Athens

Our first surprise was the prop plane to Athens from Dubrovnik. I forget that the countries of Europe are smaller and closer together than many of our states. Still, I was pretty sure that Dubrovnik to Athens was a fair distance. Although the plane was fairly noisy, It was actually quite nice inside and we had good seats with lunch and beverages included.

We were also surprised at how large the city of Athens is! The taxi ride seemed expensive at 50+€ so we opted for the metro 🚋 train instead. It was really cheap but apparently could have been very expensive. We walked through an open turnstile and joined the sparse masses for the fast ride to Athens Center. Upon disembarking the metro, we headed for the ticket area to pay for our ride. The weird thing was the ticket booth was on the other side of the turnstile!?! We found a gate-guard and explained that we needed to buy a ticket, “where do you want to go?” he asked: we explained that we didn’t want to go anywhere but just wanted to pay for the ride we had just taken. “You came from the airport without paying? that’s a 1000€ fine for each of you!” He replied. Ooooops. After a few seconds of stunned 😳 😳 looks he directed us out the door and said, ” pay next time, consider yourselves lucky.”

Our Airbnb apartment was the only one located on the 7th floor roof deck of a residential apartment building. The elevator only went to the sixth floor which reaffirmed my belief that our apartment was an after thought. It was different being on the roof with the solar water heaters and TV dishes, but I guess that’s what you get when you want the “Penthouse.” Check out the video below.

With only two nights in Athens we needed to pack a lot of sightseeing into our stay. We ordered tickets online to the Acropolis Museum and spent our first morning learning a lot of Greek history and mythology. Terri reminded me that she had taken Greek mythology in High school, I was hoping that she remembered more of it than the 3 years of French she took, nope. The museum is fairly new and beautiful with many displays both static and interactive. We then went to the Parthenon and saw history up close, well, fairly close. All in all, I enjoyed the museum more but the Parthenon is pretty awesome. We jumped on a hop-on/hop-off bus 🚌 and checked out many of the other sites around Athens.

We had enjoyed a big Greek meal and were ready for something lighter and different. I found a Japanese restaurant not far from our apartment and after a satisfying meal, we started our walk home. I decided that we should take a short cut through a very active park. There were a lot of people around a stage area and as we were trying to see what was happening a Greek man approached us and told of us if wanted to hear the best “Cretan” music ever we should hurry and buy tickets, plus they give you free Ouzo, Opa!. We bought tickets, 5€ each, grabbed a couple of ouzos and found seats. It was a good thing we had the ouzo because the night was fairly brisk. This was a very locals oriented concert and I’m pretty sure we were the only Americans present. We stayed for three songs performed by 4 musicians, drank two ouzos each and I must say that the Greek gentleman was right, it was the best Cretan music we have ever heard.

Next Stops: Mykonos & Paros, Greece 🇬🇷

our first Greek Taverna