A Day in Athens: turns Out That's All You Need

We spent Friday, May 4th in Athens. We did a full-on jog down the streets of Athens to catch our 1030am tour due to packing last minute. Looks of "stupid Americans" resonated from the locals as we ran by.  We caught the 2-hour tour by the first site. The sites on this tour included; ancient Greek columns, the 1896 stadium that held the first modern-day Olympic Games, Parliament (which included a funny dance from military guards wearing funny outfits. Imagine U.S. Marines doing the waltz - this was worse. I have video.), a building where foreign ambassadors came when they visited, a beautiful Greek church the president and leading social figures attended during the religious holidays, and the city market where we found great gyros for only 1,80 euros.


From the tour we went to the acropolis, which is the location of the Parthenon and other ancient Greek structures. Every ancient city-state had an acropolis, but Athens' was the grandest. The Pathenon was dedicated to the worship of Athena, for whom the city is named. Even atop the acropolis we sighted stray dogs that had sought refuge in the shade of ancient pillars. These dogs were one of my favorite parts of Athens. There were multiple strays roaming down every street. They were friendly, well-fed, and acted like the city was just as much theirs as it was ours. We found out the Parthenon is constantly being restored. The restoration did not look good at all, however. New, smooth, white marble was being incorporated with the 2,000+ year-old, brown-yellow marble of the original structure.

When we came back I tried my hand at washing my clothes in the sunk. Semi-successful, but I will not hesitate to feed money to the next washer I see in return for clean clothes. Our new roommate was Paul from Columbia. i socialized a bit with backpackers from the adjoining rooms on our balcony while Brandon caught some shut-eye. We talked briefly about the differences in our respective countries, but I think we were all counting the minutes until happy-hour began at 7pm and we could continue the conversation with beer in hand.

Happy-hour arrived and delivered it's happiness, as promised. We socialized with some Australians (they are everywhere!), met 5 medical school graduates out of Dublin, and two older women from switzerland. It was my turn to catch up on sleep and I called it a night around 9:30pm while Brandon stayed out a couple hours longer.

The next morning we grabbed our free breakfast (and just in case you are picturing breakfast at Bob Evans, our breakfast options were hard-boiled eggs, tea, and toast. You really got to go wild with the toast because you could put butter or jelly on it). We left Athens Backpackers and the great people we met behind, but exchanged info in case our paths crossed in the weeks ahead. We boarded the subway to a train station. Took a 1.5 hour train ride to Kiato, then 1 hour bus ride somewhere, and then finally another 1 hour train-ride before arriving at 3pm in Patras, where our ferry departed for Bari, Italy at 6pm.

Our interactions with people today wasn't the greatest. Once on the ferry, however, the atmosphere seemed to lighten up. Waiting to board we saw two men laughing and joking around and realized we hadn't seen that from locals in days. Turned out they were Italian. The captain was friendly and greeted us. Wait-staff on the boat joked with us. I hope this is an omen for what to expect in Italy. We quickly met a fellow backpacker from California, Andrew. He was having a worse day than us and was relieved to find an outlet to vent, as were we. We all agreed that there seemed to be a dark cloud hanging over Greece at the present. It's citizens don't have much to be happy about with the government declaring bancruptcy and citizen dissatisfaction with what they believe is a corrupt government. We weren't affected by the physical aspects of the riots, but it seemed this event was emotionally weighing the city down. Being here really makes you appreciate how good we have it in the United States.

In total, Greece was enjoyable. The history of the city was astounding and this backpacker culture we have been initiated into is more friendly and culturally-enlightening than we had expected. Backpackers are so eager to strike up conversation, befriend one-another, and tour cities together. It doesn't matter what country you are from. This type of trip really is one-of-a-kind and I wish everyone could experience it.

On the ferry right now. It's 2:30am and we hit port at 8:30am.

-Jeff

P.S. Pics took too long to upload. Maybe when we have time later.