Ahhh... :)

This is how today has gone:

Tour of Athens post updated

For those who are getting email updates when I post, I'm not sure if you get an email when I update them. If not, this is to let you know that I have added the filling to the quick post I made about our day in Athens! I will continue to add pictures.

Feel free to comment on posts, too! I'd love to hear from people back home!

Two tickets to paradise

We went to Paradise Beach! It was gorgeous but crowded. Our hotel is right at a bus stop so we paid 1.60€ to get there, which is great!

The party was getting started when we got there at 3 and was in full swing wren we left at 6. We got flyers for a couple of parties at clubs but we're looking forward to dinner in Mykonos Town... And we also don't want to do the parties... it was already crazy.

There was also a clothing optional section... and very confident men... getting massages.

Yay Mykonos!

We've made it here! It's gorgeous!

We left our hostel in Athens at 5:50. We walked to Monastiraki Square and took the green line metro to Piraeus. We bought our Blue Star ferry tickets as we got off and then proceeded to the ferry. It left at 7:30, had two stops before Mykonos, and got here at 7:45.

A car from our hostel, Hotel Milena, was waiting for us at the port, which was just so nice (and free!) When we got to the hostel, the lady at the front (I'll need to see her name written down before I remember it) brought us orange juice and sat down with a map to show us how to get places and where she recommends us go. In the meantime, the guy who drove us here took our bags to our room. The hospitality just makes it that much more exciting!

Soon, we'll go to Mykonos town and Paradise Beach. For now, we're just so relaxed that it went this well!

Tour of Athens

Today we got to see a lot of Athens! We did a city sightseeing bus tour where you can get off at the stops, tour around, and get on a later bus. We got off and toured the New Acropolis Museum, Acropolis (Pantheon, Theater of Dionysus, Temple of Hephaestus), and the National Archaeological Museum.

I'll have to post about them later because we are getting up very early to get to Piraeus to take a ferry to Mykonos!

Goodnight! 

Update: June 29

The New Archaeological Museum was very extensive and impressive. We met someone later that day who was so excited that there was this new (around 2009) museum that really shows off how impressive the artifacts are. The first pictures below are at this museum; it's very cool that there are glass floors through which you can see some of the ruins. Apparently they're going to let people start walking under there in a few months!  We spent a good amount of time there (about 2 hours) and 5€ before we left to get back on the bus to get to the walking tour of the Acropolis.

The (free) walking tour definitely wasn't what we thought it would be: a tour through the Acropolis. It was a tour outside of the Acropolis and nearby sites that showed us “when you buy a ticket later, you'll see that." As disappointing as that was, it ended up being helpful when we were navigating later.

The walking tour ended up taking us far from the entrance to the Acropolis, so we got on the tour bus near where we were, went through the end of the tour, and started it over. I just liked riding the bus and seeing the city from a double decker open air bus, so I thought that was neat. We got back off at the Acropolis.

A 12€ ticket got us in. We started at the Parthenon, which was awesomely impressive. It was, of course, under construction, so it was hard to get a picture without scaffolding. The view of Athens up there, with the mountains in the background, was beautiful. Not the Athens we saw on our first day! There is another monument up with the Parthenon, the Propylaia, the sanctuary of the Acropolis. It's much smaller, just as impressive, and much less crowded. (*things to consider: many of the stores are smooth and slippery. Definitely wear shoes with traction.)

On the way down, we saw the Theater of Dionysus. This is also accessible from the road beside it (across from the Temple of Olympian Zeus) and, if you want to visit separately, you don't have to climb the stairs back towards the Parthenon.

Well we hiked back up (guzzling water) and headed for the Ancient Agora and Temple of Hephaestus. This temple is so well-preserved and is definitely worth seeing.

We found an outside-the-Acropolis road that led us back to the bus. We got on and enjoyed a good number of sites from the bus before we got off at the National Archaeological Museum (7€). We stayed there until closing (8pm) and saw prehistoric, bronze, sculpture, and Egyptian exhibits as well as a special exhibit of a shipwreck. We caught the last bus back.

We saw a lot of Athens and took the whole day doing it! 

Pictures aren't posting...

They're uploading to Facebook but not to the blog, something related to the Wi-Fi here. I'll get them up later!

And please excuse any typos, I'm doing all of this from my phone!

All the way to Athens!

I will have to come back and actually write this post later, but we have made it to our hostel in Athens! I think I need a nap now.

10:00pm: after a nap and dinner, I'm feeling much better! Still exhausted, though, but that's probably because we definitely didn't get to the hostel correctly today...

We got on a bus straight out of the airport and made our way through Athens, very proud of ourselves. €10 for two bus tickets is way better than €45 for a car! Well I actually got a call while we were on the bus from the hostel manager saying that there was a car at the airport to get us... I had emailed her that we were going by bus, but anyway... it's great to add on some stress in a new situation, right? on top of that, the view of Athens coming in is kind of depressing... very run-down.  Well we got off the bus when we saw signs for Syntagma Square, our destination. Turns out we got off way too early! We tried navigating the nearby streets for 2 hours before we found out that we needed to get much farther down the road... We were using a map provided in Emery's Lonely Planet guide book, and we weren't even on the map. The next hour was walking in the right direction and then getting tired enough that we rode the metro the rest of the way. If you're planning on getting yourself to a hotel in Athens, just RIDE THE METRO. It announces the next stop. So helpful.

So anyway, we made it to the hostel (Hotel Acropolis), checked in with kind Emmanuella, and I immediately took a shower. Our hostel is in the Plaka area, which is a lot nicer and more charming.

We went on a walk and ended up at the Temple of Olympian Zeus. This is the kind of stuff we came to see! (The rest of Athens is pretty ugly...) It's €2 to get in, but we could have paid €12 for all of the Acropolis area access. We're planning on doing the rest tomorrow and thought we might want to pay for a tour... We may do an open air bus tour (city sightseeing), as long as we can spend as much time at the things as we want and just get on the next bus. Having someone determine my route for me sounds nice!

We had dinner outside at Oasis cafe. We split a Greek salad and Greek spaghetti. I liked it, but I told Emery I won't be changing my order at Mythos!

We're planning on going back out later to find dessert :)

Thanks for following along!

Pictures below are at the Temple of Olympian Zeus. The third one has the Acropolis in the background. The forth is an example of the view in Athens... not very cute.

Leaving soon!

We are at our gate at the Charlotte airport! Want to say a big THANK YOU to MeeMaw for making this trip possible, our parents for getting us here (literally, they drove us!) and Curtis for helping making the trip even better! We love you and will miss you!

-Ann and Emery

My pack weighs 22lbs!

That's shoes, clothes, hat, sunscreen, toiletries... and not much else! I'm able to take my phone, camera, kindle, jacket, and paperwork in my small backpack. That's all I'm taking, and I just hope that we'll have a couple of opportunities to do laundry while we're there.

We're leaving soon!

Emery and I are leaving in three days for #BencinisDoEurope !! We now officially have all of our hostels booked, so it's great that we won't be homeless at any point! We have a couple of little flights booked, too, but the rest of our traveling will be purchasing train tickets as we go.

Our flight leaves Charlotte, NC at 9am on Thursday, June 26 and I will be gone for two weeks. Emery will stay behind after that for her archaeological dig in Spain (cool, right?!) and tour of Rome and Pompeii! How cool! Follow her blog here. 

We will be going to Athens, Mikonos, Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre, Madrid, and Barcelona. We are fortunate that all of our hostels have wifi, so that is what I will be relying on to post here. I am not bringing a computer, just my phone, so if any of the formatting gets messed up, I'll fix it when I get back. I am going to try to post just as much about the things that we see as the food that we eat... Let the adventure begin!