Gyro Parakalo!

We were only there for four days but we managed to learn the most important phrase in Greek: gyro parakalo (gyro please) and we put it to good use!

I went to Athens on Saturday with my friend from camp, Hannah. She is studying in Alicante, Spain so we met in Barcelona on Thursday and started our journey to Greece. We arrived in the Athens airport in the early afternoon and had to take an hour and a half bus ride to Syntagma Square where a nice native helped us figure out the next bus we had to get onto to find our hostel. It was about a 15 minute ride from the main square. We checked in, dropped off our bags, and took the bus back to the square to begin exploring.

We quickly learned, however, that a lot of the shops closed at 3 and the touristy stuff closed at 5. Which was a bummer because we had wanted to do a hop-on hop-off bus tour. Instead, we grabbed a surprisingly inexpensive cab to the Acropolis. That was closed too, though, so we could only look from afar. After we got all of our pictures, we wanted to take another cab to the Temple of Olympian Zeus. But being the young, relatively inexperienced solo travelers that we are, we accidentally got into a private taxi (which is not nearly as cheap as the public taxis). The minute we got in, the guy was trying to sell us a private driving tour of the other things in Athens that we hadn't seen. When we tried to politely decline, he kept pushing and eventually we asked him to just drop us off at the next major landmark we passed.

Athens with the Acropolis

Temple of Olympian Zeus

This happened to be the Panathenaic Stadium, the sight of the first modern Olympics. As soon as we got out of the cab, I realized for the first time just how amazing Athens is. These amazing, historical locations are situated with all of modern society built up around them. We figured that the stadium would be closed since everything else was and that we were just going to look from afar. As we walked up to it, I saw a man taking a selfie with the stadium so I offered to take his picture for him. After which, he discovered, and kindly informed us, that we could still go inside and explore. Hannah and I entertained ourselves for awhile running around the track, taking pictures on the medal stands, and having Rocky moments on the giant marble stairs. While inside, we kept running into the selfie man and we realized that it was a small enough location that we would continue to run into each other but it worked out well because we could take the pictures he needed and he could take a few pictures of us together, so we stuck together, kind of. We found a tunnel off of the track (which Hannah jokingly decided was the way to the locker room) and inside there were pictures of the original state of the stadium and a mini museum of the logos of all of the modern Olympics. When all of the fun was had in the stadium and we had seen the sun setting over the Acropolis, we walked past the Temple of Olympic Zeus, the ruins located in the center of Athens. With most things being closed by the time we got to Athens, we did a pretty good job on our first evening. The next task was finding some authentic Greek food for our first dinner- let me tell you, we did not fail. We found a restaurant off of Syntagma Square and had olives, bread, a delicious Greek salad, Greek wine, and kebobs with tzatziki sauce, tomatoes, onions, and grilled pita. It was amazing.

We were up bright and early (5:30am) Friday morning to head to the port to catch our ferry, which was basically a mini cruise ship, to Santorini. The ride was 9 hours because we hit some rainy weather on the way in. We slept for the first couple of hours, then had to kill a lot of time while we stopped at 3 other islands on our way into Santorini. Getting into Santorini late was starting to mess up our plan because we were feeling the pressure of only having 24 hours on the island. Plus, it was pouring rain as we disembarked the ferry. We took yet another cab from the port to our new hotel which appeared to be in the middle of nowhere. When we got there, they told us that since it was the off season for the island, the buses weren't running on any kind of regular schedule. As it turned out, we didn't pass a single bus the whole time we were there. This threw another wrench in our plan. But as we were fretting about it all this, the very hospitable and welcoming hotel owner said she wanted to give us something so we should sit down. We reluctantly did so (as it was killing our exploring time). Poppy, the owner, put down two hot bowls of traditional Greek soup since it was a rainy day and then gave us a free bottle of wine for our business. She was very nice. After the soup, we dropped off our things in our room and headed back to the front desk so they could call us a cab so we could explore in the few hours of cloudy sunlight left. We were greeted by a private tour/cab which was for the best because the driver offered us a tour of the island the next day. With such a limited amount of time on the island, and after a little bartering, this turned out to be our best option. Friday night, she took us to the town of Oia, which is famous for a beautiful view of the sunset. Luckily, even though it had been raining all day, the clouds cleared and we got a little bit of a sunset and a double rainbow sighting! We found a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Oia, even though 90% of the town was closed for renovations and upkeep before the summer tourists arrive. We had another great Greek dinner and felt like we were immersed in the culture among natives in the restaurant.

Half-eaten baked feta + sausage and peppers

Friday morning was our "private tour" of the island and we had no idea what to expect. The woman offered to stop and buy us coffee to start off the morning and we were just trying to figure out if we were being duped. But we went with it. We started off the tour heading north, in the direction of Oia, but not all the way back to the town. We stopped at a beautiful viewpoint of the volcano island. Then we started the journey south, seeing one beautiful sight after another. We saw the famous church with the blue top, donkeys, the highest point in Santorini, the Red beach (with red stones), the Black beach (with black sand), and we stopped and had the most delicious gyro I have ever had. Funny story- while stopping to take pictures at the black beach, we could walk right up to the water and we were seeing to where the tide was coming. Hannah starts walking up the water with her phone to take a picture and she goes "I just want a big wave to get a picture of my shoes on the sand with the water." She happened to be standing right where a wave had come up to not long before so I knew she was in trouble. As soon as she said it, a massive wave came and she started to try to run back but she wasn't fast enough and she lost her footing. She fell and her but got wet but all of the important things managed to stay dry. Luckily, Hannah is a good sport and laughed it off as I made fun of her for it for the rest of the trip. It was hysterical. Following Black beach, we went back to the port and hung out until the ferry came to get us. Another 8 hours of sitting on the ferry back to Athens. But this time we got to watch the sunset over the water/islands.

Red Beach

Black Beach

We were going back to the same hostel in Athens to check in again on Saturday night. We hit another bump in the road though. The cab driver dropped us off at the hostel after the ride from the port and told us that it would be €33! We had spent the whole ride chatting with him and being very friendly and then he tried to tell us that the ride would cost us three times more than it did on the way from the hostel to the port on Friday. It didn't help that there was also a bit of a language barrier. But we were not about to pay €33 for a €10 ride. After some heated bickering, he left with €20. We headed into the hostel frustrated and exhausted. After that ordeal, just wanted to go to sleep so we could wake up relatively early to finish our Athens exploring this morning before we had to go back to the airport.

We had two main things we wanted to accomplish Sunday morning- the flea market in Monastiraki and actually walking around inside the Acropolis. We went to Monstiraki and walked around the square to stumble upon some more interesting ruins and then walked around the market. We went to the Acropolis and I headed into the most amazing ruins I have yet to see. Seeing the Parthenon and the rest of the ruins in person was indescribable.

Roman Agora

Odeum of Herodes Atticus

Propylaea

Erechtheion

The Parthenon and me!

Although we had a couple of hitches along the way, Greece was a great experience and I still can't wrap my head around the fact that we went and that we managed to fit everything into four days! Thanks for reading!
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