Day 2 The Sights Around Athens

Our second day in Greece was beautiful and sunny. This automatically put is in a giddy mood. I can't even explain how amazing it is to have the sun shining down on you when you are used to rainy England.

I made sure everyone was coated in SPF 50. There was no way I was going to allow us to get sunburned and have the rest of the vacation miserable.

We drove into downtown Athens and found a parking garage, and went walking to find the bus stop for the Hop On/Hop Off bus tour. We stumbled onto Embassy Row and then the Parliament building where we got to see the Guards or Evzones at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider.

We passed the Parliament building and walked on to the bus stop located close to the National Gardens, but as we walked, we noticed a lot of what appeared to be riot buses. We naturally asked questions and apparently there was a scheduled protest that afternoon. Something involving doctors - which the tour guide assured us were harmless. It was weird seeing the police with their gear walking towards Syntagma Square though.

We are pretty boring people when it comes to tour buses. We like to get onto the bus, ride the whole route taking horrible, crooked pictures before we get off to see things. That's just what we did this time. There are some really amazing things to see in the city and I strongly recommend the buses as part of any tourist experience. Not only do you get o see a ton of the city, you can get you bearings as well.

Our first stop was the Acropolis and Parthenon. Ok, not the first stop....That was the Dionysus restaurant for some chow because we were some hungry, but as soon as we ate.....off we went. It was only a 10 minute walk to the entrance where you purchase tickets to get into the historical site. There are people hanging around offering their services of tour guide, but we opted to go it on our own. Walking uphill, the first major site you see is Odeon of Herodes Atticus on the southern slope. It was built in 161 AD by Herodes Atticus in memory of his wife.

We wound our way around, up quite a few marble stairs, through several school groups to a pillared path way.....

....and up to the Erechtheion. This was built between 421 and 406 BC in honor of the Greek hero Erichthonius.

All we had to do was turn around and we were standing looking at the Parthenon. The Parthenon was dedicated to the maiden goddess Athena, who was considered the patron deity of Athens.Construction began in 447 BC and was mostly complete in 438 BC though decoration continued until 432 BC. 

The Parthenon was used in many ways over the years, as well as damaged over the years,  then was severely damaged in 1657. Restoration began in 1975, to bring as much of the Parthenon back to its glory. They are using as much of the original material as possible, but marble from the original quarry is being cut and used as well as titanium pins to help secure the blocks and pillars in place. If you look closely, you can see the crane in our picture.

 We wandered around the Parthenon and other structures for quite some time, then decided to head down to what was reported to be Socrates prison cell. Even if it wasn't his cell, it was used to house artifacts during World War II. This was a memorable place for Josh because he loves standing where "Great Thinkers" stood. It was memorable for me/Skye because it is the place we dropped by Nikkon D3000 and cracked the view screen. It was an accident, and a little painful, but the camera still works - no harm no foul.

We decided to head back into town, stopping at some souvenir shops along the way. We also stopped for some fresh squeezed orange juice along the way.

     

We continued on down to the main thoroughfare to check out the Temple of Zeus. Unfortunately, we didn't get to go in because the ground close at 3:00PM, but we did take some pictures.

We headed back to the hotel after this long, exciting tourist-y day. We knew we were going to have a slow day on Friday so we weren't to bothered by our second night of telling kids to be quiet and complaining to the management about rowdy kids at 1AM. (Yes, this is a recurring theme)

Stay tuned for more on our Greek Adventures......

Athens Arrival and Glyfada

Our first day in Greece wasn't a spectacular day. There wasn't anything bad about it and it had plenty of humorous moments, but it wasn't a jaw dropping spectacular kind of day. 

We arrived in Athens around 1:30 in the afternoon after our first flying experience on Easy Jet. Compared to Ryan Air, Easy Jet is quite a step up. Your carry on can be as heavy as you want it to be as long as it fits into the tiny little bin they provide. That is a major improvement over the weight limit on Ryan Air. Easy Jet also has assigned seating. That means NO CATTLE CALL. They also limited the amount of sales on the flight. I swear Ryan Air tries to sell something to you from the moment you take off until the moment you land. Not so with Easy Jet, so overall, the flying experience was good. 

We got through baggage claim and to the car rental, where there was a tiny bit of resistance on my husbands part. We usually travel with our own GPS, but our GPS did not have Greece on it, so when we got to the rental counter and are offered a GPS at the bargain rate of 11 euros a day, my hubby said NO.  He figured we would be fine after all, they gave us a free map! We tend to find our way most times so we left the counter with minimal muttering under my breath and made our way to the car.....

We get the bags into the car, get settled, open the map, and realize IT IS IN GREEK. I don't know Greek and neither does Josh which I pointed out could prove problematic. We made our way back to the rental counter and got that GPS! I am really glad we did, because our hotel was about 45 minutes away from the air port, on the coast. We wouldn't have found it. 

Athens, in general, is not a pretty city. To say they have a graffiti problem is a major understatement. 90% of the city has graffiti. Some is impressive, some is stupid, and I am really trying to figure out what the whole "Wake Up" thing is about. Suffice it to say, the city was not impressive at first glance. An interesting thing we noticed right off is the driving. Drivers in Athens are an aggressive group of people. There are people driving all different directions, road signs being ignored, traffic lights disregarded, and motorcycles/scooters/dirt bikes weaving in and out between the cars. Dangerous? YES! Concerning to the Greek people? NO! Please know, there are police everywhere, they just don't do much about the driving violations. That turned out to be a good thing for us as we did do our usual "wrong way down a one way street" thing. 

 We do make it to the hotel, located in Glyfada. This is one of the upscale areas and it boasted some really large yachts in the harbor and some HUGE amazing houses. Houses that were surrounded by high brick fences topped with razor wire. The houses were impressive, but the razor wire, coupled with the graffiti were a little concerning. The hotel was actually a beautiful little place with about 70 rooms. We had and "apartment" since we prefer the kids to be with us. We got up to the fifth floor in a snug elevator, got to our room and went in to check it out. Jaws dropped when we realized there were 4 twin beds! Josh and I haven't slept apart, with the exception of work related separations, in the 20 years we have been married. We did ask if they had a room with a double bed, which they did, but then the kids would be in a separate room and it would defeat the purpose because it would end up being Skye and Me/Jax and Josh. We decided to make due, and jokingly called each other Rob and Laura. (obscure reference to The Dick Van Dyke Show) 

We got everything settled in the room and decided to drive around looking for a place to grab a bite to eat.

The first place we stumbled upon was TGI Friday's. I felt it was a little sad that we were in Greece and eating at an American chain restaurant, but we knew we would get something we liked so I didn't fuss to much. It was a nice lunch but we didn't want to waste any more sunlight, so we headed back to the hotel and changed in to swim suits. In reality, it was only about 70 degrees, but after being in Germany and England, it was like a heat wave. We hit the beach for a little while, then moved indoor to the pool at the hotel. Just laying in the sun was heaven! This laziness lasted about 2 1/2 hours. We decided to get cleaned up, grab a quick bite and get in bed.

Bed time rolled around and that is when we discovered the second set back with our hotel. Apparently I had chosen the one hotel most popular with traveling teams. That particular evening we had 2 U-20 teams of Greek National football/soccer players AND a French school group. Need I say that we complained about noise? More than once? MORE THAN TWICE?! They did quiet down around 1 AM and we were well rested for our first full day abroad in Athens........

Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter of our trip!

Greece - Jaxon's Dream Vacation

We have been discussing a Greece trip since 2009 when we found out we were moving to Germany. Jaxon - being a HUGE Greek Mythology geek -  was adamant that it was his desired vacation location. So we decided, what better way to spend Jaxon's "Golden" Birthday, then with a trip to Athens. Thank goodness the school system had the decency to set Spring Break around his birthday!

Our trip itinerary was a low key one (for once):

DAY 1 - Leave for Manchester to spend the night. I had NO desire to get up at 1 AM to drive to the air port.

DAY 2 - Wake up at 4 AM (much better then 1 AM) and head to the air port. Land in Athens Greece at 1:30PM, grab that rental car, leave the air port, return to air port and pay the extra for a GPS, leave the air port and locate the hotel.

DAY 3 - Hop on/Hop off bus tour around Athens. We always like to get on and ride the entire route first then get off at locations.

DAY 4 - BEACH DAY in Marathon

DAY 5 - JAX'S BIRTHDAY - his choice, drive to Sparta

DAY 6 - Hop on/hop off bus tour down by the port and some shopping in the Plaka.

DAY 7 - Drive to Delphi in the Ski Resort area of Greece. (yes I typed SKI RESORT AREA)

DAY 8 - Olympic Stadium, Agora and shopping.

DAY 9 - Fly back to Jolly ol' England.

I can't lie, it was a long trip, but I am hoping to blog about each day so you all have a chance to take a peek at our adventures......