We left Delphi via Athens and arrived at our little Athens Studio apartment in a great part of the city pretty well next to the Acropolis. BIG and BUSY place!
A very exciting day for Steph who got to meet up with hubby Mark who would join us for the rest of our Greek adventure. After devouring jujubes from home, some Kraft peanut butter (ordered by Cheslea), and hearing about the poor weather, missed concerts and other tidbits from home, the rest of the evening was spent updating the blog, and teasing Steph and Mark about having to sleep in bunk beds in a room with all of us 4 after being away from one another for almost 3 weeks as newlyweds. Haha, no romance until Santorini I guess ;-)
Friday was spent doing the touristy part of Athens. We took many pictures of “white, ancient” history made of limestone or marble. The Acropolis is stunning with all of its structures; the most famous and most photographed obviously being the Parthenon. The amount of tourists is pretty crazy and each photo likely has a few dozen or few hundred people in the background. It is an ongoing fight for the most photographic spot, with people walking into pictures without much consideration and cameras clicking everywhere. Very touristy, to say the least. At the same time, the sheer size of the temples, pillars and monuments is overwhelming. We walked through all the spots including the Acropolis and all its structures, the temple of Zeus, the Athens flea market, Syntagma Square in front of the parliament building where we saw the guards to their impressive routine, the National gardens, and the Acropolis museum. The museum just opened in June of 2009 and entrance fees are set at one Euro dollar to attract the crowd. Throughout parts of it, you can see excavations below what appears to be plexiglass or glass florrs. A very modern and well laid out spot which surely adds to one’s understanding of the site and its history. The museum was basically next to our apartment and gave some great background on the Acropolis and what it looked like prior to being damaged/destroyed over the years, plundered and aged to the remains visible today (acid rain etc.).
Athens is certainly a very metropolitan and modern city. Fast traffic, mopeds weaving in and out of traffic, yellow Mercedes cabs everywhere, tons of tavernas, touristy souvenir shops, car rental places and cobble stone types of streets. The Olympics in 2004 has done wonders for the city and after the influx of much related funding, “Athena” has continued to benefit by being nicely laid out for tourists with an ability to walk everywhere. You may just hear more English being spoken then Greek, backpackers and suitcases are seen on most streets and cameras are as common as cell phones, it seems. Being fluent in German has certainly been handy the entire trip for Susanne (me), as it appears that half the crowd here is from Germany or Austria.
We had $1.50 beers on the top of a Backpackers roof top patio with a beautiful view of an Athens sunset and subsequent lighting of the Acropolis at night, and a 10 p.m. dinner consisting of the usual: souvlaki, tzaziki, Greek salad and wine. Wine is not as cheap as it was in Macedonia, but still very affordable at 5 Euros or so a bottle ($9 or so). The temperatures are still hot but we seem to have adjusted a bit.
We are glad to have easygoing Mark with us who seems to have adjusted well with jet lag and all. We are heading on to the nearby Island Aegina tomorrow for a visit, swim and maybe some mopeds and are then onto Santorini and Mykonos for a few days.
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