My big fat greek visit

Thursday morning Matt and I hopped on an Easyjet flight and took off for Athens. Not to be confused with the cestpool of the south...no, no, no, Athens Greece. First lets talk about how weird this airline was. Some of it's rules where just ridiculous. For instance, I had a sweatshirt with me that I wasn't wearing. It was sitting on my lap and they proceeded to tell me that it was imparitive that I wear my coat for take off and landing or else they needed to store it in the overhead compartments. Ok? Also, Matt had to have his shoes on for landing because the plane can not function with unworn shoes. Another thing was that I couldn't put my bag in front of me on the ground, it had to be put above. Just some really strange rules that annoyed me a bit. However we succesfully arrived in the early afternoon to beautiful weather.

We jumped on the bus that heads into Athens. It was a whole new experience. Not only was the language now completely new, but the alphabet was as well. We were looking for the stop to meet up with Lauren, Matt's friend. This was a donting task when all you see are Greek fraternity and sorority letters strung together. Plus I had no clue how to pronounce the differnt letters. I got lucky because all of a sudden I saw that a blonde girl recognized Matt and started standing up waving. Thankful it's pretty easy to pick an American needle out of a Greek haystack. We could've rode that bus forever and I would have had no clue when to hop off.

Her apartment was really nice, the walk up to it however was tyring. She lives half way up a mountain, so we got our excersize climbing hills all weekend. That day we headed over to Laurens school, which is right next to the Olympic Stadium. The one that held the first full fledged Olympic games in 1896. It was pretty cool, but the track/ infield was so close together. Not like the football fields width that I am used to. Afterwards we went to grab a bite to eat.

Hanging out at the Olympic Stadium

Gyros would become my new best friend. Better than a McDonalds cheeseburger for the same price. We ordered 3 Gyros, chicken slouvaki (chicken on a skewer), and drinks from this one local guy. Lauren then translated "10." Matt and I, who have become used to Paris prices immediately started pulling out 10 Euros a piece. The old man laughed. It was 10 Euro for everything. Amazing. I was not expecting such a deal. We must have eaten 20 Gyros a piece in our 4 day visit.

Also along the walk to her school, we saw the presidents house and some other important building surronded by armed guards. However in front of the president's abode, the guards were dressed in formal attire. This includes long white tights, sweet hats, skirts, and my favorite part shoes with big furry balls on the toe. They did this weird looking ritual that involved standing perfectly apart from each other, holding one leg up, and touching toes. They held that pose for a while... I died laughing when I saw it. Check the short clip below. That evening we rested a little bit and then headed to a taverna.



Shay, one of Laurens roomate and co-tourguide for the trip, along with 2 other friends ate with us. The taverna was a great experience. The Greek's do it right. See a taverna is owned and operated by a family. No employees to pay or deal with, just family members. Therefore they can afford to make things cheaper, resulting in us sharing all sorts of food family style kind of like a tapas resturant, while still paying close to nothing. We had greek salads, hot feta cheese, tzatsiki, chicken, lamb, pork, a pasta meat dish, etc. Also, we had some of the house wine. Stored in huge wooden containers and more then likely made at the taverna.

At the Taverna

The one thing about the meal that went completely wrong was when we tried Ouzo. Willie, my roomate, told us we had to try it because it's normal and what they do in Greece. So we ordered some for the table. We all took a shot, and it was like a Sambuca type of liqour leaving a sweet after taste. One girl didn't want to drink which is the decision she should have stayed with for the night. Later we took another and this time she was coaxed into taking one. Not 5 minutes after she took it, we saw it again. She threw up on the middle of the table, covering her scarf and splattering my right arm. Lucky me I got to sit next to her! It was disqusting, but as she still had food coming out of her mouth she said, "this never happens to me." We all tried to hold it together, but ended up laughing at the whole situation because the owner came over and stepped right in.

Not sure if he knew what actually happened or if he thought we had just spilled something, but he grabbed the scarf that had been wadded up and placed on the table with the table cloth and said "No worries, I clean for you" He takes the scarf and washes it in the back for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, the girl that lost her meal is still sitting at the table. I guess I was expecting an "I'm so embarrassed, I'm going to leave" type of attitude. NOPE. She totally toughed it out and stayed in there. Then the owner came back with the washed scarf, placed it to his nose and took a deep whiff. "Clean now" he said. A hilarious story that capped off a great welcome to Athens.

Randomly the city of Athens had stray dogs all over the place. They walk around looking for food and someone to take them home and take care of them. They kind of operated in packs with different dogs owning different territory. I saw different dogs chasing others that had wandered in. Shay and Lauren told us stories of how the dogs will follow the girls home and if guys come up to them, they become extremely protective. I felt bad about petting the dogs because it was like giving them false hope.


Zeus Temple with Acropolyis in the background.

Next morning we headed off to the Acropolyis, home to the Parthenon. Before we got there, we stopped at the ancient ruins built for the temple of Zeus. Really large towers still standing from over 2000 years ago. History has become so cool to me once you become able to see it in real life. Before I didn't really care/ think to much about what people in the past did. Now it's a bit more thought producing, like how did they build such structures without modern technology, or if they could do this back then, why'd it take so long to make the internet. Anyways, the hike up the Acropolyis surronded you with the ancient life. There where 2 great theaters along the way. Some of the marble stone work was really nice. Chairs carved to fit the back and labeled with the individuals name/title surronded the bottom level of the theater. For my opinion the Greeks were master sculptors and stone workers.


After the climb to the top, you see the Parthenon standing triumphantly in the sun. The weather turned out to be beautiful all weekend, allowing Matt and myself to wear shorts and T-shirts for the first time since arriving in Paris. The view from the top of the tower was stunning. You can see the Greek mountains and the coastline of the Aegean sea. The city looks massive from the top, all small buildings. It looked much like a village. I appreciated that it wasn't dominated with skyscrapers and modernism. Again thinking about history in a place like this, all I could imagine was the stronghold this would have been in a war. There's no way someone's easily going to defeat them here and with a view of the sea, you would be able to tell what's coming long before any actual attack. That or an army would have to march over mountains to get to the mighty city of Athens. We stayed at the top taking in the culture and enjoying the sunshine.




Later that day we left by train to Meteora. Over a four hour train ride. I'll tell you all about that on the next edition of My Big Fat Greek Visit.