European Tryst: 2009

I flew to Athens, Greece the next morning and waited for my friends to arrive. They finally made it and we headed to the city to Hotel Zorbas. The hotel was suitable. Sure, it may have a hole in the floor and the shower head has no holder, but you know, it was cheap and the beds were clean. It was quite late so we went straight to bed and woke up to go see the Acropolis! We actually decided to grab lunch first on the way and an area of town was recommended by the guy at reception and boy was he right! The first part of Athens I saw was very dumpy and disappointing but finally we turn a corner after walking 20 minutes and there were the adorable storefronts and quaint narrow streets I had imagined! We found during our trip these nice areas would just appear. They were all hidden behind the squalor. It turned out to be a lovely lunch and I got my Greek Salad and my Tzaziki so I was a happy camper. Everyone else was introduced to Souvlaki, these wonderful little meat kebabs. Greek food seemed to be a hit!

We then left and wandered our way to the Acropolis and stumbled upon the main street shopping area. Greece is definitely the place to buy jewelery...amazing selection! We finally found the entrance to the Acropolis. It's one of those frustrating things seeing your goal and then having a hard time reaching it. The Acropolis was very cool! Such amazing history there. I did however, get into some trouble. I was taking a pop duck photo and a guy appeared out of nowhere with a badge saying there are no 'toy pictures' and that it is disrespectful to the archaeological site. I explained that I was not doing it in disrespect at all, it was for a photo project. He said 'no project' this is an important historical site. I then explained that I was an architecture major and completely aware of the importance of where we stood. But alas....he had me delete the photo. I shouldn't have let him now that I look back. It's my camera and he had no right but it's just one of those things where in the moment you don't think of those things. It did give us a fun thing to joke about the rest of the day. After the Acropolis we went down the mountain to the ancient Agora and then decided to head to Hard Rock Cafe for dinner (a lot of the guys I was hanging out with collect stuff from there, we ate traditional meals the rest of the time though...love my tzaziki!) After dinner we tried to look into the sound and light show Kelly's dad told us to see at the Acropolis. Apparently he had been to Athens a few times before and never got a chance to see it...looks like it runs in the family cause neither did we! The show had stopped running. However, before finding this out, we wandered to the Acropolis, playing with some dogs on the way. One particular dog must have liked us and followed us up to the top of the hill. Deemed Kratus, Maximus, and Tyler by various members of our group, he was a pal. He got into a growling match with some dogs inside the gates of the Acropolis though...apparently that was their tuff and they were protecting it...didn't want to get in the way of that one. I really didn't feel much like getting mauled. We decided to head back down after seeing there was no show but Kratus turned a different direction and stared at us. He stared at us so much and would not budge that we turned and headed toward him and as soon as we did, he began to move again so we followed. He took us through the trees to this giant rock with some stairs leading up...it turned out to be the most amazing look out onto the city! It was beautiful. Kratus led us up the stairs and just hunkered down on a ledge and fell asleep. It really did seem that he was leading us there, what a magical thing. We all headed back down after admiring the view for a bit and hit the hay. A great first day!

at lunch

alfred had a cold and kept hitting up the natural cough medicine...doesn't work as well as the codine you could get in holland

the charming street

on the way up to the acropolis

yay aggies!

lawrence bonded with pop duck

hole!

we made it!

the parthenon

me and the view below

kelly and I

yay greek flag!

greece

happy

hello ladies...

the sun was bright so i lent out my shades

we found an ancient lazy boy!

flowers

hiking down

stoa!

dismantled columns

amazing

admiring that that is amazing

on the way back to the acropolis after dinner

maximus! or kratus or tyler

the acropolis

posing with the pup

The next day was fairly uneventful. We attempted to go to a close by island Paros and drink their famous lemonade but the tickets were too expensive and not worth the amount of time we'd actually get to spend there. So we decided to just wander around and wing it. The day consisted of walking to the Olympic Stadium, getting sidetracked by watching Pigeons and their mating rituals and avoiding the scattered showers...the latter never got too bad though. We had another lovely meal, this time getting coaxed in with free dessert. The servers were so nice though! Matt and Mark met us that evening and we all went out to dinner together.

sad we didn't go to paros