I don’t know what is up with me and these early flights, but Brent and I woke up around 4AM to catch this one. We left Istanbul at 7AM, got to Izmir and flew to Athens from there – arriving around 12:30. We didn’t have too much trouble finding our way to the station where Chris, our couchsurfing host picked us up.
When we first got out of the station we quickly dove for the food stand, they have pastry carts with most the food that Turkey has everywhere as well! We both got a piece of bread, before we could think twice we noticed there was a ton of riot going on just up the steps where we were standing. After walking up them, we found out it was actually a riot! The taxi cab drivers were on strike. This was all happening, then Chris came up and found us standing on the steps. We walked over to the nearby Parliament building and watched the changing of the guards, what timing. He is a great guy, knows a ton of history and showed us around the city a bit before we headed back to his place. I bought a kilo of strawberries on the way, 1.50euro… how is that possible? Of course, 4 of us ate them all J. We met another couchsurfer – Alfredo. We all talked a bit before Brent and I headed out on the city.
It was about 4:30pm now, everything is open from 7am to 3pm here. With that being said, I had written down a mountain as a place to see, Lykavittos hill. It is smack dab in the middle of the city. We had to get some coffee to boost the energy levels in order to tackle this one. After we did that we headed up around 6pm. It only took 20 minutes of steep hill walking to get up there, but it had absolutely great views of the city of Athens. White buildings as far as the eye can see, Acropolis and the Parthenon raised in the middle, surrounded by sea and mountains with the sun setting in the background. There was also a monastery atop this mountain, we went inside and looked around. Pretty cool murals on all of the walls, a really nice old guy who took care of the place saw our interest in them. He came over and tried telling us about them, he was as friendly as can be, but could only speak Greek! We managed to get a few poorly constructed ideas through, but mostly just laughed and smiled at each other during our mutterings. At one point he lost it and went on a rant about who knows what, Brent and I just smiled and laughed and at one point Brent said, “I have no idea what he is saying right now.” We left all in smiles.
When we walked outside, two girls asked if we would take their picture. I grabbed the camera and Brent guessed that they were from California, which they were! This struck up some conversation, and it turns out they are from San Diego!!! We are standing a top the tallest point in Athens – 4 San Diegans, small world. We continued to talk for the next hour, watched the sun set and then headed down the mountain. All four of us now walked throughout the city until we came across a place to eat for dinner. Akropoa is the restaurant where we finally settled on. This was a Greek restaurant (what are the odds) before we came I wrote down 3 foods I had to eat here, 1) A Greek salad, 2) Souvlaki, 3) Mossakas… and I had the Mossakas. This is eggplant, minced meat, cheese and what not – it was actually really good! We had some good conversation at dinner. That went along with the live Greek music and dancing that was taking place next to our table. Once we were all big and plump, we headed down the street for some Italian gelato! I had caramel and mint, omnomnom. We looked like little kids as we were going down the street, cones in hand… we walked through the ancient city of Plaka and the Agora… some cool buildings and interesting stuff along the way.
We ended up back by their hostel, well, the bar next to it. The Arsenal Tottingham game was on (soccer), we watched that for a bit and then called it a night. We made plans to meet at 9am tomorrow to go to the island Agina!
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