Easter break is now over and I am back in Swansea after 3 weeks of travelling. It was amazing!!
I began on March 16 by taking a late night train to London. It was myself, 4 guys from Tennessee, my roommate from Colorado, and 2 other guys from Illinois. We had a nice night's sleep in the Gatwick airport Hotel, on the cold floor, waiting anxiously for our 8 am flight. After stuffing our oversized backpacks into the carry on luggage check, we were finally on our way to Athens, Greece!! It was a nice sunny and warm welcome into the country when we arrived. We caught the bus into the city center. The love to honk at other drivers, even when it is totally ineffective, and there don't seem to be specific lanes that drivers must stay in. We saw one guy driving a 4-wheeler down the road! We went to our hostel, and had our own room, with our own bathroom. This was by far the best hostel of the trip. The man at the front desk gave us a map when we arrived and circled all the major site seeing places. He was really nice and helpful throughout our stay! We took it easy and went to bed early that night to prepare for a long day. We woke up around 7 and got out the door to see the Acropolis! It was soooo amazing! We did the museum first so we got some history and saw some artifacts. The we did our hike up and saw the ruins, which was really cool. It was also a great view of the city from the top.
After hours exploring at the acropolis, we headed to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, Hadrian's Arc, the original olympic stadium, and Socrate's Prison. All of these things were really cool. The ruins were huge! We ended our day by going to the highest point in Athens to watch the sunset over the water and the mountains! It was so amazing, we could see all of the city, which is way bigger than I had imagined, with the ocean and beautiful mountains in the distance! It was gorgeous! Needless to say, we slept well that night!
The following day we woke up and a couple of people went to a war museum, and me and another guy just went for a stroll around. Little did we know how close we were to the Presendential area. We saw the President's house and the changing of the guards there. It was so cool. The area was really nice as well, the house was pretty and there was a huge national guarden across the street. It was really nice. Around mid afternoon we headed for the coast. It was really nice to relax on the beach! The water was so clear, and it was a pebble beach, which was neat. There were people swimming, but we could only brave getting our feet wet.
Oh yeah, there were so many dogs all throughout the city, it was really cool. Someone told us though that it is a real problem there and not to feed them because animal control doesn't pick up the dogs, they just spay them and let them go. It is sad, but all of the dogs were extremely tame and appeared to look fairly healthy. I thought it was cool.
Athens was an amazing city! Greek is a really nice language to hear, but really hard to decipher if you don't know the alphabet! The Greek people were all helpful and patient with us for the most part. It was a great place!!!
