Athens Part 2

Just a little side note: Apparently the title of my blog is a bit misleading. Yes, I am backpacking through Asia, but that officially begins September 29th in India. Until then I am traveling around Greece. I thought "backpackingthroughgreeceandasia.blogspot.com" was way too long. (And to be quite honest, I am not exactly roughing it in Greece. To me, backpacking is what I am least looking forward to: bugs, dirt, and carrying 45 lbs of my stuff around on my back. In Greece I am showering daily and spending time on the beach.)

Our second day in Athens wasn't much different. The city did not get prettier or cleaner, the dogs were just as rabid, and the Acropolis was still standing. We had lofty goals of seeing the National Archeological Museum, the new Acropolis museum, and the actual Acropolis, but how many major tourist things could we actually do if we were still jetlagged?

We went to the National Archeological Museum first. The museum was filled with your standard statues, jewelry, pottery, and other relics, but one of the collections most prized pieces was the Mask of Agamemnon. It was kind of anticlimactic; slightly smaller than we pictured and surrounded by a similar looking death mask and other golden artifacts. I was more into the cartoonish, black-figure pottery. The boys were not interested in any of it.

The Acropolis was next on our list (we decided to skip the new Acropolis museum since we are coming back to Athens in 2 weeks). At the risk of sounding like complete cliche, it was really beautiful. The real Parthenon (which we never correctly identified) was enormous, pretty well preserved, and partially covered in scaffolding. I get that these crumbling buildings need to be restored, but something about a big metal cage wrapped around half of the columns kind of takes away from the picture-perfect idea that I had in my head. (I have pictures of all of these sights, but since I am working off some sketchy computer in an internet cafe, I can't upload them yet.)

After four-ish hours exploring the Acropolis we killed time by eating and then made our way over to the port for an overnight ferry (read: low-end cruise ship) to Crete.

As always, I am running out of time on the computer, but I'll add more when I can.

-Jess

my big, fat greek introduction

Without being too harsh, let's just say Athens isn't my cup of tea. We flew into the city on Thursday morning and took a less than scenic drive to our hostel. I think the little building was actually a "hotel" but our room was 4 twin beds pushed up next to eachother with no walking space. I shouldn't complain, especially because the place was clean and had hot water--things that might be hard to come by when we are gallvanting around India.

After a lovely nap, we got all ambitious and decided to explore the city. The buildings are pretty modern (and my modern I mean not made of marble with porticos and massive columns, like I pictured). The streets were filled with fake bag vendors crazy motorcyclists, and seemingly rabid, homeless dogs. In terms of ruins, there were these glass pyramids with the city's dusty remains in them every couple of blocks, but nothing too spectacular.

After wandering through the Athenian streets, we remembered that we hadn't eaten all day and were starving. (I can't even go into the meal Continental tried to pass as food. I think it was some pasta-chicken-possibly-broccoli mixture, but the neon orange color had me baffled. I passed and opted for a dairy-free granola bar instead). Jordan, who makes friends everywhere we go, met a lady on the plane and got reccommendations for a restaurant in the center of the city. It was supposedly tourist-free and delicious. (Both were true).

After dinner we were wide awake and still on American time so we decided to climb the Acropolis and see what all the hype was about. Of course the Acropolis grounds were closed, but there is this little path that winds up 2/3 of the mountain along the gates of the grounds and it's open all day and night. The top of the mountain and all of the ruins were illuminated, which made it eady for a quick game of "Guess the Ancient Ruin." Despite the multiple Ancient Greek History, Art, and Literature the four of us took over the past four years, none of us could correctly identify the Parthenon. (Disclaimer: There are MANY massive stone buildings with enormous pillars and that are rectangular in shape in and around the Acropolis. I just think the overtired/new location combo had us confused...)

Nothing really exciting or hilarious happened on our hike back down the mountain/hill/whatever you want to call it. We ended up heading back to our hotel and sleeping off our jetlag.

I'll write more about visiting the Acropolis in the daytime, our bizarre boat trip to Crete, and my life in Iraklio next time I get the internet.

-Jess

p.s. spell check does on this greek computer highlights all of my english words. just excuse the typos.