Athens, Greece

May 7th
Arriving in Athens was an adventure of its own, as we descended into Athens International Airport via a nosedive. No joke...the plane hit a 50degree angle as it slammed on the brakes to make its landing. The experience was made better by landing on one side's wheels before the other side touched down. I prayed. I'm not at all religious, and I was praying like a nun.

The fun continued after we got our bags. The hostel's directions included using the Metro system, which we discovered was undergoing a huge retrofit and will be closed for the next three months. Awesome. Using the advice of the surprisingly friendly folks at the Information kiosk, we determined that we'd get to join approximately 39,057 other people attempting to make their way to the center of the city by bus. After literally smashing ourselves and our stuff onto an overcrowded bus, we went twelve feet and picked up more people, including a gruff man that pushed and shoved before demanding I tell him why I was 'pushing' him...to which I replied something like, "Um, I'm just trying to keep my feet on the ground, bud." We continued our shoving match for the next hour before he finally got off the damn bus. I won.

We'd planned a very short trip to Athens, since Rob mentioned that there wasn't a whole lot to see/do, and I had one thing on my agenda: see the Acropolis, specifically the Parthenon. Ever since middle school, I've wanted to see this thing in person. I have no clue why...I'm not particularly good with history, so I can't even remember what the building was used for, but come Hell or high water, I was going to see it in my lifetime. So I did.


We spent about an hour walking from our centrally-located hostel to the entrance, and about an hour up on top of the Acropolis (I relearned that it houses the Parthenon and a few other buildings...).

in the bottom right quarter of this view from the Acropolis is the Temple of Zeus, and just to the left over the bank of trees is the 1920-something Olympic Stadium (I think)

I'd been in Greece for like four days and still hadn't tried ouzo, Greece's national liqueur, so we celebrated our travels with a bit o' the hard stuff at dinner before heading back to the hostel to prep for our departure for Italy. It tastes the way anise smells. Rob likened it to those Good N' Plenty candies. I'm not sure I'll crave it in the future...


May 8th
We were ready to rock our way to Naples, so we departed quite early and took a less disruptive bus ride to the airport, where we had a totally easy flight...sigh.

I'm on a boat...
(hehe...not really)