Athena

welcome to athens 

or should i say.. 

Καλώς ήλθατε στην Αθήνα

uhhhhhh

Excuse Me:

DOES ANYONE KNOW GREEK?!

HA!

after a 4 am wake up call and a flight to athens we arrived in one piece. after we got off the plane and went through the airport, we remembered that dorothy wasnt in kansas anymore. well aware that the greek alphabet is different, i complete forgot .. until we walked off the plane.

im sorry .. what?! 

after the initial shock we headed out of the airport to figure out how to get to our hostel. our directions told us to take bus ' E ' towards some square. well when we looked at the screens, they all we buses 'X'. so the over all consensus was that we need to find a different station.. until all of a sudden it clicked once again that they have a different alphabet and i realized that their 'X' is our 'E'. so we successful found our bus and made it to the hostel. it was in the cutest area. there were alot of cute shops and restaurants right outside of out door and the acropolis a ten minute walk away. 

view from our balcony

first order of buisness, get some lunch. when we walked out of the hostel the man working at the resturant came up to us and started his pitch about lunch and so on... and then he offered us free drinks with our meal and 10% off, so we decided to eat there. i was sooooo pumped to have greek food. hello gyros! my favoriteee. 

YUMMMMMMMM.

the man at the restaurant was adorable. throughout lunch he kept telling us greek phrases and was explain different things about the greek culture and so on, and then he brought us free dessert! after lunch we headed towards the acropolis. the walk there was gorgeous. we passed so many cute little huts and then went through a little area with the white buildings and blue roofs. something you automatically assume and associate with greece but to see it in real life was weird...this actually exists? i felt like i was living in a movie. 

we arrived at the acropolis around 2:30 but little did we know, it was closed. last entrance is a 2:00 pm because of siesta. talk about disappointing..coming all the way to greece and not being able to see something so famous and significant ... and to miss it by a matter of minutes. WAH! once we got over the disappointment we walked around the gates to see we could get a view of it at all. 

on the way back to our hostel we found another spot where you can climb up which gave an amazing view of the city and the acropolis. 

all the girls 

after our outing we headed back to our hostel to meet jades roommate from home that is studying in athens for the semester. we hung out around our area and did some shopping in the small shops around us. right before dinner we headed to another site. my memory is a little hazy as to what it was exactly because there were no signs and the girls were explaining to us what it was but i believe it was the ruins of zuses temple. i think .. not really sure. clearly it left a lasting impression on me...but in my defense  after a while all of the ruins start to look the same and the sites blur together!

then we headed to dinner ... yess more greek food! although i wanted to get another gyro i decided to try something more traditional.  greek salad and pastitsio. 

 pastitsio is a baked pasta dish with a meat sauce topped with a type of custard sauce and usually has some paprika or cinnimon in it to give it a sweet kick. now normally i dont like to miss sweet and savory but i figured i'd try it out. not to bad, it was a little bland but when i added some parmesan cheese into it, it was delicious. (so basically, i turned it into something i would normally eat .. so the whole trying something never thing ... fail

after dinner we headed back to our hostel to get some sleep. we were exhausted from getting up so early to travel and the next day was another morning to add to that list. we woke up at 4:30 to get a taxi to the bus station. we were told to get a but at 7:30 but because easter weekend is big in corfu and all the students in athens were heading back to their home islands for the holiday, we wanted to get there early to get tickets because we absolutely had to make it on that bus. well we arrive with plenty of time to spare... but the ticket counters were not open. then after we tried to decipher the signs, we figured there were a few buses that would could take but had no clue which one was the right one. long story short, after attempting to as other people, the information desk and using ever MB of data on our phones we could, some lady came up to us and told us the bus leaving in 4 minutes was to the corfu port. uhhhh whattt?! half of the girls were standing with me, the other half we in line to get food and none of us were ready to go with tickets. so we scrambled to get everyone.. sprinted to the bus, convinced the driver to wait for us while we bought tickets and finally made it onto the bus. not a clue as to if it was the right one or not, but we sure as hell didnt want to miss it if it was. after setting the departure time back a solid 15 minutes we were on the bus and asleep. lucky for us the bus was the right one, and the driver was nice enough to drop us off at our port (apparently it was going to a different one) yeha.... a bit stressful. 

after a 7 hour bus ride, we arrived at the port where we then waited an hour and half for the ferry. so of course we went to get lunch, aka chicken gyros. once the ferry arrived we took that to corfu .. about and hour and a half later we finally arrived to the island. talk about a long day of traveling! 

we were a little delusional .. due to a lack of sleep

when we got off the bus we greeted by a man from the pink palace (the hostel we were staying at). although our driver freaked me out a bit (by the way.. his name was socrates!) it was nice to have someone pick us up and not have to worry about getting to another hostel. 

Next Stop:

The Pink Palace! 

Athens Photos