It’s All Greek to Me – Part 3

DAY 3 – Exploring the City

The next day we decided to hike up the tallest hill in the city after breakfast. It was a bit of a climb with lots of stairs with nice greenery and a beautiful view from the top.

So many steps!

Olympic Stadium (you can see the faded rings on the left)

Greek flag  at the top of the hill

Turtle that was walking up the hill with us

View of the acropolis & the sea

On the way back down we stopped at a street market which was about 2/3 of the way down the hill. Why can’t I have something like this near me that I can walk to? I love the idea of just walking down the street with my rolly grocery bag and getting fresh produce, meat, fish (errr..sorta), etc.

So lovely

 

 

At the end we found a guy grilling pork kabobs which we clearly had to try. 

 

We took the kabobs and walked a few blocks until we found a cute church with a bench that we could sit on.

Couldn't even stop eating long enough for a photo :)

Not sure what to do next because N & M wanted to see the other touristy historical sites with us the next day we decided to try to head towards the water and see if we could find a beach. With no real information, we just hopped on the metro and took the line that brought us all the way to the port. We walked around a little and found a fast-food gyro place to grab a bite to eat and then decided that the port wasn’t really what we were looking for.

The port

We hopped back on the metro and took it one stop inland which was the only other stop that looked like it was near water on the map. The stop was next to a stadium looking place and other than that it didn’t look like there was much that would attract anyone that didn’t live/work there. But that didn’t stop us :)

Stadium at our random metro stop

We walked a little ways following some of the locals that got off of the metro with us. We asked directions from a guy taking a smoke break outside of a hospital on how to get to the water. He informed us that we had to go under a highway underpass and then walk around and follow signs to a restaurant. So that’s what we did and we ended up at this bizarre night-club / cafe place. On our way in we found a Albanian passport on the ground which no one claimed so we left it with the hostess. We got a seat and looked out towards the semi-commercial harbor. Drank more coffee and played more cards.

Birds!

The bizarre club / cafe where we stopped

We headed back and I decided to do a little shopping near the hotel while Paul napped. After a bit of looking I found some much needed black sling-back heels—a good, practical souvenir as far as I’m concerned :). We were going to meet up with N & M after their all day cruise, but we had trouble getting a hold of them so we just headed out to a group of cafes/bars a few blocks from our hotel where we got tapas and a couple of drinks. It was nice to relax outside. Paul was still a little hungry so we stopped for more pork kabobs at a little but busy stand on the way back to the hotel.

Just relaxing outside and enjoying the weather

DAY 4 – Catching the Last Glimpse

We got up bright and early on Saturday so that we could see the rest of the sites before our flights left in the afternoon. First we headed to an ancient library (I think). Of course, they weren’t open when we got there…there wasn’t even anyone there and they were supposed to open in 10 minutes. True to what we were learning to expect they gatekeeper dudes showed up a couple minutes after it was supposed to open, but they wouldn’t let us in because they had to get “set-up.” Five minutes later we were in. Sigh.

Be patient, be patient, don't be in such a hurry....

Someone's had quite the mood swing :)

More pretty poppies

From here we went to the Ancient and Roman Agoras and they let us in this time. Although we weren’t allowed to lay down on the benches outside the museum part…we had to sit. And when I tried to get a photo of Paul standing behind a statue with no head—we were yelled at. He wasn’t even touching the statue! Weird, but we didn’t let it get us down.

Agora

Statue that I tried to get a picture of Paul standing behind

Walking around

From there we went to some more ruins, unfortunately I can’t remember what they were (I guess that’s what I get for waiting over a month to write this…) The ruins were pretty and so were the buildings around it.







Our last stop was the Temple of Zeus. Those really are some HUGE columns.

Not the temple of Zeus...not sure what this was

Temple of Zeus

Just waiting on his wife

N, M, & Paul

And before we headed back for the hotel we made sure to stop for some gelato :)

Mmmmmmm

N & M headed back because their flight was a few hours earlier than ours and we decided to head to the Plaka for some window shopping. After that it was time to pack up and head out. On the metro ride back to the airport, our tram just stopped. And there were a few announcements, but it was all Greek to me :)    After about 15mins and my paternal-inherited-need-to-be-at-the-airport-early-stress started to kick in. We ended up starting to talk to an American whose family was Greek so he told us what the deal was and distracted my anxiety by talking about his job with UNESCO in Baghdad. After about 40 minutes the tram started moving again and we made it to the airport with time to spare—enough time for me to browse the Duty Free shops and buy a Greek face mask.

Plaka

When the metro stopped  -- my sentiments exactly

Overall, it was a nice trip in Athens. It’s always nice to getaway and see a new country. Their food was DELICIOUS! I think I liked it even more than our meals in Italy. All that to say, I am not sure that I would recommend Athens to friends/family. I think that if you’re going to go to Greece, you should definitely go to an island—even if that means that you skip Athens all together (we were told to try to make it to the islands but we couldn’t do both with our short trip).

Paul and I have decided now that we’ve seen a lot of Europe (England, Wales, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Brussels, Netherlands, Czech Republic, and Greece to be exact) we’re going to focus the rest of our trips while we’re living in the UAE to either the Far East or Africa.  I’m in the process of researching/booking a safari in Kenya for early November….anyone want to join?