Athens, Greece

(June 1st - June 3rd, 2015)

We got into Athens at night and took the metro from the airport into the city. We emerged from the underground station to find ourselves on a somewhat deserted street with graffiti everywhere (it felt a little post apocalyptic to be honest). We were definitely surprised, but found our hotel easily, set our bags down, and set off to find a very late dinner. We were staying in the famous Plaka neighborhood so there were many restaurants and bars located all around us. We decided to have dinner at Melilotos. I had a delicious beetroot and balsamic salad and Allen had a chicken burger. Unfortunately when Allen ordered a chicken burger, he didn't realize it would be ground chicken...and it didn't hit the spot like he thought it would. After dinner we headed back to our hotel and went to bed to rest up for the full day of sightseeing we had ahead of us.

We only had one full day in Athens so we had to make it count. We started the morning with breakfast at the hotel and then walked up to the Acropolis. We downloaded Rick Steves' audio tour so rather than hiring a guide and dealing with some of the largest crowds we had experienced on our trip, we just wandered around learning about all the ruins one by one. We started off by admiring the 5,000 seat amphitheater Odeon of Herodes Atticus (that is still used today) and then continued up the marble steps to the grand entrance gate of the Acropolis, or Propylaea. We passed the Temple of Athena Nike and then entered through the column lined hallway of the Propylaea and went straight to the Parthenon. It truly is an amazing structure and is much larger than I ever imagined (each of the columns are 34 feet high, 6 feet in diameter and weigh 12 tons!). I can't even fathom how people 2,500 years ago transported all 100,000 tons of marble, that was used for the Parthenon, from the quarries 16 miles away.

Even though there were major restoration efforts going on at the Parthenon, we got some great photos avoiding almost all the cranes and scaffolding. Allen couldn't decide how he felt about the structures being restored with new marble, but I appreciated it because it helped me visualize what the ruins looked like thousands of years ago. After the Acropolis we grabbed a gyro and souvlaki from the family owned restaurant nearby. Everything from the greek salads to the traditional dessert was really good, but the owners wife wouldn't clear any of our plates until they were completely empty...and there was a lot of food to be eaten! Afterwards, we made our way to the Acropolis museum to see some of the original Parthenon sculptures and artifacts that are now being preserved to protect them from the outside elements. The plan was to have Allen listen to Rick Steves' audio tour and regurgitate anything interesting or important, but he quickly realized that he accidentally downloaded the audio tour for the National Archaeological Museum instead of the Acropolis Museum. So instead we spent hours walking around the museum reading about all the exhibits on our own. One thing I never realized before coming to Europe was that most of the white marble ruins once had sections that were painted in a variety of colors. The museum had some photos of what Parthenon would have looked like thousands of years ago and it was gorgeous! They also had a full model of the Acropolis made entirely out of legos which was one of Allen's favorite parts of the entire museum :) Overall, the Acropolis Museum does a great job of explaining the artifacts and exhibits (in English!), which was not always the case on our other museum visits. We ended up really enjoying the museum and would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Athens.

After finishing up at the museum we found an amazing juice bar where I got the green detox juice and Allen got the apple pie smoothie (but it was made with all clean ingredients) and they were both delicious! After our snack we walked over to the Temple of Zeus and admired the few massive columns that remain from the temple today. Next up was the Ancient Agora of Classical Athens, which is the best known example of an ancient Greek agora (the agora was the center of athletics, artistic, spiritual, and political life in the city). We walked across town to the entrance and listened to the Rick Steves' audio tour while we walked around. He does a really good job of being informative and providing just the right amount of detail in his audio tours and the best part is that they are free! We also enjoyed his incredibly corny sense of humor. Afterwards, I really wanted to see the old Olympic stadium, but didn't realize we were right next to it when visiting the temple of Zeus. With our lack of general exercise and spike in dessert consumption throughout our trip, it wasn't hard to convince ourselves to make the walk back to the stadium. We got some good views of the track, the stands, and the winning podiums that were used in the first modern day Olympics that were hosted in Athens back in 1896.

We finally made our way back to our room to wash up for dinner. Our hotel wasn't located around the top restaurants in Athens so we settled for a chic looking restaurant nearby that was supposed to have good cocktails. To our pleasant surprise the food was fantastic and Allen had a cocktail that had an entire scoop of vanilla mascarpone on top! Before calling it a night, we grabbed the laptop and went up to the rooftop bar of our hotel for some wine and to enjoy the amazing view of the Acropolis lit up at night.