It's All Greek to Me

October 9-10, 2014
Athens, Greece
The Beginning

Let me tell you, I had never heard the saying "It's all Greek to me" before this trip. Brittany, Megan, and David made sure I knew it before we left though. It was their favorite saying. I think they're just glad they could actually use it literally. Because, seriously, the only people that can say they didn't understand what some was because it was "all Greek" and mean it would have to be in Greece. AND WE DID THAT.

Greece has been my favorite trip since my time at Harlaxton. Not only did we see incredible historical monuments, but most of it was FREE. You can't get any better than free.
The start of the trip was a little bumpy. In order to get to Greece at a decent(ish) hour I had to take one for the team and skip my gender womens study class. Don't worry everyone, I was able to make up what I missed the class period before. Thursday morning we had a school visit in my education class. Then I had my honors tutorial for my research paper, and ate lunch before we had to go outside and wait for the train. It was at this point that the sky decided it wanted to empty itself of rain. So I decided I wasn't waiting outside without a coat. which was a very good decision considering our taxi was roughly 15-20 minutes late picking us up from the manor. The taxi got stuck in traffic, which was not okay with our nerves. We were beginning to panic by about 1:00 since our train was supposed to leave at 1:18 and the taxi still hadn't picked us up. When the taxi finally arrived, even the driver realized how late we were and was speeding to get us there on time. The perfect ending would be that we got there at 1:18. But we didn't. We were late, arriving at about 1:20. BUT SO WAS THE TRAIN. Learning the fact that our train was delayed until 1:26 was the beginning of a great trip. We were so relieved to realize our trip wasn't ruined befoee it even began. But next time we know to allow an additional 20 minutes in our schedule just in case.

The train ride was quite uneventful. We just had a few transfers before we arrived at the London Stansted Airport. Once at the airport we had to wait for about an hour before we could go to our assigned gate. But once we got there we didn't have to wait long before we were able to begin boarding. Once again we got super lucky... We printed our boarding passes at home and neglected to notice that we were supposed to get our passport checked before we made it to the gate. The attendant was kind enough to overlook our ignorance and checked our passports for us anyway.
The flight was also uneventful. I slept a whole lot. I'm very good at sleeping, and I'm very proud of that, it will continue to serve me well throughout this semester. :)

When we arrived at the Athens airport, our taxi driver was waiting to drive us to the Minoa Hotel. It was about a 30 minute, drive so we arrived at midnight (10 pm in England, 4 pm back home.) I was very pleasantly surprised by our hotel. Especially considering how inexpensive it was. When you walked inside, the interior decoration was gorgeous. The staff was warm and welcoming (despite the lateness of our arrival) and the room was very satisfactory. We had a four person "family room". Since we arrived so late we pretty much went straight to bed.

We woke up pretty early on Friday. We found our way to the metro and took it as close as we could get to the Acropolis. We went to purchase our tickets and were ecstatic to find we got in free since we were students in the UK! YAY! Saving money is always awesome, and even better when you weren't expecting it!

We had to walk up a steep hill before we made it to main part of the acropolis, where the Parthenon is located. It was a little crowded when we got there, so luckily we found out the best place to take pictures was around the back. They were doing preservation construction on the Parthenon which was slightly disappointing because they had taken parts down in order to reconstruct it so we couldn't get the full effect of how awesome it was. The noise of the power tools was slightly disappointing as well. Regardless of these small complaints, I loved the opportunity to see it. You could see most of the city from the Acropolis and just a glimpse of the shoreline as well.

Afterwards, we went to the Acropolis museum for breakfast. Breakfast was delicious, especially the part where I put my bread into Megan's syrup from her French toast. It was perfect.  After we were done eating we went through the Acropolis Museum which basically there were a lot of ancient Greek artifacts, which we weren't allowed to take pictures of. :(

When we left the museum we stopped and got gelato before we headed to the temple of Olympian Zeus and saw Hadrian's arch.

Hadrian's Arch

The Temple of Olympian Zeus

When we left the temple of Olympian Zeus we kind of knew how to get to the Panhellenic Olympic Stadium with directions but we still managed to get lost. We thought we were going in the right direction but Google maps isn't the most descriptive source for directions. We always manage to find where we're going after we get lost though, and eventually found the stadium.

It was a good thing we found it, because the Olympic Stadium was our favorite and we spent a lot of time there. Much to the annoyance of another tourist, we took a lot of pictures in front of the winner's block. We determined I would be in first place since I'm the only one that enjoys running, or more like I jumped into first place and no one stopped me.

We took pictures of each of us individually, so by the time it got to David's turn,  the tourist lady was speaking to her husband saying that we were taking too long. We weren't actually taking that long, so we didn't let her ruin the fun and finished taking our pictures before we decided to climb up all of the steps to the top of the stadium. It was such a beautiful view from the top. And of course we took a lot more pictures up there as well. After climbing back to the bottom of the stadium we went and looked at a small collection about the history of the Olympic torches. After that we decided we should take pictures of us on the track. I showed Britney, Megan, and David the proper way to begin a race.

After that we decided we should actually do a race. We had to rig my camera so that it would be able to video us without one of us holding it. With the help of a phone and a wallet for support, we were able to get it pointed in the right direction and we started our race.

  

After leaving the Olympic Stadium we went to the National Garden which surprisingly was pretty disappointing. I love gardens but there were not many flowers, it was mainly other types of vegetation.

After walking around the park for a while we decided that we should go eat dinner. We got some really good pasta and we were so hungry we ate our humongous plates of food.

We didn't really know what else to do that night so we decided to go to the Acropolis for the third time that day and take pictures as the sun was setting. This was a great idea and we got some of my favorite pictures at that time. The Parthenon is even more amazing when the sun is setting behind it. Plus silhouette pictures are always pretty cool.

The Acropolis was the last stop for the night and we took the metro back to the hotel. All in all, I'd say we had a pretty wonderful first day in Greece.

Stay tuned for the last two days of our Greek adventure, hopefully coming soon! (Unfortunately I am incredibly behind on blog posts, as is quite obvious!)