Bridget and I landed in Athens on Sunday morning. We had booked a hostel prior to our stay, so from the airport, we jumped on the metro. As a precursor to come since a large majority of Athens has both English and Greek, we missed our stop, and had to back track a bit. We finally arrived at our hostel, dropped our bags off, and then started to explore Athens.
First impressions, Athens looks dirty. There’s a lot of graffiti everywhere. In fact half of the train we were riding was tagged in spray paint. However, a lot of the people here do speak English, and for the most part, are really friendly.
We first started with the Parthenon (12 euro admission), which is Greece’s main attraction. This huge monument did not disappoint. The ruin sits on top of a hill overlooking Greece. And below stands a theater that the Greeks still use today a couple times per year. Below also sits a temple of Zeus and another huge ruin of columns. Here is where Socrates supposedly caused his raucous.
The ruins were spectacular to see, and this may have been the start of the marble craze in Greece. As the floors, the sidewalks, and anything else you can think of has marble in it. Marble is the new concrete here. On the side of Parthenon stands some of the little tourist shops and restaurants. This area was the nicest place in Athens that we found, so we stood around meandering (and getting lost) in these small streets for a few hours.I also had my first authentic gyro as well (1.50 euro), which is by far the cheapest meal you can find here.
Well… there was no time to waste, so we quickly went to bed to rest up for our next day of traveling to Olympia.
