Day 29: Return to Athens

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Today's highlights:

   -Why we loved Greece

   -Agora

   -Plaka neighborhood & dinner

   -Hung out with roomies

Today we made it back to Athens for our last day in this beautiful land of Greece. Tomorrow morning we fly out to Romania (can't wait!), but I am sad to leave Greece so fast. Here are the reasons we fell in love with this place:

   -The Wind blew all day, every day. It was like heaven, and did not feel like we were wandering the surface of the sun anymore.

   -We met some of the coolest people. Our hosts here made this our favorite place to sleep. It's so easy to make friends here because people are so friendly!

   -THE FOOD (obviously)

   -It has the conveniences of being a tourist area (with info) but not overrun by tourists (except that sunset in Santorini, but totes still worth it).

   -It has SO much history and it feels like its still a part of their culture.

   -Music everywhere! Such a rich modern culture too.

   -There is just so much to do here and we barely even scratched the surface of it. 

So needless to say, we will come back. Someday, we will come back...

But for now, let me tell you about our last day. First place we went was the agora (which is basically the old ancient city of Athens where the ruins are). It was awesome. There's a little museum there that had the coolest artifacts. Like the world's first bumbo (but they were a step ahead because they also made it a toilet):

Or the water jugs with a hole in the bottom that timed a politician's speech to exactly 6 minutes. Their speech, to be perfect, had to be no less than the allotted time but no longer. They had to be "good to the last drop."

Or the world's first voting booth:

It was awesome. After that we decided to splurge on lunch (being our last day) and we went to this AMAZING traditional Greek restaurant: Ydria. I kid you not when I say, I hope that heaven serves their stuffed mushrooms every day. I loved them so! We had all the good stuff: spinach-feta pie, fried zucchini, moussaka, veal stew, crazy Greek lasagna. It was amazing and we had to waddle home when we finished. 

We came home to hang up our laundry and.....might have fallen asleep for a minute. A long minute. Our plans had been to go to the National Archeological Museum that afternoon to see Greek art from back to 7,000 BC (holy moly!) but then we woke up and realized we would only have about an hour til it closed. I told Robbie maybe we should just skip the museum and wander around the town for the evening. His face lit up like you would not believe, and in that moment I realized what a gem I married. Museums and history are not his thing so much, but he has never once complained or said we shouldn't go this WHOLE trip (and we have been to a lot of museums). If he knows it's something I want to do, he treats it as something really important to him too. What a sweetie. But if I am the one to suggest not going, he is quick to agree :)

So instead, we spent the night wandering around Plaka, this fun neighborhood with shops and restaurants galore. Since we never fully recovered from lunch, we ate dinner as we walked. That's right, gyros and Fanta to your heart's content.

The only bummer is, I dripped tzatziki ALL OVER MYSELF before I noticed it was leaking. (I looked like I was a toddler that was let loose with no parental supervision). And now I'm pretty sure my pink shorts will have grease stain drops all over them, but I have to keep wearing them anyway since I only have two pair! I am a scuzbucket. Anyone know any magical remedies for getting tzatziki grease stains out?

So after our wandering and souvenir shopping, we headed home. Prepared to hit the sac, we ended up staying up forever with our hilarious Greek roommates (Giota and Loucas) and talking about everything under the sun. We talked about travel and music and movies and how Chewbacca (Giota's cat) is so excited for the next Star Wars to come out. It was so much fun. By the time we went to bed, Robbie said we should come back again just to hang out with them some more. And I agree. 

Greece, you won our hearts. And we will see you again soon.