Literally! I couldn’t even begin to name off five Greek letters if I had to, but thankfully everything in Greece is also in English! And everyone in Greece speaks English really well!
After an early morning departure from Genova, where we said goodbye to Rach and Paul, we took the bus to Milan for our flight to Athens. Although our hotel was small and no frills, we had an amazing location at the base of The Acropolis and it had an awesome rooftop terrace with a wonderful view of The Parthenon. We first set out to explore the neighborhood, but first we stopped for what I hoped would be many Greek salads!
 |
| View from atop our hotel |
 |
| Greek Salad and Beers |
We wandered around a bit to get a feel for Athens, and found at the side of The Acropolis, Filopappos Hill, which overlooked the city.
 |
| Athens |
After a long day of traveling we decided to call it an early night and get some rest before our next day in the city, which included a walking tour with Evangelis, a true Grecian, the other guide option was from Australia. We visited the old Olympic Stadium (home to first modern Olympic Games), The House of Parliment, The Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers (where we witnessed the changing of the guard), and finally received an intro to The Acropolis and The Ancient Agora (Greece’s ancient city). Even though our tour was a lot longer than we anticipated, our guide was great and gave us good background information for our anticipated afternoon visit to The Acropolis!
 |
| Olympic Stadium |
 |
| Greek Guard |
After a delicious lunch in Athens city center and some window shopping, we headed back towards the hotel to change as it was a lot hotter out then we could have ever anticipated – I would hate to visit here in the middle of summer!
On our way back to the hotel we stopped off at The Ancient Agora, where visited the Temple of Hephaestos, Greece’s most well preserved ancient temple, dating back to 5th century BC. I know that I have said it many times before but, it just baffles me that they were able to build these amazing architectural structures that long ago, and they are still standing!
 |
| Temple of Hephaestos |
I was told that Athens was dirty and that there tons of stray dogs that ran around, and of course then told by my husband that I could not touch said dogs – ugh! Well on all accounts this information was wrong, Athens was not dirty, at least the parts of it that we visited, and while there were strays wondering around, there was not tons of them! Our tour guide explained to us that most of the strays do wear collars as they are tagged by city officials when they are vaccinated. The city of Athens embraces these animals and they are in no way a nuisance to the city and actually they appear (for the most part) quite healthy as they are fed scraps from the locals / tourists. I of course thought that they were charming, I never saw them bothering anyone and they would just take up space somewhere comfy, like the entrance of a museum at The Ancient Agora.
After our quick wardrobe change, we made our way to The Acropolis, visiting the Temple of Athena Nike, The Erechtheon, and of course The Parthenon. I just sat there in awe, number one because I would have never dreamt in a million years that I would ever get the chance to visit Greece, and because these structures were just stunning, minus the scaffolding 😉
 |
| The Parthenon |
We enjoyed our last night in Athens by eating gyros and baklava, shopping in Athens flea market district and watching The Parthenon light up from our hotel rooftop with some Grecian wine.
 |
| Wine, a book and views of The Acropolis |
 |
| The Parthenon at night |
Our visit to Athens was even better than I could have hoped for, we were early to bed again as we had an early morning ferry departure from Athens to Mykonos!
