Athens

Ok I'm doing my Greece trip in three parts because I really cannot handle the idea of doing it all at once. Even three parts seems kind of daunting. Part one will be regarding Athens because I went there first. Parts two and three will be Santorini and Mykonos respectively, but those come later.

Ok, so right off the bat, it begins thundering, lightning-ing and pouring rain right as our plane is getting ready to leave from Rome to Athens. We were all glad to be leaving Rome right when the bad weather started (and we did end up missing most of it while we were gone which was sweet!), but it was annoying because we had to wait forever on the tarmac while the planes were slowly taking off during lulls in the storm. We still ended up hitting the worst turbulence of my life. Ashley and I seriously thought that we were going to die. Here's a picture of the lightning that I managed to take with my camera, I am so pro-status:

When we got to Athens, we all went to our hostels and went to sleep. Which was an adventure in and of itself because we had to take a bus from the airport into the city and then take a taxi from the bus stop. Some taxi driver tried to charge us 50 euros to drive 2 blocks. Umm, no. So we ended up finding reasonably priced taxis (is there such a thing?) and getting to our rooms. Another fun fact: we (Ashley and I) ended up sleeping in the other girls' rooms without a reservation because they would have charged us way too much to book our own room. So we had a lovely time squeezing 3 people onto a queen sized bed (might have been a full sized bed). It was hot and gross. But we were only in Athens for 2 nights so we just made due... don't we always? The next day we went to the metro (metpo- p is r in greek- rho... anywho) and we went on a little excursion to buy our ferry tickets and then to the Acropolis. Here's a picture of the five of us sitting on a fountain outside the metpo station:

Here's a picture of me on the way up to the Acropolis standing in front of an amphitheater. It was neat and we wanted to sit on these old stone chairs but they were roped off and this lady with a whistle was looking very vigilant:

Then we went up to the top of the Acropolis and I stood in front of the Parthenon (naturally):

Then I found Rachel, Linnea, Chantal and Maurenna who were staying in Greece at all of the same places and at all of the same times but weren't travelling with us. Small world... so this is a picture of the five of us atop the Acropolis. You can kind of see the city of Athens in the background. The word sprawling doesn't even begin to describe how huge this city appears from atop the Acropolis.

This is a picture of me pretending to be a column in front of a temple (no I don't know the name of the temple, I'm a bad person who forgets things and it's not like I was on a guided tour :) ).

Then we took a picture of what is supposedly the first olive tree in Athens. I have my doubts (well obviously since according to myth the first olive tree in Athens was given personally to the Athenians by Athena herself) but besides the myth side of things, don't you think a 2,500 year old tree would be more distinguished-looking?

Then we clambered down to the Agora (Agoura... no I think that's a high school... but I confuse myself) and took this picture on top of a smaller hill. That's the Acropolis in the background with lots of lovely construction taking place.

Then we decided it would be fun to break the rules so we all climbed on these very inviting looking pillars and got some American tourists to take our picture for us. We ended up getting whistled for it (what is a trip to the Acropolis without getting whistled?) and having an all-around good time. But here's the infamous pic:

That night we went to the Plaka for dinner and shopping and I got a really cute ring which you might be able to see in some of my upcoming pictures from Santorini and Mykonos. We also ate gyros (pronounced the same way as euros, I can't begin to tell you how confusing that one was for me) which were molti deliziosi. Then we made friends with some stray dogs named Bruno and Eucalyptus (yes we gave them those names, we're quite creative people you know) who followed us all around Plaka and Athens until we walked and checked out the Acropolis at night and then went back to our cramped hotel room and went to bed. Here are the dogs:

The next morning (Sunday morning) we went to the port and almost missed our ferry. But we made it and went on our merry way to Santorini. Next installment you shall hear the fun tales of beautiful Santorini and Pension Stella (the fabulous hotel at which we stayed). Ciao for now!