Athènes

I'm back from Greece, safe and sound... and I had a great time.

I miss the food and warm weather already!

We had a couple adventures getting there-- I took the train by myself (but ended up sitting right next to a girl from my program) Tuesday night and met my friends in the train station. From there we had planned on taking the metro to the airport and trying to sleep there a little bit, since our flight left at 6 the next morning. We bought our tickets and got on the metro, but when we got to our connection to the airport, it was blocked off. Apparently it closes at 23h00. There was another person standing in front of the gate with a couple suitcases, looking confused, and when we figured out that we were all in the same situation we decided to leave the station and try to work on it together.

We asked a woman in the station what bus(es) we could take to get to the airport, and in the Parisien tradition of customer service she replied that there were "no buses" and was done with the conversation. However, the other stranded traveler had a bus map that looked like it was possible, so we decided to try anyways. Our friend, who was from Brazil and was traveling in between a German program in Germany and a medical program in Serbia, spoke English and was good company to have while taking buses around the outskirts of Paris in the middle of the night. He watched out for us and also showed us some pictures from his travels.

As it turns out, the buses did work, and we arrived at the airport a little after midnight. We found some benches and soon after realized that is was FREEZING. Apparently they keep it cold so that homeless people don't sleep there... and I couldn't sleep either, even after putting on the majority of clothes I had packed. Needless to say, when we got on the plane the next morning, I was unconscious before takeoff.

3 hours later we were in Athens! We took the tram to get to our station closest to our hotel, got off, and promptly got lost. We walked around in circles for a bit before walking into another hotel and asking for help. Greek people were extremely friendly the whole time we were there and it seemed like everyone spoke English.

My first impressions of Athens weren't the greatest...basically, it looked old and dirty. When we walked around later that day, though, we discovered the Plaka, a touristy area below the Acropolis that was really cute. I had some Moussaka (yum) and we headed back to the hotel early since we were all exhausted.

The next morning we got up and headed to the Acropolis. It's really impressive and up on a hill in the middle of Athens, in sharp contrast to the city below. We got in for free (there and everywhere else) with our Université de Nantes id's, which was really nice. European Union students get in for free, but other students only get a discount, so it was weird saying "We're from France" everytime, especially since there were a lot of Americans around (we really are very, very easy to identify abroad). We ran into the two other girls from our program who went to Athens for the break, and exchanged info to be able to meet up with them later.

On the steps of the Theatre of Dionysus

Odean of Herodes Atticus

The Parthenon

Then we walked back down and headed to the Agora. I really liked it there because you could just walk around explore the ruins, and the more restored buildings were really nice as well.

Stoa (of Attalos?)

Temple of Hephaestus/Theseion

Our last day in Athens we got up and went to the National Archeological Museum, which was actually really interesting but we didn't have enough time to see everything. Then we had signed up for a tour to see the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion. I had my doubts, but it was definitely worth the price if just for the opportunity to drive along the coast--it was beautiful. The temple is really picturesque and the sky and the ocean were amazing... sigh.

Poseidon (in the National Archeological Museum)

His temple

My lovely travel companions and I :)

That night we met up with the other girls from our program, and went out to a fabulous dinner in the Gazi district, which was amazing. It was really pretty with a view of the Acropolis in the background, lots of really cute cafés and restaurants and bars and atmosphere and people.

Saturday morning we got up to catch our flight back to Paris. We were all pretty tired, so we hung out in our hostel for a bit, and then I decided to walk around by myself for a while. I saw the Panthéon (from the outside), Notre Dame, the Seine... I finally had to head back because I had to go to the bathroom!

The next morning we went and saw the Catacombs (really creepy... I read somewhere that there's about 7 million people's bones down there??) and the Musée d'Orsay, which was free because it was the first Sunday of the month. I loved it.

Lessons learned:

• Guidebooks are worth the investment. I would have liked to have known a little bit more about a lot of the places we saw, and also had more information about what to see, how to see it, etc.
• Talk with all of your travel companions before departure and have a general idea of what you want to do and how

All in all I had a great time. Hopefully I'll be able to go visit the Greek islands at some point!