North Face Forever!

1/17-1/20

To begin, sorry for the delay of this post. The next ones should come more regularly.

Also, since the poll is closed on the trivia question about brooke we are able to inform you that the answer to the question of what food brooke found that she would eat every day if she could is...... Stuffed Grape Leaves!! congratulations to the few of you who didn't pick baklavah which she decided was too much (it's soaked in honey in Greece.... drenched and dripping honey)

We arrived in the Athens airport at 7:30 in the morning. We were greeted by a man holding a sign “Jacobson” and took a taxi to Hotel Economy. As we drove through town, we saw a variety of super chic hotels (and some dump-looking ones) and I kept hoping our hotel was nice, or somewhere in the middle. It turns out that Hotel Economy was a pretty sweet hotel that was pretty nice and in a great location.

When we left Mykonos, we were bummed about leaving too early for their delicious complementary breakfast, so when we made it to our Athens hotel in time for breakfast, we were overjoyed and immediately went to eat. The food was pretty good…there was coffee, delicious hot chocolate, steamed milk, and a couple of juices. Best of all, there was water. For the food, there was cereal (that tasted horrible), delicious toast (and a toaster!), and the finest in canned fruit. They also had breakfast cakes, which I personally liked, and ate way too much of. (Ken: Brad ate all of it, in case you were wondering.)

We took a nap afterwards for a few hours, and woke up fresh and ready to go around 1pm (or 13:00 if you will). When we first arrived at the hotel the quasi-kind attendant gave us a map and circled some of the premier historical sites in Athens. Deciding we didn’t want to miss any of the goodness, we embarked after our nap for the archeological museum, filled with priceless treasures from Greece’s glory days over 2,000 years ago. I think we all remember how great those days were.

In 2004, Athens hosted the Olympics, and the city began a massive amount of construction and renovation in order to prepare itself for the massive influx of judgmental foreigners and television cameras. The archaeological museum was a part of this effort, and it disappointed no one (except for the French, of course). We were thoroughly impressed by the museum’s massive collection of statues, busts, vases, and pretty much everything and anything that would fit on a pillar. The museum itself was impeccably designed, especially the museum café, which was full of awesome modern architecture and design, a marked contrast to the museum’s ancient collection. The gift shop was also quite cool, and provided us with a few decent to above average reading materials FOR FREE. Once we got over our shock and awe at the museum’s generosity, we left the gift shop and the museum very satisfied.

After our delicious museum experience, we walked towards the neighborhood of Psirri which our book (the MTV travel Europe book…the only book worth being called a book) said was an “up and coming” hotspot in town. The neighborhood didn’t disappoint, full of quirky and interesting shops, made all the more beautiful by the dusk light. A couple of highlights of this gem were stores dedicated to one of Greece’s professional soccer teams (one store even had an inflatable chair---CrAzY)., and a street with a series of upscale restaurants.

Although all of these restaurants were quite nice in their own way, one particularly caught our fancy. It was called the ice grille, a beacon of warmth in a world that’s oh so cold. The restaurant featured incredible ice cream with real pieces of fruit or chocolate and even baklava served with every scoop, as well as an incredibly chic and modern upper floor. After surveying our options, we decided this was the place for us to eat, sat down upstairs and surveyed the menu. Our server was a tall and sheepishly handsome young Greek (not as handsome as Nathan of course, because nobody is), who had a penchant for conversation and witty one liners. We chatted with him for a bit and then placed our orders, but unfortunately he returned with bad news instead of food: the restaurant was out of chicken. Grief stricken, we returned back to the street in search of another restaurant.

We found one at the bottom of the street, and what it lacked in style, it made up in atmosphere. It was a homely, family sort of place, with pictures of famous patrons (or just regular Greeks, how many Greek celebrities do you know?) plasterd to the walls. There was also a live band, which was very cool. We ordered some delicious food, and after the meal were treated to a dessert of yogurt, honey, and fruit. We were a little reticent at first because we thought it was mistakenly placed on our table since we did not order it, but at the urging of our waiter we dug in, and it was quite tasty.

Not having our penchant for dessert completely satisfied, however, we returned to the ice grill for some ice cream, which they did have (we saw it through a glass case so we were pretty confident). The ice cream was wonderful, and we went downstairs, where our old friend (we’ll call him Mr. Awesomakos), the waiter who served us before. As we were standing in front of the register, Mr. Awesomakos noticed our matching North Face jackets. He pointed to each one and then declared ‘North Face forever!’ And so it was.

After ice cream, we returned to our hotel, and very quickly fell asleep. The next morning, we woke up early and immediately went to breakfast. We ate the usual: bread, hot chocolate, and canned fruit for Nathan. Afterwards, we headed back to our room, got cleaned up, and left for our busy day of touring.

We quickly headed to the Acropolis to start our day. We began by hiking up a hill and finally reached the entrance and location to buy tickets and enter. We started by walking around the beautiful sites of temples and the ampatheater, and then we headed up and saw the Parthenon. It was really incredible because we were at the top of a huge hill, so not only were there beautiful ruins, but also a fantastic view of the city, which literally surrounded the Acropolis and was absolutely huge. It was truly a Pythagorean experience…it just felt RIGHT.

Afterwards, we wandered back down and walked through the Agora, the former center of commerce. It was another beautiful place to see and it was amazing to read about the history behind the Agora and the frequency of change that occurred in Athens throughout different ruling civilizations and time periods.

After visiting the Agora, we decided to travel towards another historic site, the Temple of Zeus. On the way, we noticed on our map that there was a synagogue nearby. We found our way to the synagogue, which was unfortunately closed except for two days of the week. We got out our cameras to take pictures of the synagogue’s façade, and were immediately approached by a police officer and another man who was not in uniform, who asked to see our passports and student IDs. We showed these to him and showed him our Jewish star necklaces, which we had usually kept tucked under our clothes just in case. When the man not in uniform saw our stars, he pointed to the police officer, who nodded in approval who told us they were just trying to protect the synagogue and that we could take pictures. It was a scary experience, but looking back it’s comforting that the synagogue was so well protected.

We continued on towards the temple of Zeus, and on the way saw the Parliament building, where we can assume very important business takes place. The building had several ceremonial guards standing in front, whose outfit and footwear was awesome, although it probably would impede with them actually dealing with a real crisis, should one occur. We took pictures with them, and they remained perfectly still throughout, which is pretty impressive. Since the Greek army (to our knowledge, but who knows?) doesn’t do anything especially meaningful, the guards were most likely Greece’s most highly trained, diligent soldiers.

Near the Parliament building and on the way to the temple was the Greek botanical gardens. Although it was winter and not a lot of flowers or trees were in bloom, the gardens were very well designed, vast and ordered, with statues and sculptures throughout. We wandered through the garden and made our way over to the Temple of Zeus.

We entered into this beautiful and after maybe giving our tickets to people who “scammed” us for a free entry (it is hard to say if they worked there or just wanted to use us to get in…) we walked over to the huge pillared temple, the majority of which had disappeared over the years, except for a few pillars and part of the roof which rested on top of the remaining pillars. It was hard to picture what the complete temple must have looked like, but the remaining structure was still pretty impressive. There was also a pillar that had fallen over and broken into cylindrical segments, which was very cool.

After we walked around a bit, we headed back towards the shops. Then, Nathan spotted the most amazing find of all time…A PYTHAGORAS T-SHIRT. Yes, it is true. It is an authentic Greek shirt and it is of one of my all time favorites, good old Pythag. It was definitely a relief to get something “mathy” our of Greece, and now I will have it forever! After I bought my shirt, the boys were jealous and wanted to be “European” as well, so we went into a couple chic and trendy European stores: The Pull and Bear and Bershka, homes to deliciously tight jeans, pink shirts for men, and European sweatshirts. We spent a lot of time there and the boys happily each purchased a shirt, and Nathan even bought two. (Pictures will be posted shortly of the overwhelming deliciousness.)

After a great day of shopping we only had one more craving to satisfy…so we headed for another Gyro (by that time our most favorite food). We bought delicious Gyros and since there was not a place to sit and eat, we went into the nearby (and very fancy) McDonalds to eat. Our Gyros were delicious (except that I couldn’t finish mine, again). Satisfied, happy, and very full, we left for our hotel and finally we able to use the internet. We pretty much just surfed the rest of the night, played a bit or checkers, and watched music videos on TV. A fun time was had by all, and we happily went to bed, excited for our next and final day in Athens.

For our third day in Athens, we had already visited many of the ancient historical sites, so we decided to hike up Lycabettus hill, which overlooks the entire city. The hill was a farther walk from our hotel than any of the other sites which we had visited, and so we got to walk through some areas of town which we had not yet seen. The most exciting of these was Kolonaki, full of ritzy shops, restaurants, and clubs. The neighborhood even featured a Jamba Juice-esque smoothie shop, which we frequented happily.

The hill itself was a nice climb up a concrete path, with many seating areas on the way up which provided great looks of the city. The top of the hill was equally incredible, providing a view of the entire city, including most of the places which we had visited up to that point. It was a nice final sight to cap off our time in Athens, and once again demonstrated how large Athens was, as buildings stretched for as far as the eye could see in all directions. The top of the hill also provided an ideal backdrop for the start of Brad´s promising modeling career. Wearing fashionable European t-shirts also never hurts.

After descending from the hill, we toured the Kolonaki area a bit more, then went for dinner and coffee to a café which was near our hotel. We bought some food and ascended the stairs to the second floor of the café, and found to our surprise that there was trash piled everywhere, on all of the tables and on parts of the floor. It was as if the employees of the restaurant simply forgot there was a second floor to the restaurant, and the patrons were none too keen on reminding them. Not wanting to be the whistle-blowers ourselves with our limited Greek, we went across the street to Everest, another café which is part of a Greek chain. Everest was much nicer and cleaner, and provided a good view of the plaza across the street. We drank our beverages and talked there for a while, and then returned to our hotel to sleep for our very early plane flight the next morning. All in all, Athens was a very fun city with some great cultural sights, and delicious Gyros and baklava at every corner. We left the city excited to return to a country where we could communicate in its ´mother tongue,´ and looking forward to the start of our program.