Destination #37 - Athens, Greece

Booking an early flight always seems like a great idea at the time of booking until the morning comes when you have to take that flight. I was scheduled to leave at 7:50am and luckily the European mindset is a little more relaxed than that of North Americans thinking they have to arrive at the airport at least 3 hours early. I woke up at about 5:45am to notice I still had the 6 bed dorm I was staying in to myself. I guess the 5 others were still out partying. I got to the airport around 6:20am with plenty of time to spare and I made sure I hung onto my boarding pass this time!

When I arrived in Athens, I couldn't believe the lack of information available for getting from the airport to the city centre. I'm grateful that travelling in this day and age, I have the internet to guide me to a lot of places as opposed to those who travelled say 20 years ago. The hostel had said I need to take the blue line but this still wasn't clear enough as most signage was in Greek. You would think that as big of a city and entry point that is Athens that it would be a bit more tourist friendly. Figuring out how to buy a ticket on the machine proved impossible so I bought one from a ticket agent, which was a whopping €10! Then once on the platform, I had no idea which train to take (along with about 5 other people). All looking confused at each other, we finally found someone who looked like he knew what he was doing and luckily spoke English. He let me know which train to take and I was on my way.

Athens has been played down quite a bit for me from a few friends and I can see why. It's a very big city and the particular area I was staying in was a bit grungy. After checking into the hostel, I took to the sights of Athens. My first stop was the area where the Parthenon and Acropolis were situated. I didn't actually go right up to them because it was going to cost me an arm and a leg to get access. You can see it from around the city so I didn't really see the point. Instead, there was a cool area that overlooked the entire city and I could not believe the massive concrete jungle in front of me. It was just building after building for miles and miles and it looked like there was no room in between buildings. The perspective was interesting as well because at the forefront was the ancient Temple of Hephaestus and behind was all urban sprawl.

I spent the rest of the afternoon seeing the ancient Olympic stadium and strolling around the park where there was a random pool full of turtles and a mini farm with goats, rabbits, peacocks, ducks, and roosters.

The rest of the evening was spent meeting and hanging out with the Busabout tour group that I would eventually spend the next 9 days with. We got a great view of the Acropolis and Parthenon while we had some drinks.

Next:
Mykonos
Paros
Santorini
Ios
Milan
Venice
Cinque Terre
Rome
Sorrento
Assisi
Florence