Monday, May 21, 2012

Greece is the Word!

We're off to Athens, Greece. We decided only a few weeks prior to our flight "hey let's go somewhere." This trip is going to be fun mostly because after the first 4 days, we're "wingin" it. No hotel reservations, no plans, just a rental car. That's right, we'll be driving. To get onto Greek time, Aaron said it would be a good idea to sleep on our red eye. Did I listen?! Of course not. I had the BEST idea. Stay up and watch a movie! Oh and it was a gem; Tower Heist. 

Insert sarcasm. It was NOT worth it. I hit the "I'm tired" wall so quick. 
We stayed in the Plaka, the oldest neighborhood in Athens. It had a great charm about it. Lots of cute restaurants as well as souvenir shops, and occasionally a sprinkling of ruins. We listened to an audio tour which took us all around the center of town. At lunch, I tried my first gyro. I'm not sure if the tzaziki sauce is going to be my friend. After lunch, it was off to the Acropolis. We were too late to see the Agora, but I guess that's why you revisit certain cities later in life. When we approached the Theater of Dionysis, I nearly cried. It was so breathtaking not just to see a huge amphitheater of this size and age, but it was one of the birth places of theater. I would've loved to have done a tap dance there.
 Just a couple hundred feet away was the Parthenon. HUGE columns! There used to be a roof. Yep, that's gone. The marble at all the sites we went to today was SO slippery.
I'd always wanted to see these ladies. I imagined them to be giant like the pillars at the Temple of Zeus or the Parthenon, but no, I think they're around 9 feet tall. They were really far away too. I couldn't get any closer. After all the ruins, we went to the Archaeological Museum and saw some pottery and sculptures.

After being here for a day, I can see why so many have said that Athens is an "interesting" city. It's not the most beautiful, though it's full of culture and history. I'm sure if pollution hadn't ruined some of the ruins, it'd be a lot prettier.

Dinner was pretty standard; eggplant and fish. For dessert, we had Greek frozen yogurt with nutella! Aaron also got some sour cherries. How very Greek of him!

Something funny: The way you saw Thank you in Greek sounds like you're saying eff Christ. Literally it's pronounced "Eff Kah ree stow!"

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