Hello Friends--
Still awake with the jet lag, so I am posting more while I am up.
Our last day in Athens was simply fantastic. It was just a great day overall.
In the morning we just relaxed since we booked an afternoon tour of the Temple of Possideon and that didnt leave our hotel until 2. So the morning we spent lounging and catching up with our German MTV. It felt nice not to have to be on the go from the early morning hour.
We drove the coast to get to the temple. It was really really pretty, but a lot of the seaside towns look the same, and it seems that they are very seasonal, and since we came in at the end of the summer season, the places looked really desolate and dead. I dont even want to think about the kind of crowds the summer season would bring. Plus it would be all hot with all that BO. Ewww...honestly, I just kept wanting to bring out lysol or Fabreeze at every step of my trip. And believe me, I would have been a user as well as a provider. It was hot and sweaty and I am sure I was not up to my freshest, but damn, some people's bo was making my eyes water.
Still awake with the jet lag, so I am posting more while I am up.
Our last day in Athens was simply fantastic. It was just a great day overall.
In the morning we just relaxed since we booked an afternoon tour of the Temple of Possideon and that didnt leave our hotel until 2. So the morning we spent lounging and catching up with our German MTV. It felt nice not to have to be on the go from the early morning hour.
We drove the coast to get to the temple. It was really really pretty, but a lot of the seaside towns look the same, and it seems that they are very seasonal, and since we came in at the end of the summer season, the places looked really desolate and dead. I dont even want to think about the kind of crowds the summer season would bring. Plus it would be all hot with all that BO. Ewww...honestly, I just kept wanting to bring out lysol or Fabreeze at every step of my trip. And believe me, I would have been a user as well as a provider. It was hot and sweaty and I am sure I was not up to my freshest, but damn, some people's bo was making my eyes water.
It took about an hour and a half to reach the temple, and when we got there it was crawling with people. Great. However while there, we had lots of people available to take our photos together so that was a nice bonus. Also we saw the girl from the airport who was honeymooning with her husband from Michigan. So we had her take our photo.
After about 10 minutes all of a sudden the temple was empty--most of the buses were going to be leaving so people went to get drinks and use the WC and stuff, so we were able to get a lot of photos without lots of people in the background. So that was cool. What wasnt cool, is that I asked some guy Georges to take our photo and he was great and taking the pics, but he had serious bo, and kept putting his arms around us. Poor Rachel--he put his arm on her and kept it there, and hi, when we got on the bus, her shoulder still smelled like the dude's B.O. It was very Seinfeldian. Luckily i had purell and lotion so she could try to disguise the funk but how gross is that???
After about 10 minutes all of a sudden the temple was empty--most of the buses were going to be leaving so people went to get drinks and use the WC and stuff, so we were able to get a lot of photos without lots of people in the background. So that was cool. What wasnt cool, is that I asked some guy Georges to take our photo and he was great and taking the pics, but he had serious bo, and kept putting his arms around us. Poor Rachel--he put his arm on her and kept it there, and hi, when we got on the bus, her shoulder still smelled like the dude's B.O. It was very Seinfeldian. Luckily i had purell and lotion so she could try to disguise the funk but how gross is that???
When we got back from the tour, they let us out at Syntagma Square, and i think we have this impeccable timing with guard changes. It happened while we were in London and also every time we went to the monument in Greece. We would walk up and then like 2 minutes later they would do the guard changing ceremony. However this one was special--they actually changed out the guards from one shift to the next so there were 4 guards rather than 2 and then they did a prolonged ceremony.
After we saw that, we walked a bit in the National Garden which was described in the brochure as a "lung paradise". Sadly we didnt spend too much time there since it was way too close to sunset, and as soon as we got in there we saw a guy peeing---not really the lung paradise I had imagined. there was a random animal menagerie in there that had like cats and dogs and peacocks and chickens, goats and donkeys living together in like 4 cages of Greek harmony.
We were going to call our friends from the tour, but the tour ran a bit late and we needed to finish up some last minute stuff in Athens. Since the tour was picking us up at 5 AM for our flight to Istanbul, we needed to make sure we got it together and finished our shopping.
As we were shopping we encountered some super annoying urban American youth. It was so embarassing--makes me see why people hate Americans sometimes. These guys were a-holes and were walking around with a very sick air of entitlement. I already hate that kind of stuff here, let alone in foreign countries. Can you get it together please American Youth?? Anyway...We got the rest of our souvies and then decided on a place to have dinner. I was so flipping sick of Greek food at that point, and we both wanted pasta, so we walked the streets looking for a place. We stumbled on this one place that looked cute and then we found out the guy who was the person responsible for filling the restaurant with peeps from the street was part filipino. (that info was volunteered by him when he found out where we were from) We ended up not going there at first because their pasta selection was limited, but ended up there anyway since every place had basically the same menu with only like 2 pasta dishes on the menu anyway.
When we first got in there, it was packed. There was one table left with one chair, and so they added another chair and we were in this make shift situation. It turned out to be awesome though. There was a table of old men next to us in this elevated part of the restaurant and they were so adorable. They were having a guys night out or something. So cute. So we listened to the live Greek music they had going on and then they brought the guitar over to the old dudes, and they started belting out the tunes. So hilarious. They were actually really good. There was a Japanese couple at the table next to us, so after the first set of old guy tunes, they clapped and were leaving. As they were leaving, the waiter yells out Domo Arrigato! and then one of the old dudes yells, SAYONARA! super loud. At that point, i just about fell out and lost it. However it gets BETTER....one of the guys gets up and starts doing Traditional Greek Dancing. However, because he was old, the dance was all like slow-mo style and geriatric. I loved it. The waiter also brought us free watermelon for dessert (that seemed to happen a lot...after dinner fruit or apperitifs just appear on the house) and then the old guys shared a glass of wine with us. It was really nice of them. Unfortuntely the wine tasted like Pine Sol. However those dudes were taking it out by the bottle so we drank it since we didnt want to be rude. So back to the dancing guy...Just as he was dancing, Chad's mom walked into the restaurant! So she told us they'd waited for our call. :( sad. We felt like jerks for not calling, but were so excited that they ended up at the same place as us. It really was fate, because there's like 5 gazillion restaurants in that little area, and the place was like all the others, nothing particularly special about it...so it was great that we saw them. As we were talking to Chad's mom, the main old guy asked what our friends name was, so we tell him, and he starts yelling. "Patricia! Come and dance with us!" Dying.
After we saw that, we walked a bit in the National Garden which was described in the brochure as a "lung paradise". Sadly we didnt spend too much time there since it was way too close to sunset, and as soon as we got in there we saw a guy peeing---not really the lung paradise I had imagined. there was a random animal menagerie in there that had like cats and dogs and peacocks and chickens, goats and donkeys living together in like 4 cages of Greek harmony.
We were going to call our friends from the tour, but the tour ran a bit late and we needed to finish up some last minute stuff in Athens. Since the tour was picking us up at 5 AM for our flight to Istanbul, we needed to make sure we got it together and finished our shopping.
As we were shopping we encountered some super annoying urban American youth. It was so embarassing--makes me see why people hate Americans sometimes. These guys were a-holes and were walking around with a very sick air of entitlement. I already hate that kind of stuff here, let alone in foreign countries. Can you get it together please American Youth?? Anyway...We got the rest of our souvies and then decided on a place to have dinner. I was so flipping sick of Greek food at that point, and we both wanted pasta, so we walked the streets looking for a place. We stumbled on this one place that looked cute and then we found out the guy who was the person responsible for filling the restaurant with peeps from the street was part filipino. (that info was volunteered by him when he found out where we were from) We ended up not going there at first because their pasta selection was limited, but ended up there anyway since every place had basically the same menu with only like 2 pasta dishes on the menu anyway.
When we first got in there, it was packed. There was one table left with one chair, and so they added another chair and we were in this make shift situation. It turned out to be awesome though. There was a table of old men next to us in this elevated part of the restaurant and they were so adorable. They were having a guys night out or something. So cute. So we listened to the live Greek music they had going on and then they brought the guitar over to the old dudes, and they started belting out the tunes. So hilarious. They were actually really good. There was a Japanese couple at the table next to us, so after the first set of old guy tunes, they clapped and were leaving. As they were leaving, the waiter yells out Domo Arrigato! and then one of the old dudes yells, SAYONARA! super loud. At that point, i just about fell out and lost it. However it gets BETTER....one of the guys gets up and starts doing Traditional Greek Dancing. However, because he was old, the dance was all like slow-mo style and geriatric. I loved it. The waiter also brought us free watermelon for dessert (that seemed to happen a lot...after dinner fruit or apperitifs just appear on the house) and then the old guys shared a glass of wine with us. It was really nice of them. Unfortuntely the wine tasted like Pine Sol. However those dudes were taking it out by the bottle so we drank it since we didnt want to be rude. So back to the dancing guy...Just as he was dancing, Chad's mom walked into the restaurant! So she told us they'd waited for our call. :( sad. We felt like jerks for not calling, but were so excited that they ended up at the same place as us. It really was fate, because there's like 5 gazillion restaurants in that little area, and the place was like all the others, nothing particularly special about it...so it was great that we saw them. As we were talking to Chad's mom, the main old guy asked what our friends name was, so we tell him, and he starts yelling. "Patricia! Come and dance with us!" Dying.
So she is hanging out and Aunt Linda walks in! We appologize for not calling and the Greek Dancing guy, has Aunt Linda join in the dance festivities. AWESOME. At that point we saw Chad, and he came in too and hung out for a bit. Since we were at the end of our meal, we got our check, paid our bill and took pics with the old guys. We then went outside to talk to Chad and the fam, took pics with them and then took off. we stopped at the Athens Starbucks for nostalgia's sake and enjoyed our last few moments in the Plaka.
All in all, it was a fantastic time in Greece. We really had fun, and were glad that it ended on a high note. Greece in general was tough at times, but it came through in the end with some fantastic memories. Now we had to go back to the hotel and prep ourselves for what was sure to be an adventure in Turkey.
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