Greece

I arrived in Athens on Friday afternoon around 1pm. It's a long Metro ride from the airport to downtown. The 6 of us made the trek downtown to the Plaka - that's the downtown area of Athens where all the touristy stuff to see is. The first pic is the view of the Acropolis from just outside my hostel. It's an amazing view of the Acropolis and the Parthenon perched on top of it. The next pic is the 5 of us that stayed in Athens together - Me, Katie, Tim, Richard and Fatima. The 6th I mentioned earlier was meeting his family on one of the Greek Isles and left the first night.

It's an AMAZING city - Greece has such a rich and diverse and extensive history that has for the most part been preserved well. I love the Greek people too and the city of Athens is beautiful and easy and clean and all things good. If Greek didn't seem so impossibly hard I'd think this would be a great place to live(due in large part to the entirely different from Latin script letters - they use the Phoenician alphabet).

So after a wearying whirlwind tour the next morning of all things you have to see in Athens (we did the self-guided tour from my tourist book) we broke for a nap. We got together Saturday night for dinner and then we hiked up the Lycenvitius (sp?) Hill. Perched on top of this hill that's about a 3km hike is a beautiful church - the Church of St George. It was built a few centuries ago. The group wanted to take the boring way up following the road while Katie and I wanted to hike up the middle on paths through the wooded mountain. So we broke up and although ours was shorter in distance it took about 2 minutes longer in time to hike up the mountain in the dark. It was fun though! We made it to the top and keep in mind EVERYTHING in Athens (and Greece in general it seems) is marble and granite so being atop this HUGE mountain with a SMALL SMALL guardrail and the incessant Greek rain was a little bit intimidating to say the least.

The next morning (today) Tim, Fatima and I got up to go to Hydra for a day trip. We thought we couldn't be in Greece and not visit one of the famed Greek Isles. So we got on the boat this morning and woke up from our naps when they were announcing SOMETHING (in English mind you) and we got off the boat. We then proceeded to ask directions from a local with a map - when he replied - "Hydra? You're on Poros!"
I think I cussed out loud as we could see the boat just beginning to pull away from the dock.
We checked with the local travel agent before finding out that it would cost us another 13 Euro to go to Hydra on the next boat in 2 and 1/2 hours but we could use our return tickets we already bought. There wasn't a lot to do on Poros - and most of it was inland a few kilometers and we didn't have the time. So we just walked up the coast a little and then hung out in a cafe until the next boat came and took us to Hydra.

We get to Hydra and it is POURING - the worst rain I've seen in over a year and so we are stuck for the rest of our 6 hours on Hydra until the next boat wandering between cafes and gift shops with rain the streets up to my ankles....
don't get me wrong - the island was beautiful and I got some good pics and we enjoyed being together - but we had planned on hiking up a mountain on this island too and that was obviously cut out of our plans.... crappy weather!
So we came back and now I'm back in the hostel checking email, facebook and updating the old blog before I get up tomorrow, see some last minute sights and board my flight to Poland!

Until then.....