Ruins and Hills

Hello everybody! Last week was spring break, which means that we had 9 days free of class to go off into the world and explore. For my break I ended up traveling with Betty (Betty is a nickname, her real name is Maria, no I don't know where the nickname came from, so for the purposes of this post Betty and Maria are the same person, sorry if I jump back and forth between the two names), a girl I met on my trip to Istanbul, and her roommate Alicia. We spent Saturday March 1 - Tuesday March 4 in Athens Greece, and Wednesday March 5 - Sunday March 9 in Rome, Italy. Since we did and saw so many things there's no way I can get it all in one post so this one is going to be about Greece and I'll do one on Italy later.

Oh also I should probably point out before I left for vacation I may have gotten a bit of a hair cut, and by that I mean I had pretty much all of my hair chopped off. I love it. It's just so much easier to manage.

Before

After

Saturday March 1

The adventure began at the totally reasonable hour of 3:30 AM on Saturday when the cab arrived to bring us to Heathrow Airport for our 6:30 flight. (On a side note, I'm in love with short hair I can roll out of bed, brush it AND IT LOOKS FINE!! And the best part, it stays like that ALL DAY!!) We had a three hour flight to Rome where we had a five hour layover before our jump to Athens. By the time we got there and found our hotel it was about 8:00 and raining so we just grabbed something to eat and headed to bed.

Sunday March 2

A few observations about Greece to begin with. 

1. English is everywhere. Almost everybody speaks some, and if they don't they can summon someone who does in less than ten seconds. Even in the metro all of the stations are labels in Greek and English.
2. Along with English, graffiti is everywhere. All of the buildings in Athens, that aren't thousands of years old, seem to be approximately seven floors high, made of poured concrete, and covered on several layers of spray paint. 
3. Breakfast included means something very different in Greece than America. In the US if your hotel has breakfast included that usually means there will be a small buffet in the lobby with several options to begging your day with. In Greece this means you will be given one hard boiled egg, one cereal option, one juice option, some bread, and one slice of meat and cheese to pick from.

We decided to spend Sunday exploring the major ruins in town, it turns out this was a good choice because when we arrived at the ticket desk it turned out entrance was free on Sunday's. Best. Price. Ever.

First we climbed the Acropolis to the the Parthenon and some other ruined temples. The Acropolis is a REALLY tall steep hill, but the climb was totally worth it.

The view half way up

One of the temples in better shape

Maria, Alicia, and I in front of the Parthenon

Halfway down on top of a really big rock

Once we had had out fill of the ruins at the top of the Acropolis it was time to climb back down the really big hill. About half way down we stopped at the really big rock, pictured above, from which we could see Ancient Agora, which was our next stop. It was kinda like the "down town" area or town center thousands of years ago and has a ton of ruins and a small museum now. Now I'm about 99% sure there is a nice well groomed official path that lead downs from the Acropolis to Ancient Agora, however this was not the path we took. While enjoying the view from the aforementioned rock we spotted when we thought was the official path, about a quarter of the way down when this path ended we realized it wasn't. And of course instead of climbing back up to the top and finding the official path, we just kinda made our own and eventually made it to the bottom. 

This my friends is a training toilet from several thousand years ago that was in the museum  

One of the many beautiful temples 

Lunch time!

After lunch we made our way back around to the ruins and stopped at the Theater of Dionysos, which is amazing! So much of it is still in standing after thousands of years, it looks like it could still be used with a little bit of clean up.

After dinner we went to the second of many museums that we visited over the course of break, the Acropolis Museum. The Acropolis Museum may be the coolest museum I've ever been in, not because of the stuff in it but because of the way it's built. There are a ton of ruins all over Athens, they are literally everywhere. In the case of these particular ruins the government wanted people to be able to see them, but they were afraid too many people walking through would ruin them, so instead they built a museum over said ruins with a see through floor. This both gives the ruins a certain about of protection from the elements and allows millions of people to see them every year. My camera isn't good at taking pictures through glass so this is the best pic I could get of them from the side of the building where you can see under it.

 After a bit more exploring we made our way back to the hotel and stopped at a bakery on our way back for a extremely healthy dinner. (Hey it has fruit on top!)

Monday March 3

Monday we had a bit more trouble finding things to do due to the fact that a - it was raining all day and b - it was a holiday in the Greek Orthodox Church so pretty much everything was closed. We slept in bit in the morning since we knew it would be raining and then decided to so some shopping and see the changing of the guard at the Parliament building. This plan however was doomed to fail since none of the shops are open on holidays and the changing of the guard ceremony doesn't happen when it's raining. On rainy days the guards sit in little huts and when it's time for a new guard to take over he goes into the hut and the old one leaves which as you can imagine is significant less exciting to watch. Thankfully we didn't hang around long enough to witness this disappointing scene, there was a tour guide walking by while we were looks for the location the changing of the guard would usually happen at and she told us not to bother on a rainy day.

We were now left with four or five hours to kill before the National Archeology Museum opened, which was our plan for the afternoon. Maria and I decided to go on a bus tour to kill a few hours and see other parts of the city, Alicia didn't think it would be worth the money so she decided to wander around some more and meet us back at the hotel in a few hours. The bus tour was really interesting, there were recorded commentaries in several languages and we got to see some cool sites that we didn't see the day before. The tour took about two hours then we headed back to meet Alicia, got some lunch, and went to the Museum.

The National Archeology Museum

As I mentioned before everything in Athens is either beautiful  or ugly concrete and covered in graffiti, to demonstrate the picture above was taken from the same spot as as the one below I just turned around.

The Museum had a ton of cool stuff, my favorite was the room full of stuff that was found in a ship wreak a few decades ago. This statue was in my opinion the coolest thing in the museum, I think the eyes are so cool. 

I also find this statue, and several others like it, incredibly cool. Most of the statue's left today are white marble, leading most people to believe that the statues were always like that, in fact the statues all used to be covered in nightly colored paint. A few of the better preserved ones still have some of that paint on them, which I find just incredibly cool, this one still has some red on it.

By the time we were done in the museum the rain had stopped and we decided to go back to the area near the acropolis and get dinner where we could see the monument lit up. This was an incredibly good decision. The ruins are beautiful in any light but lit up at night they're breath taking.

Cute cafe with really good food AND a view

Tuesday March 4

Tuesday was our final day in Greece and since the weather was supposed to be amazing, sunny and in the high 60s, Alicia suggested we go to an island off the coast that she had read about. So in the boring we headed down to the docks and bought tickets for a boat ride over. They boats they uses to ferry people over are these really cool things called flying dolphins. They can move through the water like normal boats, and they do to get out of the harbor, but they when they get some speed they rise up on runner that are attached to the sides in the front and glide across the surface of the ocean. This is what they look like.

When we got to the island we realized that we had a bit of a problem, well actually several problems. The first being the island was a lot larger than we had originally thought. We though it was a little place that we could walk around in a few hours, in reality it's closer to the size of the Vineyard, not huge but you still need a car to get around. Secondly it wasn't a very touristy place, which is good in the sense that everything isn't really cheesy, but it also means that there aren't maps and information readily available on the pier for those tourists who do come along. We ended up spending about an hour wandering around the water front area looking for a map. A kind gentleman eventually pointed us in the direction of the town hall where they gave us some maps and information leaflets about the island and it's attraction. Maps in hand we decided to grab an early lunch while we figured out what to do next. 

First we wandered around the water front and the piers taking pictures and goofing off for a while.

This teeny tiny church is out on one of the piers, it can't be more than 20 feet long and 10 feet wide, they whole inside is painted with religious iconography and it's beautiful.

The water's so clear!!

After the water front we decided to climb another big hill to see the old temple someone build on it. There were ruins on this hill dating back about 10,000 years, it was really cool! At this point during the day the temp was in the high 60s as promised and it was beautiful! We would see for miles from the top of the hill, and there were wildflowers all among the ruins. I even got a bit of a sunburn on my face it was so nice out. 

After we climbed down from the hill we visited the beach you can see in this picture for a little while. Alicia put her feet in the water but apparently it was freezing. I'm sure the beach is super popular in the summer. Although it what I have concluded is true Greek style the sign at the entrance was, you guess it, covered in graffiti. 

These mosaic's are from a Jewish temple that stood on the hill at one point. There nothing left of the building itself but they floor tiles are still there, which is incredibly cool.

After the beach we wandered around the island for an hour or two to kill some time before our boat back. Maria and Alicia found this amazing ice cream place.

And we all had some pistachio's. They we caught the boat back to the mainland and headed to our hotel to pack and make an early night of it so we would catch our 6:00 flight to Rome for the second half of our vacation.