Documenting Athens

Sunday, October 25th, we got up at the crack of dawn to catch four different buses that would end in us making it to the airport in order to fly to Athens. The airport was packed and we were all tired and hungry. It didn't really make for a good start to the day but we managed once we got off the metro in Athens. Now I must note that we were hoping for amazing weather in Greece but it rained for most of our stay. It has barely rained in Dublin, at least not nearly as much as we had expected and London turned out to be beautiful, but Greece well it rained a lot.
The map and directions that we were given to get to the penthouse were horrible and we walked around Athens for about three hours before finally hailing a taxi to take us to our destination. Along the way we asked a pizza restaurant owner for directions along with a five star hotel doorman and finally a guy who was on holiday by himself from the Netherlands. We passed Hadrian's Arch and the Temple of Olympian Zeus but it was pouring rain so I didn't get pictures of them. Our friend from the Netherlands was originally supposed to go to California because his friends live there but he ended up deciding on Greece. He told us he likes to travel alone because you get more of an experience that way, having to put yourself out there instead of just hanging out with the people you came with. If it weren't for the fact that I have no sense of direction and also as a safety precaution I wouldn't mind traveling by myself, I did come to this country alone and it's been the greatest experience of my life. I love meeting people who are extremely independent like that, we have a few in our program and it's fun to hear about their trips.
After our friend couldn't read our map either he helped us hail a taxi on one of the busiest roads I've ever seen in my life and we bade him farewell. We made it to the penthouse at about 6:30 pm and we were starved. Laverne, Chris and Charity's International Studies Director, greeted us and gave us food to tie us over until it was time to go to dinner. She had been concerned with our whereabouts since she of course had been expecting us at least an hour or so after our flight had arrived. We ended up at a T.G.I. Friday's across the street for dinner, it wouldn't have been my choice for eats out in Greece but we were tired and hungry so that's what we did. When we got back I used the free international calling on the phone to call home and talk to my dad and sister which was really nice. I rather enjoyed calling them from Greece and even saying so.
Monday I was bound and determined to document as much of Athens as possible with my camera. Chris, Charity, and I set off through town toward the Acropolis. Modern Athens itself is exactly as I imagined it to be with crazy traffic and buildings crammed in everywhere. It's such a cool thing to see a place be the way you expected it to be when you're seeing it for the first time. I enjoyed seeing all of the signs in Greek as well along with stumbling upon ancient ruins. There is just something seriously cool about seeing ruins of the past in amongst modern day living. When we got near the Acropolis the Acropolis Museum appeared first but it was closed like most museums are on Mondays which was a bit of a bummer. Next we decided to make the trek up to the Acropolis and I must note that there were a ton of dogs roaming about, but mostly just lying around napping. The Theatre of Dionysus was the first thing we came upon and from the top of it you could see out over the city. The Parthenon itself was quite breathtaking, but it's under restoration as well so there was tons of scaffolding on it. I really enjoyed just trying to picture how the area was in it's prime in contrast to how it is now.
After our stroll through the ruins we decided to find the marketplace to find lunch. We ended up in a souvenir shop first which had a ton of different things in it from pottery and statues to chess boards and jewelry. All three of us ended up doing our only shopping in Athens there and we chatted with the store owners for quite a bit. It had started pouring down rain once we got down from the Acropolis and one of the store owners told us we had brought it from Dublin with us. Once we left the shop we stumbled upon a gelato shop which of course we had to go into. So we had our dessert before we found a cafe to actually eat lunch at. We had gyros at a restaurant called Ioakh barbeque. The owner waited on us and he was extremely nice and funny. First of all he made us all sit side by side in a booth with Chris in the middle that way he could see all of us because we were “good looking”. Then he teased Chris by saying that he was a lucky man to be out with two girls. He asked us which states we were from and when Charity and I told him Pennsylvania he said, “I used to live 2 hours and 46 minutes from your home”. Turns out he lived in NYC for a while before returning to Greece to live. I'm not sure how long or what the circumstances were surrounding his time in the States but that was pretty cool. We weren't entirely sure what to order but we knew we wanted gyros so he just brought us two big plates, one with vegetables and the other with meat, to share and save us money. The restaurant was such a great find, I loved it.
Once we were fed and the rain had let up we decided to try to get to the Mediterranean Sea, which we did but we just ended up at ports and not necessarily near a beach. We decided to head back to the penthouse after a couple of failed attempts. That night we went to a restaurant and were served authentic Greek food which was really cool. The waiter brought us a ton of samples mainly in the form of appetizers and then we chose three different main dishes for dinner. He was going to bring us 6 plates to share between the 11 of us but through a miscommunication on our end we ended up only ordering 3 plates. Dessert was a delicious chocolate pudding type of dish though so it made up for our mistake.
Tuesday we made our venture back to Dublin which was tiring but it was nice to be home. I didn't realize how much I had missed Dublin until I was on the bus and then in the taxi home from the airport. Just seeing familiar places gave me a real sense of home and I was just super excited to be back. Once I got to the house I just walked around the kitchen and dining room for a while revelling in the feel of my second home (although it's probably more of my third home as Clarion is my second). Next on the agenda is Northern Ireland, Belfast and Derry, November 5th-8th. It's another group trip like Galway was so I'm really excited just to be with everyone in the same place again.