the tower dates back to 50 BC but some think it was built in the 2nd century BC.
Next we walked through Hadrian's library where they kept books. Although then they were scrolls of papyrus. Pretty awesome though! The coolest thing about the library was there were still mosaic floors in their original spots. It was both cool and a little disconcerting because they weren't covered at all.
We were ready to call it a day until we looked at the time and had about 25 minutes before the Greek agora closed again. It closed while we were at it before, and we would be cutting it close, but decided since it was so close and all we needed to look at was the temple, to just go for it. We made it with just enough time to see the temple before they closed. Phew. This temple is the best preserved of its kind. We couldn't go inside at all, but you could see decorations on the inside of the walls. You could even see some leftover paint on the columns! Everything in ancient Greece was very very colorful and bright, now everything has faded to the white marble. It was cool to see traces of that. They started blowing the closing whistle (really annoying, btw) and we headed out.
Our final stop for the day: ice cream and air conditioning. We hadn't really recovered from the bus melt until now. We found a cute frozen yogurt shop where you can put whatever toppings you want on it. It was pricey in the end (it's done by weight) but delicious and we finally cooled off!
We did a tiny bit of shopping before going back to the hotel. Once we got to the hotel we cooled off, showered and relaxed a little.
For dinner we decided to go to the cheap gyro place next door our hotel again. It was so good and super cheap. I got the same thing, a pork gyro, but I also got a greek salad. Yum! I love greek salad! Skye got a chicken gyro this time and an Amstel beer. It was cheap, delicious and filling. Our waitress was super sweet too!
After dinner we went to the roof top bar at our hotel to see the view. It was a stunning view of the acropolis! So beautiful in fact, that we decided to sit up there a while and have a beer. We had the local brew, Mythos, a delicious lager. The breeze was gentle and cool, the acropolis was beautiful. It was a lovely relaxing evening. A perfect end to an exhausting (but amazing) day!
Acropolis
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| Odeon Theater |
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| Us in front of the theater |
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| View from the acropolis |
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| The Propylaea |
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| Temple to Athena Nike |
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| The Parthenon! |
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Us in front of the Parthenon
(don't ask a Russian tourist to take your picture,
they don't seem to understand the concept) |
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| Skye in front of the Parthenon |
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| Another amazing view from the acropolis! |
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| Parthenon again |
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| Side of the Parthenon |
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| Parthenon from the other side |
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| Parthenon Frieze at the top |
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| Close up of the Frieze |
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| Theater of Dionysos |
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| Erechtheion with the six lady pillars |
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| Lady pillars |
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| Inside of the Erechtheion |
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| I couldn't get enough of the beautiful views! |
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| Greek flag |
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| Hadrian's gate and temple of Zeus from the acropolis |
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| Front view of the Parthenon |
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| Athena's olive tree |
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| Poseidon's trident stike |
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| Theater Dionysus |
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| VIP seating |
Roman Agora
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| Roman Agora |
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| Wind tower |
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| Skye is being a wind tower! |
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| Close up of the wind tower |
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Ancient bathroom! Look to the far left you can see toilets, and the ditch around the
platform had running water to wash waste away. Pretty high tech! |
Hadrian's Library
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| Hardian's library |
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| Hadrian's library |
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| Hadrian's library |
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| Old mosaic floor in Hadrian's library |
Evening Fun
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| Acropolis again! |
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| Greek salad!!! YUM! |
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| Evening drinks and a view! |
DAY FOUR
This was our fourth and final day, however, we had the entire day because our flight to Malta didn't leave until 12:45am. We had to check out of our room, but the hotel held our luggage for us while we finished up the last of what we wanted to see. The only thing left on our multi-site ticket was the Kerameikos. We decided to do this in the morning because the high for the day was 97 with a UV index of 10. The hottest day yet! It didn't matter at all that we did it in the morning, it was already extremely hot and miserable, and there was no shade at the Kerameikos! Luckily, we kept finding the 35 cent ice cold water!
The Kerameikos is an area of Athens where the Dipylon Gate is along with the largest and oldest Attic cemetery. We also saw part of the road to Plato's Academy! There was a festival building, a temple and tons more. It was quite large. Some of the tombstones are in really excellent shape, but most of the other ruins in the area are hard to imagine what they looked like from what's left.
We were already feeling some sun exhaustion, so thankfully there was a small AIR CONDITIONED museum with artifacts from the area. Mostly vases and jewelry, but they had a pair of sandal soles! That was cool! They also had clothing pins that look almost like safety pins.
After we were sufficiently cooled down we went back to the hotel for some coffee. We had planned on doing the archeology museum which was opened from 1pm to 8pm. It was a perfect day for an afternoon in an air conditioned museum.
We had another Rick Steve's podcast tour of the museum. It was so great! I loved it because I always feel a little overwhelmed with everything at museums. I'm never sure what's what and the labels give minimal information. He took us through the highlights and had information about those and more. It has some really amazing statues and other artifacts from the Mycenaean Period, Cycladic Period, Neolithic Period, Archaic Period, Classic Period, Hellenistic Period, Roman Period and more. Skye's favorites were the Mycenaean artifacts found by Heinrich Schliemann. When we were about half way through looking at a small famous statue of Athena, a museum attendant told us to get out because the whole museum was closing. What? This made no sense, the hours for Monday were 1 to 8pm! We read it on the website! She said nope, all the other Mondays were 1 to 8, but that today it was 8 to 3. Ooook? It was like they just randomly decided to have different hours. It wasn't a holiday or anything. We were so disappointed! We quickly went from room to room skipping through the Rick Steve chapters so we could at least see what the highlights were and have a quick glance. I checked the hours at the doorway before we left. There was a note hand written in red ink that it closed at 3. The woman who sold us our tickets (who was actually quite mean) failed to tell us this, it must have been after 2pm when we bought the tickets. She might have told us they closed at 3pm since it is the largest museum in Greece and it may take some time.
So we headed back to the hotel out of ideas of things to do, not wanting to simply walk around because of the intolerable heat. We sat in the air conditioned lobby cooling down and catching up on emails. We also had a small crisis to take care of in Malta. The hotel receptionist was super sweet about just letting us hang out. We even had all the hot tea and coffee we wanted! It was nice downtime before dinner and our flight to Malta.
We went to dinner at a place called Thanasis recommended by a couple different friends. It ended up being about a 7 minute walk from our hotel which was great! It was really good and very cheap with a fun atmosphere. We finally had a chance to try the grilled yellow cheese, or saganaki. It was also very good! It reminded me of one of my Madison favorites, baked cheese. YUM. We left stuffed and happy and headed to the hotel to get our things.
We ran into an American couple who has been traveling all over Europe for the past month, they were super nice and seemed eager to talk to some Americans. We chatted with them a while then made our way to the airport.
ATHENS WAS AMAZING! And beautiful! And reminded Skye and I how much we love Europe! I'm so thankful we had the opportunity and so happy everything went so smoothly. Now, how can we fit Skye's research into Greece so we can get a year abroad here? :)
Kerameikos
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| Kerameikos |
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| Cool walls at the Kerameikos |
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| My favorite scholar on the road to Plato's academy! |
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| Festival building |
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| I was participating in a celebration in the festival hall. |
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| Pins for clothing and hair in the museum. Look familiar? Ancient safety pins! |
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| Sandals |
Archaeology Museum
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| Archaeology Museum |
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| Schliemann's artifacts |
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| Dagger case |
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| Augustus |
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I liked this statue because you can still see the paint and details
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| Mmmmm dinner! |
