Athenz

Before you start, I'm just going to warn you that since I wrote this on a boat with nothing to do, it turned into a bit of an essay. My bad!!
Hello! I write to you from the ferry to Mykonos. We are pulling out of Athens and I can't say I'm horribly sad to see it go. While it's full of cool stuff, the city itself is, as we kind of expected, polluted and not very friendly. Anyway...




Needless to say when we got to our hostel we were exhausted and ended up having a power nap (becoming common on this trip!) before exploring. Our hostel was super nice. Friendly, spacious, with a balcony out our room! Great for drying laundry. (exciting, I know.) Did I mention cheap? After we rejuiced a bit we took a walk for some food. Literally 2 minutes from the hostel you get an amazing view of the Acropolis (where the Parthanon is), though that's not uncommon in Athens. We then went to Plaka, which is SUPER touristy... one of those places where everyone runs at you with their menus and make you insanely uncomfortable. Food was touristy, but alright. Finished with a glass of Retsina and basically went to sleep.



So day 2 was basically our only full Athens day. We did the Acropolis first, which was probably a mistake since it was INSANELY crowded and later on was not at all. Oh well. We were literally the only teenagers. There were about 4 trillion seniors in Tilley hats, and the occasional group of Greek schoolchildren. The temple of Athena Nike is completely covered in scaffolding, and the Parthanon is under quite a lot of construction as well. it's also missing all of its statues, though we did see them at the British Museum. The Erectheon, though, is really cool. Less crowds around it and it's a lot prettier and well-preserved. The view from up there is obviously pretty spectacular as well.





After the walk back down, we hit up the New Acropolis Museum. It's not the most exciting thing ever... in fact, it may be the least exciting thing ever. But it wasssss air conditioned. The 3 euro may have been worth it for that. The one cool thing about it was that it's built over the old city/ruins, and so the floors are glass in many parts so you can see it below. Once I looked down and saw a janitor. Fun.





Anyway, then we went to the Temple to Zeus and the Gate of Hadrian. Another ruin photo-op. They are pretty impressive and of course I am glad to have seen them, but to see the undersides blackened from pollution and juxtaposed with graffiti-covered buildings was a little depressing.



Finally we did the best-preserved temple in Athens... or maybe even Greece? It's pretty cool and very deserted. I believe it was called the Hephaesteon and it's by the Agora or marketplace.
That evening was pretty relaxing... power-naps and researching the ferries for the next day. We headed up to the rooftop bar, which was GORGEOUS and had a view of the Acropolis which is lit up at night. It closed less than an hour after we got there though, so we ended up sleeping relitively early for our 5am wakeup this morning.
I apologize again for the length of this entry... I promise Mykonos will be shorter as I think the plan is to basically lie on the beach.



PS!!! Funniest part. We went to see the crazy Greek Parliament. No signs of violence except some bullet holes in a window. No worries...but... Have you seen the Greek Guards? We went for changing of the guard and they do this walk in ULTRA slow-mo. It looks like it's something out of Monty Python. And they have pompoms on their shoes. I accosted them after.