The mainland

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We left Santorini for Athens Monday, and after a LONG metro ride later, we arrived at the hotel in the heart of the Plaka near the Acropolis. We walked around and I enjoyed my first real gyros pita in Europe (every city has their own inferior imitations and variations)! We saw some ruins, old churches and houses just walking around the city. I then really wanted to see Kallimarmaro Stadium, home of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 and used in the 2004 Olympics for some of the events - it was built in the 4th Century B.C. for the Panathenaic Games and then restored for the modern ones! We walked to Parliament and watched the changing of the guards, done every hour here. It was quite a show, complete with the guards' cute little costumes with kilt-like skirts and puff ball shoes. There was a little choreographed routine for them to change positions, too. This city was one of the pretties big cities I've seen in Europe, at least the old part, and it's like Rome in that with every modern streetcorner you turn, you can see something ancient and amazing. It was pretty incredible. After walking around the old town some more, I was excited to find a Starbucks (clearly not an ancient structure) and, later, we had dinner at a typical yet tourist-filled taberna.

On Tuesday, we head out early for the Acropolis, the ancient city of Athens to try to beat the heat as well as the tourists. We did neither, so I can't imagine what the height of tourist season in the summer must be like here. I did, however, get into all the ruins for free with my Spain ISIC card, which was exciting. Here, we saw the Parthenon, the Theatre of Dionysus, the Temple of Athena-Nike, and the Acropolis Museum, along with other scattered ruins. The ticket gets you into all the big ruins around the city, so we did them all - we went to the Agora next, and lunched near there to take a break from the heat at an amazing cafe. We continued on to the Roman Forum and the Tower of the Winds, the Perameikos - the ancient city limits and graveyard of important old Athenians - and the next day, we saw the Temple of Olympian Zeus and Hadrian's Arch right by our hotel. Later Tuesday, we walked around the city shopping and continued stopping to admire random ruins throughout. We stopped for some refreshments at Bretto's, a colorful if not overrated bar in the Plaka with colored and lighted liquor bottles covering the walls. The place serves mostly local alcohol, which is a very cool concept. We had dinner later that night at Daphne's, where all the celebrities dine when they come to Athens, but didn't enjoy our meal or service much at all.

The next day, after seeing Zeus's Temple, we strolled through the lovely National Gardens and passed by the dinky little zoo they have inside. We shopped for native handicrafts today, exploring the street markets and tried unsuccessfully to find the flower market in town. We eventually found a shop near our hotel with the nicest couple, who chatted with us and discussed the cruise ship incident, too. We bought a beautiful hand-painted tray from their shop - older Greeks in shops are SOO friendly. It's great. After a nap, we went to Philopappos Hill. It was a bit hard to find, even though it was near the hotel, but it was very pretty and peaceful once we got there. There were gorgeous views of the city and ancient ruins. We went back for a yummy dinner at a tiny basement taverna, and went to bed early to get up for our VERY early flight the next morning.

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