Athens...

We flew Royal Jordanian Air from Amman to Athens on Wednesday August 12th. Aside from the flight being delayed about 2 hours, I like the airline. Comfy & even good food. Once we got into Athens, we figured out our bus routes and bussed it into the city to the hotel we "had a reservation at". Unfortunately, they did not have that reservation. It didn't take long though, we found a place pretty quick at Hotel Acropolis. not quite as traveler central hostel style as we were hoping for, but only slightly more expensive for a room to ourselves and free wifi, plus they were way nicer than the jerk at the hostel... works for me. :)

Once we were settled, we ventured out to grab dinner. It seems that the majority of restaraunts are in little "districts" for lack of a better description. They will have 6-10 restaraunts right next one another, so close that with the side-walk seating, you can't tell one from the other. But don't fret, they have a host, or as we like to fondly refer to them... a used car salesman in front to lure people in. This was actually pretty comical. We took the first stroll through to see what our options were. We haven't been able to really desipher the difference between the menus yet, we're pretty sure they should just get a discount to buy them in bulk and give copies to every restaraunt. By the time we walked to the end of the row of restaraunts, we had to stop and make sure we didn't buy a car... hence the used car salesman. That may not make sense as a story on a blog, but trust me, it was funny. A little taste, we heard this from just about every host as we walked. "Come eat here, look how many people, how popular it is... we have the best food in the city... no? ok, ok, special for you, we give you a free glass of wine..." SOLD. hehe :) The greek salad was really good-really fresh tomatoes. The Lamb skewer... pretty dry, but great seasoning. We crashed after dinner, pretty tired from travel and had a big day the next day. Lame, I know. But IOS is coming up, I have a feeling there will be some lat night partying involved, so don't fret. Mom, totally kidding. From here on out, the word party describes the yoga group we joined... (?)

The next day after a breakfast of bread, a hard boiled egg, butter, marmelade and tea (pretty much what I'll be having for breakfast most days for the next two months), we set out to figure out our trip to the islands -booked- and our train to Thessaloniki and then on to Istanbul, Turkey -booked- and -booked-. We spent most of the day just walking around everywhere, which lets you see more of the city then taking public transportation between sights.

So probably our most "interesting" walk was from the train ticketing station (OSE) to Keramikos, an ancient grave yard (not that exciting). We just had a map and zig zagged our way through to get to there. In this direction, we purposefully avoided the tourist "walking streets" with all the shops and such, so we could see the outskirts and the non-published areas to get an idea of the way of life. Some areas we walked through we pretty normal. We found a little shopping area and a few cute swimsuits, then kept walking and found a meat and fruit market (although the lady at the hotel told us its general location). We grabbed some fruit and some cheese and figured we'd go find a place to sit. Beyond that, as we worked our way over, we went through some seriously seedy areas of town. Dirty, stinky, shady characters, looking at us like we were slightly out of place... cause we were, thank goodness. During our walked, we saw a park on the map, thinking it'd be a perfect place to sit in the shade and eat. hmmmm... you know that park in Seattle on 3rd and Yesler? Lots of homeless people? yep, that's a good description of this park. We walked up to it and promptly walked around. There were allot of people in that tiny park. The neighborhood around it wasn't much nicer. It was kinda crazy though, as we were walking through all this, there was one single block that was really nice, the building was clean & there were trees with flowers planted every ten feet of so. It crazy to see such a drastic difference from one block to the next & even just across the street.

After Keramikos, we went to the Ancient and Roman Agoras (big open spaces). In ancient times, they were the market place and main town area, shadowed by Acropolis, which we went to the next day. Lots of pillars and parts of stone from the ancient buildings. After the Agoras, we stopped on this cute street of steps lined with restaraunts. We hung out for a while with a few beers & eventually got dinner. We shared the Grower's Lamb. It was REALLY good! Slow oven baked, wrapped in grape leaves with some type of cheese and the sauce that it was with was SO good! Yum!

Today, we saw the last few main sites we wanted to see. Acropolis and from afar, due to it's being closed, the Olympian Zeus. Ok, after a while, the ruins are well... still just ruins. Looks pretty much the same everywhere. The Acropolis on the other hand was amazing. instead of a few half pillars and a bunch of stones, there were multiple massive structures still available to see. Most of it was down to the basics with no walls, but the sheer massiveness of what was left of these was incredible. Truth be told, I'm not sure what extent of preservation and potentially recreation has been done. You can see the scaffolding in many areas where they are doing some work (I don't think the scafolding is part of the ancient tools :)) Regardless, it was really an amazing sight. Also, the city is situated on top of a hill in Athens, overlooking most of Athens, so the 360 view from it was pretty dang cool. Olympian Zeus is a theatre just south of Acropolis. We did get to peer into it from Acropolis above. It had to have had a fair amount of restoration because it looked far too perfect to be left over - but still, really cool.

We also found in our walking around that downtown Athens where all the sights are, even though they are somewhat spread out, is Far smaller than the map implies. We didn't plan on seeing near as much as we did yesterday, but the sights that looked like they were a good 20-30 minute walk from each other were just about 5 minutes. I think they may have to ship in more water bottles just for us though, we're goign through the 1.5L bottles like their a few sips a piece. It's a little hot here - we may be a whole different nationality when we get back & that's with wearing 30 sunscreen at all times. You start to get used to the heat though, and we're in shorts and Chacos, so it's cool.

After finishing our sight seeing, we decided to check out the shops. I bought a pretty cool dress that I'll have very little use for in Seattle, but... I'll make it happen. :) After all that, we were starving to death, so we crossed our fingers and bought Gyros at a little place on the walking street. I don't think it qualifies as street meat because the place was actually permanent, but there was no "inside" for customers to enter. So... ??? maybe it is? It's been a few hours now though & so far so good, so here's hopin'. :D

Well, we're off to get Gelato and see if we can get a computer that will allow us to upload photos-wish me luck...