Thursday
My alarm ringer did not go off in the morning (yikes), and I ended up arriving to work one hour later than usual. I felt guilty walking in late (waaay more guilty than when I walk in late to lecture) when everyone had already finished their morning tasks, but sometimes, things like this happen. I cranked out the day's tasks, left work early to pack a weekend's worth of clothes, and hopped on not one, not two, but three modes of transportation to reach the airport terminal (bus, train, shuttle).
After getting questioned by a security guard at the gate as to why I travelled to Malaysia, Indonesia, and Jordan in the last two years, I hopped onto the plane with Eileen, Rosie, and Amber and slept on the 2-hour plane ride to Athens.
2 hours will get you a couple states over in the northeast of the U.S. but one continent over in this area of the world. Crazy.
Friday
We woke up at 6:30am on Friday and were definitely in the mindset of "Do! Everything! You! Possibly! Can!" ...and we really did. Started off the morning with a grab-and-go spinach and feta pastry known as Spanakopita. Delicious and nutritious.
On top of our priorities was the Acropolis, and we arrived at the ticket office just as they opened at 8am. It was well worth it to make the trek up to the acropolis so early in the morning because only twenty minutes after we reached the Parthenon, the Acropolis was swarming with tourists. Here are some photos pre-tourist-swarm.
From left to right: Amber, me, Eileen, and Rosie!
Oh yeah, and we got this great view of all of Athens. Athens is vast.
We visited the Acropolis Museum around 10am because listen: it was hot, and our Boston-accustomed bodies could not handle being outside for that long. Saw some cool statues and sculptures, but what I found to be most interesting was the pieces of stone with text engraved in Greek. Like, this is what ancient Greek looks like:
Greek is English-enough to appear to look like English at a quick glance, but then you realize that there's a lambda or a delta or a theta in the middle of the word and you think, "How do you pronounce that!?!?"
Other endeavors of the afternoon, post-lunch:
Strolled the streets of Plaka, a small village with narrow cobblestone streets lined with tiny shops selling jewelry, clothes and local ceramics.
More ruins: Temple of Zeus, Ancient Agora, Erechtheion, Theater of Dionysus, Arch of Hadrian and more
Took pictures with these yellow flowers
Dinner on the rooftop of a hotel with views of the Acropolis (on my left) and the sunset (on my right) over Athens. Pretty hard to beat this view.
Saturday
Lazy day. This is what happens when you do everything you possibly can on Day 1 of a two-day trip and finally remind yourself that "Hey, this is supposed to be a vacation." Our morning was spent exploring the markets of Athens. We were trying to go to the fruit market but ended up smack dab in the middle of the largest meat market I have ever encountered. I really have never seen so much meat in my life, and it was...scary. The picture below shows one meat stall. There were at least fifty back-to-back with butchers chucking knives down on cutting boards relentlessly.
We finally found the fruit market (whew) and bought pounds of fruit for probably less than ten USD. Watermelon, cherries, apricots, donut peaches, nectarines, and lots of strawberries. Take notes,Whole Foods. Here's documentation of the demolition of all that fruit by four people. Scurvy no more.
After lounging around some more at the apartment and watching snippets of the debate, we walked around our neighborhood area, grabbed a bite at a small cafe, and had an early night to catch our 6am flight the next morning (which we almost missed because we didn't have enough cash to pay the taxi driver and then proceeded to almost get scammed when withdrawing from at ATM at three in the morning).
I arrived to Tel-Aviv at 8:45am in morning, just in time for work, and work is what I did.
Eats
As most of you may already know, I am a big photo-taker, but I am an even bigger photo-taker when it comes to food. Greek cuisine, as one can imagine, was phenomenal, and below are my top three dishes from the trip:
From left to right:
A classic Greek salad: cucumber, tomato, onion, olives, olive oil, and a chunk of feta
Old-fashioned Moussaka: an eggplant-and/or potato-based casserole dish, that traditionally also includes ground meat (this one had slow-roasted lamb)
Chicken gyro in a whole wheat pita
