It's All Greek to Me! [Athens]
I can hardly believe it's time to wrap us this extensive Greece 2018 series already. I mean, it's only been three years since I went on this trip and half a year since I started writing about it (har har). My original plan was to create two posts only: one for the land tour of Greece and one for everything else. Then my Santorini post kind of blew up in length (there was just so much to gush over!), so I committed to writing about each island on its own (i.e. Naxos, Mykonos, and Zakynthos). That leaves us with... Athens. Unfortunately, Athens is not really a place to write home about, so I'm not sure I'll have much to say here.
Day 1
We arrived a little late on May 11th, so we had "Lunner" at the airport — a gyro pizza and four cheese pasta. We then took the hour-long subway back to our hotel, which was the same one we stayed at upon first arriving in Athens before the land tour. Again, while the Metaxourgeio area is decent, you have to pass Omonoia station to get there. Save yourself the headache and stay in Syntagma or Plaka instead. Better yet, perhaps skip Athens altogether?!
I'm being a bit harsh. I'd say there's a day's worth of stuff to see in Athens, which brings us to...
Day 2
On day 2, we finally spent some time touring the landmarks of Athens. Honestly, it is REALLY cool that there is a whole city built around famous ruins. The Acropolis Museum was truly awesome and beautiful — arguably better than the Acropolis itself! And the museum was built on top of ruins too, so there were cut-out holes in the ground to see ancient buildings underneath. It's truly amazing to me that all these structures have been able to withstand the elements over the years. Then again, I'm pretty sure it didn't rain AT ALL during our time in Greece, so there's that.
The old juxtaposed with the new
We walked up to the Acropolis with its impressive and imposing pillars. At this point, tourist season was definitely heating up, so we started seeing some crowds. It was also SWELTERINGLY hot.
Then we walked around the town, where we saw fun graffiti and went for smoothie bowls (a perennial fav that you can seemingly get everywhere EXCEPT Toronto... smh, we need to catch up) and fresh juice. Check out this cool juice machine!
Othe other huge highlight was a place called Tasty Corner right beside our hotel. It was super cheap and absolutely delicious. In fact, we went there for both breakfast and dinner. The pork skewer was ESPECIALLY delicious, although we also enjoyed the chicken skewer and chicken gyros.
Day 3
Day three meant it was time to go home. The action never stops though — on this day, my mom nearly got pickpocketed on the subway! Be careful at Omonoia Station, folks. The only saving grace was that my mother had nothing in her pockets. But they shockingly went from fully zipped to fully unzipped as we stood on the subway with our luggage (aka: clear tourist targets). My mom grew up in a developing country, and she couldn't even FEEL them unzipping her pockets. Stay safe and alert out there... and maybe even take a taxi when you're departing with luggage instead of the subway.
I'd also recommend getting to the airport a little early, or at least checking in as early as you can. The only direct flight from Athens to Toronto was on Air Canada Rouge, which is truly subpar. Especially when you're a bit late, so you end up getting the back row seats by the cabin washroom. They even ran out of food by the time they got to our row... on an EIGHT hour flight! Seriously, that's practically inhumane.
We had a good time interacting with our seatmates though, who showed us stellar pics from Milos (and giving us some major FOMO). Oh well — there's always next time!