Athens... our only european experience!

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another of my list of 'must dos' ... the parthenon in Athens... the only european thing on our list for this trip so I was pretty excited about this bit!!

despite being very sad to be leaving england and the comfort of my second home we got a little bit excited about starting our adventure again!

unfortunately, not being good greek orthodox people we neglected to know that it was greek easter and we were arriving on the equivalent of good friday!! so we flew in not knowing if anything would be open the entire time we were there!

our first morning there was their easter sunday equivalent which meant that absolutely everything was closed... and i mean everything!! the town was a ghost town... no one in the cafes, no one on the metro... no one in the city in fact... one major advantage with this was that we got to find our feet and get to know our way around without the crowds which was really good! we walked around and looked at all the sights from behind bars!!

the second morning thankfully the greeks had decided that they had better pander to the tourists a bit after the weekend and and opened all of the major sights for free.. this was a really good thing for us as our budgeting skills are being stretched here!! (so different when it is your own money!! - i am much better with budgets when i don't have to use my own money!!) so we got up really early and headed for the parthenon!! for those of you who don't know what that is... basically athens is made up of 7 hills surrounded by a city... on one of the hills in the centre of the city there is this massive temple complex called the acropolis... one of the buildings in this is the parthenon which is the photo that you would have seen about a billion times during the athens olympics!!

speaking of the olympics... this is a really good time to visit athens... it is all still new and clean... everything works and everyone speaks english as they all leant for the olympics... so we have found athens the easiest place to do everything... the only problem is that it is all olympic prices still!!

anway... back to the acropolis... it was spectacular!! sorry that our photos don't cut it... i was in awe... it was so amazing to be there... we just kept reminding ourselves how blessed we are to be able to see the most amazing things on this trip!! I think that dave's arm is again a little dead from me pinching him!! The only sad thing about it is that a lot of it is under scaffolding as they try and restore it... and this means that they have removed a lot of the freizes etc and put them into a museum to protect them from the acid rain... although i understand the theory... it is just not the same as seeing them as a part of the building themselves! take them out of context and you may as well look at a picture!! i was much more excited about what was still standing!! big tick from me for the acropolis!!!

next on the stop was the hill where paul preached his sermon to the unknown god!! how cool...can you believe that we actually were standing where paul had stood 2000 years ago? well even if you can we were in awe!!

Ruins are good... but food is really what dave is travelling for!! so we spent much of our time wandering around finding the best baklava!!! had to do the souvlaki as well which was fantastic... much better than back home (actually not really but thought i would make you all feel jealous!!) baklava however is much better and there are about a million types which dave insisted on trying! think that we have put back on all of the weight that we lost walking up that mountain in peru!! but it is all worth it!!

overall I loved athens but i am into manicured cities and after the olympic experience it is really designed for the tourist so i was in heaven... clean and easy to get around!! however i think that we are both really looking forward to the islands...we are basically going to take pictures of blue and white buildings... so heres hoping that we get some!! we are island hopping across to turkey where we are following paul around and going to ephesus!! but athens has a big tick from me and i hope to go back someday!

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