Trip to Athens!

Finally, I took some time out from my laziness to write about our Greece trip which we took in September 2014. I was super excited about this trip. It was our first trip to Europe and Greece is so beautiful in pictures that it was first thing on my bucket list to see in Europe. We stopped at Paris for one day and from Paris we came down to Athens. We spent about three and half day in Athens.

We had our morning flight from Paris to Athens. By noon, we were in Athens and then took metro train to our rental apartment. It was a nice residential area where we stayed and close to most of the places. It had a small living room, tiniest kitchen which had everything we needed and a spacious bedroom. Our host was waiting for our arrival. Tatiana, our host was very kind enough to talk to us and suggest us few places to eat and get around. She showed us how to get the trolley. We use to take trolley from Zakinthou street. She also showed us how to make greek style coffee. It’s always fun to meet local people. 

Soon we got ready and decided to spend the rest of the half day to hike to acropolis site and spend our evening there.

It was the best decision as the sun was going down and perfect pictureque sky. Look at that view. We could not get enough of it. We spent quite sometime at the top. After Acropolis we hiked back through Plaka seeing beautiful churches on the way and ended our day dining in the busy neighborhood close to the Museum. Our first day in Athena ended with amazing Greek food and fresh pistachios that a vendor was selling on a small cart.

The next day we started our trip by taking a cab and visited the lycabettus hill or likavitos hill, Olympic Stadium, Temple of Zeus, and many other sites.

 We could not see the change of guards ceremony at Snytagma Square, but one of the days we were travelling around the square and saw guards moving towards Snytagma Square. They guards looked handsome, I think overall Greek men are really really handsome.

We did lot of people watching at Monastiraki . It is a very crowded place. And, also a great neighborhood for shopping. Yes, I said it shopping. We bought lot of things from here. Most of the sites are accessible by foot. We used mixed means of transportation. Most of the time we used the trolley, tram, bus, metro and cab. Cabs are really cheap, as the distance is very short between most of the sites. Athens is really accessible by all means. I have to say though, be careful people drive very fast as there are lot of two wheeler drivers.

Overall, Greek people are very generous and helpful. On our very first day, we met this old lady sitting at a tram station and I tried asking her the direction to our apartment. I have to say she saved our trip because we were going to get into wrong tram and go into totally wrong direction. She spoke no English and I spoke not a word in Greek but she was so helpful and it made me really happy that without knowing the language we both communicated and it worked out. We wete not suppose to take that damn tram glad I asked the old lady. After missing our trolley we decided to cab.

As I said earlier, cabs are really cheap and you will get some funny talkative and humble cab driver. Our’s made sure that we know where to get the bus for our rest of the trip. I thought he would make sure to drop us inside our apartment , he was that gracious and helpful. Overall, Greek people are very hospitable.

Athens reminded me so much of India. The people are always eager to help and the lifestyle. The way people dry their laundry outside their apartments and the way people drive ruthlessly.

I was eagerly waiting to see what would the next day bring to us. We had planned to visit a nearby island and do a day trip. More about it in the next post. Until then “Kalimera” !

All the pictures are taken by my talented husband!