Greece, Day 4: Athens

As you can see, at this point, I have run out of energy to produce creative titles to document this trip.  That is an accurate impression of how we were when we woke up that Monday morning.  After three days of near-continuous travel and sightseeing, we were both rather spent by the time we finally reached Greece's capital city.  I think I woke up at around 7:30, but just laid around for about an hour before I woke George up because I was hungry and wanted to take advantage of the free hotel breakfast.  In case anyone else is keeping score, this one was not even close to our first breakfast in Litochoro; in fact, it was quite similar to the offerings in Loutraki, aside from the fact that they did have Greek yogurt.  Which was obviously enough to make me happy.

After breakfast, we alternated between getting ready to go out and about and catnapping.  Because we did not have any driving planned for the day, and we didn't want to burn out already, we felt it was okay for us to move a bit more slowly on this day.  After all, it was a vacation; the point was to have fun and relax.

We made it out at around 11 am...we aren't great at the whole relaxing thing, and also, while we had two nights in Athens, we only really had one day.  We had gotten in so late the night (well, morning...) before and then Tuesday morning we would be checking out at around 5:00 am so that we could catch our 7:15 am ferry from Piraeus (the port in Athens) to Naxos.  Hence, we could not afford to bum around all day.  That is what Naxos and Mykonos were for.

And so we headed out into town.  For all the sketchiness of the area at 2 am, the hotel is actually well-situated for hitting the sights.  It only took us about ten minutes to walk into the center.  Our first stop of the day was the Acropolis; we figured we would get the climb and the most essential part of visiting Athens done first so that we wouldn't be under any pressure for the rest of the day.

As it turned out, there wasn't as much of a climb as George remembered, but it was good to see it early since it clouded up later in the day.  It is a spectacular and awe-inspiring sight. However, I will say that this is a case where George's tendency to read every sign kind of detracted from the experience, as we learned that nearly every piece of the Parthenon was a replica.  Very few original parts still exist.  We couldn't decide how we felt about that; is it really worth going all that way to see a replica?  In this case, I would still say yes.  Athens has an astounding number of other artifacts, and the view from the top of the city is spectacular.  However, I also think there was something to George's argument that it should be allowed to die in peace.  I don't really know how I feel about it though.  It's a subject that warrants further thoughts and discussion.

The next big site we went to was the Theatre of Dionysus.  It's just below the Acropolis and you would have to go out of your way not to see it.  We sat where who knows how many other people have sat for more years than I can comprehend.

This is, embarrassingly, the one and only picture of the two of us from this entire trip.

And then we walked across the street and to (another) Temple of Zeus.  This one was a bit bigger.

George, trying to redirect my camera angle.

With good reason.

By this point, we had again succeeded in avoiding food to the point where we were famished.  Rather than go to one of the touristy and expensive (for Greece...) restaurants near all the sites, we took the advice of my friend, Kate, who studied abroad for a semester in Athens, and walked about fifteen minutes out, to a more suburban-ish area.  We then went to a small café that she had recommended.

As with nearly every eating experience in Greece, there is a story to tell.  First of all, the menu was entirely in Greek, so, rather than take ages having everything translated, we just decided to put ourselves at the mercy of our waiter.  He looked surprised, but said he would to his best to pick something we would like.  He also brought us out some free cake while we were waiting for our food.

And we did not have to wait very long.  Within about ten minutes, he brought George a MASSIVE chicken salad.  No joke, there must have been nearly an entire chicken's worth of meat there.  Whilst I was brought some special bread with about a kilo of feta cheese and olives (think they were again stereotyping the tastes of Americans and Brits?).  Both were delicious, though I did struggle to eat mine and had to call George in for an assist.  It was just SOOO much cheese.  However, before leaving Greece, I did say, on multiple occasions, that I wanted to eat my body weight in feta cheese.  That was nearly accomplished in a single sitting.  

Another interesting moment came after we finished eating, but were still loitering around.  George went up to use the bathroom.  When he came back, I asked him where the toilets were located.  Without skipping a beat, George told me that you had to go next door as the ones in this restaurant were being renovated.  I, being the innocent and gullible human being that I am, believed him, and spent a couple of minutes trying to get into the apartment building next door before I realized that the Englishman was playing a trick on me.  Naturally, I charged back over to our table and started yelling and smacking him.  George, and our waiter, thought it was hilarious.  After that, we paid and started to walk away.  However, we heard someone calling us from in the restaurant.  We turned around, and saw the woman behind the bar beckoning us back in.  Our first thoughts were, "Shoot, did we not tip enough and offend them?"  So imagine our surprise when as we approached the bar, we saw her pour us two shots of a special homemade Greek liquor, the name of which escapes me at this time.  It was really, really nice though, and when we told her this, she poured us another shot apiece, and gave us chocolate before sending us back on our way.  Only in Greece.

It was now around 6:30 pm.  We had roughly 2.5 hours of daylight left, so we decided to stroll through the botanical gardens, hit one or two more sites, and then head back to the hotel as we had a VERY early start the next morning.

Cute dogs posing for us in the gardens

"Spanish" Fountain in the Athens' Botanical Garden

Hehehe...I couldn't resist.

It was around this point that I was saturated with "cultural stuff," so I started sneakily taking photos of George reading the signs so that I didn't have to.

After getting hustled out of the last sight, George and I headed back to the hotel and collapsed.  It had been a great day, but we were very excited to be spending a few days in one place.  And quite ready to lounge on a beach in a Greek island.  To be continued...