Athens

Before we get to Athens, we want to encourage you to read our Naxos and Greek Cooking Class in Naxos posts! Naxos is one of our very favorite places we've been this trip. However, we ended up finishing and then posting three posts in one day, the last one being Sifnos. Maybe because it was the most recent, or maybe because our key photo for our Sifnos post is awesome, Sifnos got far more views than the other two! We thought that was a shame, so if you missed Naxos, definitely read it :)

Alright, Athens. We arrived in Athens on a ferry straight from Sifnos.  The final ferry ride of our adventures passed rather uneventfully, which was nice considering the rocky journey to Sifnos (see previous post). 

In Athens we spent one night at a youth hostel, which turned out to be quite nice for the price (only €10 each!).  It was also well located, more on that later.  In our room we met a French woman and her granddaughter who were visiting Athens after the girl had learned about Greece in her school history class.  It’s been really fun for Monisha to be able to use her French throughout this trip, many times outside of France. 

We asked a man staffing the hostel for food recommendations nearby.  He recommended a local take out gyro place.  Monisha wasn’t convinced, so we wandered around the area a bit looking at menus and Google Maps reviews before returning to the aforementioned gyro place.  Wow was it good.  We got two pitas stuffed with tomatoes, potatoes, tzatziki, onions, and meat.  Oh my gosh the meat. This stuff was so good. The pork was especially flavorful.  After a single bite we looked at each other with wide eyes and slowly started to smile.  Also, the entire meal cost us less than €5.  Afterwards, even though we were full we wanted to get two more.

Side note: the vast majority of food reviews on this blog were written by Monisha.  Nolan wrote this one. That’s how impressed he was with this place.

Since we arrived pretty late in Athens, that was pretty much all we did that evening. We actually got back to the hostel in time for potentially watching a show or movie, but the internet was far too slow. We ended up entertaining ourselves with a gem of a find in the hostel: a Rick Steves guidebook for traveling in Europe! Monisha has fond memories of Rick Steves guidebooks from both her trip with Maya and Nathan as well as her trip with Adrienne. We ended up taking pictures of basically every page for the Rome and London sections. We definitely learned some things and utilized our Rick Steves advisement for our time in Rome!

The next day, however, we had a good bit of time to explore Athens before our evening flight to Rome. We started the day eating Greek yogurt with honey and toasted hazelnuts; Monisha wouldn’t spend her last day in Greece without taking advantage of Greek yogurt….mmm.

OH and we saw this cafe!! <3 <3 <3

We didn't actually get anything there, though it is a pretty cool looking place; it's an 80th themed cafe / bar with arcade games and such inside. 

Next, the Acropolis / Pantheon. Yep, they’re impressive all right! On the way up we got quite a view of the city as well. We didn’t get tickets to go in – neither of us felt any desire to stand in the long line – but we spent some time admiring it.

There are a lot of pretty crazy buildings / structures / ampitheatres around Athens, most of which we didn't know what they were. 

Next, coffee at a little Bookstore Café. Monisha contented herself reading through five or so Greek cuisine cookbooks, taking pictures of exciting recipes.

Last, our favorite big city activity: exploring a park :) On the way, we passed by a street vendor and got a little bag of honey sesame covered peanuts, which hit the spot. In the middle of the park was this random and awesome little zoo sort of thing. There were mostly birds, but also goats and bunnies (co existing in the same section).  We continued on in the park, and soon enough we came across another unexpected and delightful haven of animals: a big pond full of turtles! Red eared sliders to be specific. It was awesome.

Before heading back to the airport, we had one last meal. Monisha wanted to café / food shop hop on the way back from the park. Nolan couldn’t pass up another opportunity to get those gyros. So Nolan headed straight to gyro place while Monisha slowly made her way. M got a freddo cappuccino (cold with lots of foam – but turns out you don’t have to get them sweet), a chocolate covered orange, a couple chocolate covered oranges, spanakopita, and a little spinach breadstick thing. Nolan got two pork gyros pitas.

Were we to write / post this when we were leaving Greece, we would probably have said “Boy, we’ll miss Greek food..” But we’ve been in Italy for about five days now. And it turns out…Italians know a thing or two about good food, too. ;)