Athens, absolutely

And finally... Greece! We left for Athens on Thursday around lunchtime. We got to Heathrow plenty early and after going through security, had a great brunch at a cafe called Giraffe. We all got smoothies with little giraffe straw-type things, which were absolutely delicious! I also had my first plate of scrambled eggs in forever, which tasted fantastic. After brunch we made our way to our gate and soon began to board the plane. Hearing Greek at the gate and seeing lots of Greek passports in the hands of passengers was super exciting and we were anxious to arrive. The flight was about four hours but with the two hour time difference, we arrived around 6pm local time. The flight went by pretty fast - they showed Burlesque, which was entertaining for the times I wasn't listening to my iPod. 


After landing in Athens (not really though, because the airport is way far outside of the city center), we went through security, which was most fun for my friend Athenas. She is named after the Greek goddess Athena and the man who checked her through customs commented on how original her name was. This joke never got old the entire time we were there. We then took a long and uncomfortably crowded bus into the center of Athens, which took about an hour and a half with all of the stops in between the airport and Syntagma, our stop. After finally getting off, like I always do, I relied on my iPhone to lead us to our hostel using a free wifi network that it picked up. After walking with all of our bags for about 20 minutes, we discovered it had led us to the totally wrong location in the opposite direction of the actual hotel so we decided to just take a cab because it was already getting late. After getting slightly lost with all the one-way streets in the cab, we arrived at Hotel Myrto and climbed the 5 flights of stairs up to our room. Our room was adorable, with one queen and two single beds and our own bathroom, not to mention a view of the Acropolis from our window! 


Anyways, back to the bathroom. As many do, Athenas went into the bathroom to fresh up before dinner and ended up locking herself inside! The doorknob actually came detached and we could not figure out how to open the door. Lillian awkwardly walked down to the reception desk and explained the situation and luckily the woman working was super cool and came up with a metal ruler of sorts to try and rescue Athenas. After assessing the situation and trying a couple things, the woman just said to herself "Oh Shit." (excuse my French) and made sure Athenas was doing okay (she was laughing at the situation the whole time, no one was panicking). She then told us she had to go back downstairs to call someone and that she'd be back up shortly. In this time, Athenas gave up and decided to just crawl through the window out onto our balcony (see photo), which gave the woman quite a scare when she came back up to our room and there were four girls sitting on the beds instead of the three before. She finally got the door open and it was fully repaired by the next day afternoon. After that ordeal was over and it was about 10:00, we went to a restaurant down the street from the hotel for dinner where I had a delicious tuna risotto dish (weird, but so good!) and we were given a free traditionally Greek dessert by the owner of the restaurant, which was really sweet. After dinner we were all completely exhausted so we went to bed.

Friday morning we woke up around 10am, getting out of the hotel around 11 and discovering delicious Freddo Cappuccinos at a cafe a few minute's walk from the hotel. After we'd had our caffeine fix we decided to make our way to the Acropolis just by following our noses and seeing if we could make our way without looking at a map. Easy, because we didn't have a map. We found it no problem and immediately fell in love with the views. Also, it was a GORGEOUS day out, temperatures in the 70's and totally blue sky (I even got a bit of a sunburn!). We decided that we wanted to do a tour so we found a nice woman who then found another family to tour with us to bring down the price. So the four of us set off on a guided tour with a nice family from Canada - our tour guide was super cute and it was amazing how much she knew off the top of her head. I know it's her job to know all of that but it still impressed me just because she had an answer to all the random questions we asked too. Her English was also close to perfect, with the only shortcoming being pronouncing catastrophe as ca-tas-trofe, which was endearing anyways. After the tour we had time to roam around and take photos on our own, which we definitely took advantage of before wandering back down the hill determined to find the best Greek salads that we could. And indeed we did. We sat outside at a little restaurant and enjoyed some delicious tzatziki before our salads, which were comprised of the most fresh tomatoes, red onions, green peppers, olives and feta. I ate almost all of my tomatoes which was a feat, as I usually don't like raw tomatoes but the combination of them with everything else was just too good to resist! 

After lunch we did some shopping down the touristy streets near our hotel and just did some more walking around and exploring. We then went back to our hotel for a short nap/rest before venturing out to find a good restaurant for dinner. We ended up eating at one of the restaurants on a big road that had lots of them, much like the road in Brussels where they bargain for your business (but really only in that sense was it similar). We got free wine and dessert with our meals - not too shabby and we were all pretty satisfied by the end of it! We walked around some more after dinner and ended up going to a hookah bar on one of the busy nightlife streets. We sat outside which was really nice, and still pretty warm, and made for great people watching. About six different children came up to our table, some speaking English even, trying to sell us little flowers and stuff during the hour and a half that we were there. We walked around some more after the hookah bar before heading home for the night.



Saturday we decided would be an island day. Lillian researched how to go to an island on your own so we decided to try it out. We took a cab to the port on the water and bought roundtrip ferry tickets to Aegina for the day. We got on the ferry, which was actually super nice inside, and the ferry left around 11am. Athenas and I went on the upper deck of the ferry for the hour long ride because it was another beautiful day. I took about a thousand pictures here and just enjoyed laying out in the sun. We arrived at the island just in time for lunch and ate at a restaurant right on the water/harbor. The feta at this restaurant was amazinggggg, I substituted my fries for feta with my chicken and it was absolutely amazing. After lunch we strolled around the island and did a bit of shopping and then walked along the water until it started to rain :( We took shelter in a little cafe and had afternoon coffee and brownies and then it was time to catch the ferry back home. We played many games of BS on the ferry ride back and then did some more shopping back in Athens before dinner. For dinner Lillian and I got the BEST chicken gyros for dinner and ended up having a lazy night in the hotel because it was cold and rainy. We watched the movie Flight Plan with Greek subtitles and even caught a little bit of Greek Idol beforehand :) All in all it was an amazing trip and probably most of our favorites of the whole week. I definitely want to go back one day!


For more photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2078423&id=1232820029&l=5a8de0233f