Last Impressions of Athens and Greece

I spent my last full day in Athens doing a combination of touring and relaxing. I met up with my friend Jenni, who was still in Athens for a few days, and together we went to see the new Acropolis Museum. It just opened a few weeks ago and was said to be quite controversial, so we were eager to see it!
It’s a very modern looking building, and it was built on top of some ruins, so there are many glass floors and openings for visitors to see the ruins beneath.


We were also pretty excited because admission was only 1 Euro (which is a huge improvement from the 10-15 Euro admissions we were used to paying)!
Once inside, we walked through the rooms full of artifacts they found in and around the Acropolis area. Most of them were put back together and missing pieces were filled in so visitors could see what the pieces originally looked like. For example, there were many sculptures which had been broken and pieces of, let’s say an arm, were made using clay or plaster or other such material and filled into the sculpture. It was pretty interesting.
We couldn’t pinpoint exactly why the museum was said to be so controversial. We guessed that maybe it was because of the new modern building that was housing these ancient artifacts, and the building might not “fit” in. Or, more likely, because the building is situated on top of ancient ruins.
Either way, we still thoroughly enjoyed the museum.
After visiting the museum we decided to spend the rest of the day relaxing at Jenni’s hotel. She is staying at this incredible hotel, downtown Athens, with a rooftop pool patio that overlooks the Acropolis and the rest of the city. We needed a break from the intense heat of the city, and this was the perfect solution!
Rooftop patio with the Acropolis in the background:

Jenni and I by the pool with a view of the city of Athens and surrounding mountains in the background:

We had a great, relaxing day, and it was the perfect end to my time in Greece before my flight to Portugal!
Before ending this blog post I wanted to share a few things I noticed or learned during my stay in Greece and Athens.
The first thing that I learned when I arrived in Greece is that you are not allowed to put toilet paper in the toilets. There is a separate bin next to each toilet for the purpose of collecting dirty and used toilet paper. This bin is usually changed daily by the management of whoever owns the toilet. On top of every toilet there were signs to remind us:

We were told that this was because in Greece the plumbing is very old, and it cannot handle massive loads. Needless to say, we were all a little bit worried of clogging the toilets!
Another thing I learned was Greek time. Greek time basically means the time, with an “ish” at the end. For example, if a bus/boat/train is supposed to leave at 10am, it really means it’s leaving at 10-ish, meaning it could leave at 10, 10:15 or 10:30.
Also, almost all establishments (with the exception of the tourist areas of Athens) have a little siesta in the middle of the day. Which means if you try to go shopping/eating/drinking/etc. between the hours of 2pm and 5pm you will not find anything open. During that time you should probably stay indoors, preferably somewhere with air conditioning because during those hours the temperature is usually above 35 degrees Celsius.
In general we found that Greece was cheaper than Italy. It was easy to find a bottle of water for 0.50 Euros, while in Italy it was almost impossible to find a bottle for under 1 or 2 Euros.
Another important thing to note is that in Greece, smoking is permitted everywhere! Indoors and outdoors, and cigarette ads are seen throughout the cities.
In Athens, there were also also a few things that I learned. The first thing was the overcrowding of the city. The city is so overcrowded with people and cars that they have very strict rules for driving in the city, and expensive fines for disobeying the rules. Depending on whether the date is even or odd, only license plates with either even or odd final digits are allowed to drive in the city. And it alternates daily. I would assume that wealthy people would buy two cars, one with an odd last digit and another with an even last digit so they were able to drive daily in the city.
Another pretty cool thing about the city is that there are ruins everywhere! Whenever a new building or metro station is being dug and made, they generally find ruins buried underneath. Our guide told us that there are many metro stations with little museums of ancient ruins, unfortunately I didn’t use the metro and was unable to witness this myself.
In addition, the maps are pretty difficult to read. This is because all tourists are given Athens city maps, written in English, without the use of any Greek letters. But as you walk through the streets and look at the street signs, they are all written in Greek, using Greek symbols, and they do not correspond to the words on our tourist maps. So it’s nearly impossible to walk through the streets and be sure of where you are, and the maps are pretty useless.
In general, I did not get a very good feeling from the city of Athens. I noticed it was not very well kept by the people, for example: the streets were quite dirty, and there was graffiti everywhere, even on historical buildings and monuments. I found this really sad, as Athens is a beautiful city with lots of history and architecture, but it gives off the wrong “vibe” to it’s visitors and tourists. I felt a little unsafe walking through the streets, which is probably a direct result of my getting lost incident a few days ago. I got lost finding my hotel, turned down the wrong street, and found myself walking through streets and streets full of scary, strange, dirty men all looking at me and trying to talk to me. It was awful, and it made me very uncomfortable, more uncomfortable than I have ever felt in any other European city.
All in all, I did love Greece, and I will visit it again. I most likely won’t spend much time in Athens, but instead will spend my time exploring more of the beautiful Greek islands!!