Athens

Hi everybody! I hope you are ready to sit back and look at my Athens pictures...they turned out amazing! Much better than my normal cell phone pics (these are almost all pictures that David took). 

Athens was not quite what we all expected it to be. Well, Daniel and I went with somewhat low expectations. We'd heard that Athens was a bit rougher than most other cities we'd been to. If you go to Athens, just know it is a modern yet economically disadvantaged city that, yes, has ruins, but also has loads of graffiti, beggars, stray dogs, etc. With that being said, our pictures make it look like a beautiful city, and parts of it were! But I think it was a shock going from beautiful, picturesque Rome to Athens. 

The first day, we checked into our awesome flat (love airbnb!) and then walked up Filopappos Hill to get an incredible view of the acropolis.

There were tons of stray dogs in Athens, yet they all seemed to be taken care of. I later learned that the government vaccinates and I believe neuters the stray dogs in Athens. So at least they are somewhat cared for! They were all really sweet and would follow us around everywhere. I wish I could have brought one home!

The next day, we did the whole Acropolis and all of the ruins that are included with your ticket. Towards the end of the day, we were definitely ruined-out! It all started to look the same. Not to mention, it was pretty hot there!

The acropolis is constantly under construction. In fact, the majority of it is actually a model. Most of the real stones are in the British museum!

At this building, there were tons of security guards and several nicely dressed Chinese people being filmed. We later found out it was the Chinese prime minister! And he was staying at a hotel on our street, so we had lots of police and security guards around our area. 

                    

matching bros in their new jerseys! 

We loved the shopping in Greece- it wasn't too expensive, and it was easy to find souvenirs that weren't generic and tacky. We walked around the little neighborhood of Plaka and the flea market, looking at handmade leather goods, jewelry, and foods to take back with us. 

OH! And Kristen and I got our feet eaten by fish. I felt totally fine about it before getting started, until I had my feet over the water and the lil fishies were swarming the top, jumping out in excitement to gnaw at my feet. And then the feeling of them nibbling was pretty creepy. But after awhile, we got used to it and enjoyed! But no, my feet weren't as smooth as I hoped for them to be. I'll stick with a pumice stone.

More ruins......I think these were the last we saw and I was over it at that point.

We had a really nice restaurant near our flat called Smiles. We ended up eating there two nights in a row! They had the best gyros we had ever had, and it was all really inexpensive. They also had little white rocks that you could decorate while waiting for your food. It was a nice place to sit outside, enjoy the breeze, and watch the world cup.

Really, the food and drinks were very tasty and inexpensive in all of Athens. Like Rome, you could get a liter of wine for 6 euros or less. And I loved the Greek wine (really, I like all wine)! 

A sweet kitty became our friend while eating lunch one day. We quickly learned why you don't feed the stray animals in Athens! Towards the end of our dinner, she was nearly sitting on the table trying to eat off our plates. Yuck! 

We had a great time being together in Athens, but it's definitely not a place I need to go back to. We were there for 3 nights, and by our 2nd full day we were running out of things to do. Next post will most likely be about Santorini....and then I need to write about my brother visiting!