Saturday, March 24
Today we got started a little later but still made it down to have breakfast. There was Halva there on the buffet today!
We bought kind of expensive tickets for the hop on hop off bus tour this morning. In theory, it was a great idea. But it turned out there was a parade in the middle of the city and we wouldn't be able to do most of the tour stops until after 1pm. We still went on with the tour and saw a few different parts of the city though. We went past the Panathenaic Stadium, the Archaeological Museum and a few other important places. We observed that this is not a very kept-up city. I don't know if it's because of the money problems or if as a culture the upkeep of buildings is not a priority, but there's at least one building in every block that is boarded up or burnt out. Projects look started and abandoned and there is graffiti everywhere. There are definitely more affluent places, but the really nice apartment buildings are next door to rather run down ones.
We had to trade buses to get back to our beginning stop and when we did, we headed for the tram station. We tried to figure out what tickets we needed from the machine, but there were four price options and no descriptions. So we bought the most expensive (1.40 Euro) just in case and headed towards the shore. We got off the tram where the hotel front desk guy said we should and we did go down and wander on the beach there for a bit. But it was so gravelly and there was nowhere to sit and nowhere to buy lunch. So we walked back along to the stop before, checked out a restaurant that we decided was not too keen on tourists, and then walked a little further to where we found our spot for the afternoon. There was a cafe and bar there and we had chicken souvlaki sandwiches, complete with french fries inside, and a glass of beer each. We chose our lounge chairs from those set up in front of the water and proceeded to soak up the sun. Brandon got a henna tattoo from a wandering vendor guy and then went and jumped into the sea for a quick swim. We didn't plan well for the day so we didn't have swimsuits and I didn't want to get soaked so I stayed with all the stuff. We also didn't bring sunscreen along with us so we paid a crazy amount of money for a bottle of spray on stuff that was too big to bring home in our carry on luggage. Oops. It was worth it to spend the time on the beach though.
At the second tram station where we changed trains
It was so cold!
Eventually we both had enough sun and we made our way back to the tram. When we transferred lines we stopped into a grocery store and bought pita bread and hummus to eat at the hotel. The people in the store don't get a lot of tourists because nothing had English labels and only one or two staff spoke English. We communicated as well as we could though and then caught the tram back home. Again, the sun had us craving naps and after showers to wash of the sunscreen - and cool down the burn that was spreading over my shoulders - we slept for about an hour before heading out in search of dinner.
We walked past Hadrian's Arch, the Temple of Zeus and the National Gardens on our way to Syntagma Square. It was nearly dark already so we couldn't see much of the park, but there was a large theatre surrounded by orange trees that we stopped to take pictures of. Brandon picked an orange and we tasted it but both spit out the pieces as it was unbelievably sour. Not quite ready yet I guess!
Hadrian's Arch
Temple of Zeus
Temple of Zeus
Zappios - a theatre. Also where some early modern Olympiad events took place.
More orange trees
We went a little further down the road to the Greek Parliament building and watched two guards in some kind of ceremonial marching around. We found out later that they are the guards of the Unknown Warrior's tomb. They perform this changing of the guard every hour and there are two of them there 24 hours a day. They wear very odd uniforms consisting of white tights, short kilt-like skirts, jackets and what appears to be stiff shoes with pompoms on the toes. They have metal on the bottom because they are loud when the soldiers stomp and kick their feet. There's a parade in front of the parliament tomorrow to celebrate the Greek independence from Ottoman rule and seats were being set up. We might come back for it.
Syntagma Square
The parliament is just outside of Syntagma Square and we wandered around a bit, trying to find somewhere that looked good for diner. But I was very uncomfortable and not happy at the thought of walking back through this area after a late dinner. This is where the protesting and rioting happened a few months back. So we headed back towards our Acropoli area and ended up in a restaurant in Plaka that was really good. We had fried cheese, moussaka, gyros and souvlaki
After our short walk back from the restaurant we just lazed about in the hotel room. I pre-packed for tomorrow's departure because I don't like to panic in the morning before breakfast to get things put away and cleaned up. Brandon was falling asleep quite early so I ate the Twix bar we were going to share and put him to bed. I'm so sorry I gave him my cold!
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