By now I am day 11 into my two week long spring break and its April 19th. This morning I got up at some unfortunate time like 4am, and got myself packed. Let’s be real for a minute, its not like I’d been getting a lot of great sleep on the trip so 4am wasn’t that early, and my body was in some sort of trance mode of let’s go, so that’s what I did I went. I got up Elisa and moved her to my room since the people in her room had moved her stuff off her bed the night before and she didn’t trust them. Plus, she and Joe were going to spend part of the day exploring more of Rome before they both left the hostel for good. After I get myself and the crew all situated we say goodbye to Roma and we take a shuttlebus to the airport with the destination of Athens in mind.
The airport was kind of a funny story in that no one looked at my passport. They saw that I had one and that it said USA, but no one opened it. Not a single person opened up my passport to see if I really was who I said I was. Also, I later found out that I still had my razor and liquids in my bag, things your not supposed to fly with. And finally, my bag was by far too big for the EasyJet restrictions, but somehow I got away with all of the above. Apparently, airport security that morning wasn’t feeling too chipper to verify that I follow the rules.
So after no one looked at my passport, we boarded a bus, which took us to the plane, where similar to Ryanair, we had to board the plane outside. Oh rando European airports, how you never cease to amaze me! Took a little plane to Greece, and the next thing you know we were in Athens! Luckily for us the wonderful Madeline Kramer was there to help us by telling us what bus to take from the airport to the city, so we did just that. We arrived in Syntagma Square for a few unpleasant sightings/ occurrences a) it was cold b) there were at least twenty dogs in a 40 foot radius just lying there on the ground looking dead c) sometimes the dogs would get up and just walk into the middle of a busy road d) everything was in Greek, I could literally utter the phrase, "its all Greek to me" and not feel like a cliche, no now I was living the cliche! e) why was it cold in Greece? It was warmer in Brussels than Greece.
After walking in the opposite direction for a while, we found Maddy, who also proceeded to lead us in the wrong direction. Eventually, we found where the other girls were staying, and we got them all checked in. Maddy left for class, so the rest of us went out to lunch on a street we had passed earlier. We walked into a gyros shop and all they had to say to us was "2 euros." We were all quite confused, but Christy just responded by giving them 2 euros and telling all of us to give them the money. Once we had and we were just standing there, we were like "uh, what was the 2 euro for?" Then they explained it was 2 euros for a gyros, but that was the take-away price. If we wanted to eat there it was .15 euro more. Since it was freezing out and we were tired, we just sat and enjoyed our delicious gyros inside. From there we went to a little pastry shop where the girls got baklava and I had some tasty chocolate dessert. Next, we walked to Parliament and saw the changing of the guards.
Kelly, Christy, and I wandered a little into the National gardens before meeting Katie at the Blue Ferry travel agency to plan our island excursion. We knew we wanted to visit an island during our time in Greece and now that it was cold out, our need to go someplace warm was only magnified. We pretty wasted an hour at the agency realizing the two main islands we wanted to visit: Mykannos and Santorini were super expensive. So we left full of ideas of where to go to instead, and went to Temple of Zeus.
From the Temple of Zeus, we saw Hadrian's gate. And from there, we went to the Acropolis Museum. The Acropolis Museum houses masterpieces of ancient Greek civilization and art, including sculptures, friezes, and figurines. After a while, we got kind of sleepy from our 4am wake up, so left and returned to the hostel awaiting Maddy's call for dinner. 4 hours later, we woke up from our naps to realize it was now 8pm! We then contacted Maddy and went out to eat at a restaurant near the Acropolis. We had maastraki, stranginki (a fried cheese dish), oranges, and lamb. NOM NOM NOM.
After a delightful dinner where Maddy explained to us the dos and don'ts of Greek life, we met up with Katie and her friend from home who is studying in Athens. As we all walked back to the hostel we saw one of those homeless dogs try to attack a man, turns out if you look shady, the dogs will try to attack you. Scary business these homeless dogs. After that adventure, I picked up my stuff from the girl's hostel, and Maddy and I walked to her apartment. There we bonded and had a little reunion sharing stories of our lives, and then it was time for some more much needed sleep.
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