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!!

Athens - Contiki Endings

Our time in Athens marked the end of my Contiki tour, a tour where I met a group of amazing people, had so many good times, saw some incredible sights and had new and unique experiences. To celebrate the end of the tour, we went out for our last Greek dinner as a group. The restaurant was really good, and we had all our favourites: Greek salad, tzatziki, lots of olives, fried zucchini strips, souvlaki, wine and many other goodies. We also had Ouzo, a traditional Greek liquor which has a very strong taste of black licorice, usually taken before meals to help with digestion.
During the dinner, the restaurant had Greek dancers come give us a performance:

During the course of the night we had a chance to say our goodbyes and take some goodbye photos.
Me with my two roommates Jess and Jackie:

The whole Contiki group:

It was sad to say goodbye to everyone as we all became a close group of friends. But the end of the Contiki tour marks the beginning of my Portugal/Spain section of my summer adventure!

Road to Athens and the Acropolis

On July 8^th we left the beautiful Greek Island of Corfu to make the trip to Athens. We took a 1.5 hour ferry to the mainland, and then a 5 hour bus ride.
From the bus we had the most amazing view of the Gulf of Corinth:

We made a stop at the Corinth Canal, which was built in the 1880s to connect the Gulf of Corinth with the Aegean Sea. Without the canal, boats would need to travel down to the bottom of the Peloponnesian peninsula in order to cross to the Aegean Sea.

Once arriving in Athens we were dropped off close to our hotel. Our hotel is a beautiful 4 star hotel, which happens to be in a very sketchy area of the city. Our tour manager and bus driver devised a system for us to remove the luggage from the coach while keeping it protected from the Greek thieves who apparently prey on tourists with large heavy luggage. We formed a large circle around the opening of the luggage area of the coach, and 5 of the “strong” guys on our tour unloaded the luggage into the protected circle.
By the time we arrived in Athens it was dinner time, so we all went out for an excellent Greek dinner. After dinner we walked back to our hotel in a large group, as we were pretty scared of the strange characters on the streets surrounding our hotel.
The next morning we went on a tour of the Acropolis. The Acropolis is on a hill, and consists of the Parthenon (the famous temple to the God Athena), The Temple of Athena Nike, and The Theatre of Herodes Atticus.
We first walked past the Theatre of Herodes Atticus, built in 161 AD and still used today for outdoor concerts.

We then walked up the Propylaia, the entrance to the Acropolis, which was built in 437-432 BC.

We finally reached the top of the hill to see the Parthenon:


Construction began on the Parthenon in 447 BC, and it took 9 years to complete. It is built using no straight lines. Each column is wider at the base and becomes narrower closer to the top. Also, the distance between columns vary, as it was believed that our eyes are so used to seeing perfection in architecture, that if it was made slightly less perfect by varying distances and widths it would give an illusion of perfection and our eyes would not become “bored” of looking at the temple.
We had a chance to walk around the Acropolis hill and see all the sights on the hill and the view of the city:



From the Acropolis we went to see the Olympic Stadium:


We then made our way over to the Parliament to watch the changing of the guards. It was really interesting. The changing of the guards happens once every hour on the hour, and the two guards that stand post outside the building are replaced by two new ones. The ceremony consists of three guards entering the area: one guard to accompany them and two to take over the post. The two guards who are leaving and the two new guards do an interesting series of marches and steps during the changing process. Once the two new guards have successfully taken their positions the two old guards march out with the accompanying guard.

The three guards marching in (the two new ones stand on either side of the accompanying guard):

The three guards waiting while the two old guards march out of position:

Finally, the two new guards marching into place:

I spent the rest of the afternoon walking through the streets and looking into the shops.

The Greek Island of Corfu

The morning of July 6^th, after arriving on the Greek Island of Corfu, we were taken to our new hotel: The Divani Corfu Palace Hotel. It was a beautiful hotel with a large swimming pool.
The only thing I wanted from the moment we arrived was to dive into the pool and spend my day relaxing by the water. But instead I thought I should first explore Corfu Town. It’s a small town on the island of Corfu, with lots of shops and restaurants. I spent a few hours walking the streets and checking out clothing and souvenirs in the shops.
After doing thatI decided to spend the rest of the day at the pool. I had been touring around almost non-stop for 2 weeks and I thought I could use a nice relaxing pool day!

Me with my very elaborately decorated cocktail the bartender made me:

After spending the majority of the afternoon in the sun (using SPF 55 sunscreen, of course), I was pretty tired, but it didn’t stop me from going to a traditional Greek Gloupos dinner held in Corfu Town.
It was a sort of dinner show, with traditional Greek dancing and music while we ate. The massive amount of Greek food and wine they provided us with was delicious!! And the Greek dancing and costumes were also very good and entertaining!

But the most interesting part of the night was their very last dance. They created a circle of fire on the dance floor by spraying gasoline on the floor, and the dancers danced inside the circle.

The grand finale (during the fire dance) was a dance featuring the throwing (and breaking) of plates all over the dance floor. It was really interesting! I really enjoyed my first night in Greece!
The next morning, July 7^th, we woke up and got ready for a full 8 hour day on George’s boat. George is a rather large, hilariously funny, Greek man who owns a boat and hosts boat tours and fun boat days for Contiki groups.
It was the most amazing day of my entire trip. The boat took us in and around areas of the beautiful Island of Corfu, and made many stops for us to jump out into the brilliantly blue water.


Our first stop was at a beach resort with a beautiful beach to swim in and lie on. The beach resort offered many different water sports, including parasailing. I decided to try it!!
Me getting ready:

Me taking off!!


I’m flying!!


It such an exhilarating experience! It was just incredible!! It was so peaceful up there, and the view was amazing! All I could see for miles and miles were mountains and water!! I felt so full of life for the rest of the day!!
We spent the rest of the day relaxing on the boat, swimming and enjoying George’s incredible Greek cooking.
The boat was well stocked with food, drinks (alcoholic and non-alcoholic), and lots of souvenirs including George’s Boat T-shirts:

I somehow managed to get incredibly tanned throughout the day, which is a little surprising considering I was wearing SPF 55 sunscreen and was religiously re-applying it every hour or two. The sun is so strong here that I am actually on the verge of finishing the whole bottle of sunscreen, which I just started a week ago in Rome. Needless to say, I’m on the hunt for a new bottle of sunscreen!
Our last stop on the boat was a little area, off the shore of the island, where they held seal shows twice a day.


All in all it was an absolutely amazing day. The beautiful Greek Island of Corfu is a spectacular and stunning island that I hope to visit again sometime in the near future!

Pompeii and Overnight Ferry to Greece

On the morning of July 5^th we left Sorrento and made our way over to Pompeii. Pompeii is an ancient Roman city, which was destroyed by the volcano Vesuvius in 79 AD. The eruption covered the city with lava, rock and ash, preserving the Roman city extremely well. The ruins of Pompeii show theaters, marketplaces, temples, stores and houses, all very well preserved from their construction before 79 AD.
The gate to the city:

All the columns and structures are originals from before 79 AD, except for the statue, which was placed there after excavations began in 1748.


Since the volcano blast happened so fast, people were unable to rush to safety, and almost everyone died. Bodies covered in hardened volcanic lava were found in their original positions.
A crouching body:

Body of a person lying down and covering their face, protecting it from the ash and lava:

We also saw the ruins of the Roman baths. I remember learning about all the different rooms and procedures of Roman baths in my 4^th year Engineering History class, and it was so interesting to walk through the ruins of what used to be a real Roman bath! The Roman baths were a sort of “spa”, where the men and women were separated. They went through a series of rooms, some for cooling off, some for heating up, others for relaxing, and they always had a beautiful garden in the middle.
Some photos from the baths:



It’s incredible to see all the structures so well preserved after almost 2000 years! The whole layout of the town is visible, and we were able to walk through the streets. On either side of the narrow Roman roads we could see the ruins of what used to be shops and houses, divided up into individual units.



We went inside the ruins of what used to be a very large house, and saw 2000 year old frescos on the walls:

We were able to see the ruins of a brothel, where male and female prostitutes were available for service. A sort of graphic “menu” of services was displayed on the walls in the frescos:

Beds were provided for convenience:

It was so interesting to walk through the streets of what used to be a Roman city almost 2000 years ago. Actually, the ruins of Pompeii were one of the key locations providing historians vast amounts of knowledge of the lives of ancient Romans.
From Pompeii we drove to the city of Brindisi, on the Adriatic Sea, to board our ferry “hotel” for our overnight trip to the Island of Corfu, in Greece.
The ferry reception looked just like a hotel, and we were all given room keys to small rooms with ensuite bathrooms. The ferry had a restaurant, a bar, a sitting area, and a top deck. We spent our 8 hour, overnight ferry ride hanging out in the numerous areas and finally attempting to sleep in the rather uncomfortable beds. Unfortunately I took no photos of the inside of the ferry.
We arrived in Greece at 5am the next morning completely exhausted from the trip, and were able to witness the most beautiful sunrise:

We were ready and excited to begin our adventure in Greece!