Athens

This past weekend I went to Athens with the school. So that meant all 80 of the study abroad students which was kind of crazy, but I liked getting to know some of them that I'd never even seen before for some reason. It was a pretty awesome weekend since everything was already paid for as part of our tuition. We left Friday morning and it took about 5 hours to get there by train. So by the time we got there it was time for dinner and they served us at the hotel. We had spaghetti which was kind of annoying because I'm in Greece and I want Greek food but the dessert was really good (kind of like ice cream cake with a frozen strawberry on top), so it was fine. Then a bunch of us took the tram into the main area of Athens and just wandered around until we were too exhausted to do anything but go back to the hotel and sleep.

First thing the next morning we were off to see the sites! My impression of Athens was that it really wasn't very different from Thessaloniki (except a bigger city) except for the parts that were very touristy. Also, everyone in Athens spoke to us in English, but in Thessaloniki they expect you to speak Greek and not everyone even knows English. Our first stop was the Panathinaiko Stadium or Kallimarmaro ("beautifully marbled"). It was where the original Olympic stadium was in Athens and also the remodeled version is where they held the first modern Olympics.



Oh, by the way, I'm wearing those ridiculous sunglasses because my gang and I bought matching ones in different colors. :) Awesome. Anyway, next we went to the Acropolis. I saw the Parthenon! Woohoo! It's so weird to see all of these really famous, really old sites in person. It just doesn't feel real.

^The girls. Sorry we're not all wearing our shades, someone else has all those pics.

I wish we could have gone into the Parthenon though and that they had it all set up like it was. I think that would be a lot better. Instead everything is in the Acropolis Museum (which we went to later that day, not too excited) or scattered around the world in other museums. It stinks that all the statues that they have at the Acropolis are replicas. Also, when we were at the Acropolis we could see all these hills surrounding it. One of the hills was where they held their town meeting type thing in ancient times. We climbed the hill that was where the supreme court met. I honestly have no idea why they climbed up that rocky hill to meet there. I don't think there was ever a building there either, so they just hung out in the rocks I guess. It was also where St. Paul came to preach Christianity to the Ancient Greeks.

The next day we had a long trip home so the only thing we did on our last day in Athens was see the changing of the guards at the Monument for the Unknown Soldier at the Greek Parliament building. It was really cool actually. There was a parade and then they do this dance walk and switch guards. They also wear the outfits that the Greek soldiers used to wear (not the Ancient Greeks, I'm not sure exactly when they're from actually).







Here are all the pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kaitz.j/Athens#
Enjoy or should I say με γεια!