Athens, Greece - Part 1

Hello again!

First things first: All the posts I make on this blog are saved. When a new post pops up (especially long ones, like this one) it may appear that the old ones disappear. Fear not! If you scroll to the very bottom of this page, you'll find the posts indexed by date posted. Click a month and you can see all of my past posts.

Okay. We have now arrived in Greece, after over a day (nearly 30 hours) of travel. Upon exiting our plane, we all comment that Greece had a unique smell to it. It smelled fresh. Hard to describe.

We get to the exit of the airport and begin looking for the easiest means to get to the metro. Turns out theres a bus that will take you to the metro for cheap. Great. We go to the ticket office, and are greeted by a sign saying that the buses are all cancelled because of a strike. Uh oh. We then decide we'll take a taxi to the metro. We ask the taxi service about the price, and he mentions that the metro is also not in service because of the same strike.

...

We end up having to take a taxi to our hostel (small hotel, not everything is included, generally no food served, you may have to share a room with a stranger). We have a group of 5. Of course, the taxis only hold a maximum of 4. We split up into two groups and take the taxi into the city area where our hostel is. Because they know the strike is going on, they charge a huge rate for the taxi, and we end up paying 100 euros for the two taxis. Brutal.

Regardless, after a long, trafficy, crazy-passing-motorbike ride, we arrive at our hostel. The place was really nice, and cheap. We had a room for 6 for 5 people, it was clean and had free internet access. Pretty cool. Later in our stay, a 6th person randomly showed up and claimed one of the beds. It would have been weird, I guess, but she was Canadian (eh) and pretty cool.

We decide to get some food that night and walk around a bit. Here's a night shot of the Acropolis, which sits perched on a large hill in the center of Athens. The night lights on it are quite nice.

I guess I didn't take many pictures that first day. Here we are on day 2, touring the Acropolis (which was free entry to anyone with a European school ID, rock on). To be noted: very rainy, very windy. Cold also, as a result. 

 Looking back as we scaled up to the Acropolis. Athens does not have many tall buildings.

 The monument on the green  hill, pictured in two photos above.

 This is the final climb before you reach the top which is mainly the Parthenon. I regretfully did not get any pictures up there, but there was pretty good reason: once you hit the top of these steps, on this particular day, you were nearly blown over by wind, and had stinging, stinging rain hitting your face. I didn't want to take a chance of getting my camera soaked, so I decided to just walk on through. I would like to say that the Parthenon was breathtaking, but I couldn't focus on much else other than walking by and not freezing/stepping in puddles. Also, they were doing some construction on the Parthenon, and the big crane in the middle takes away from the mystique of the entire thing. Still cool, though.

 At the bottom of the Acropolis, heading out.

 Here's my rain soaked group. Notice the dog. In Athens there were soooo many dogs of about this size littering the streets. They are very tame and sweet, looking for whatever food you can give them. They will literally follow you all the way home, crossing busy streets (safely). Pretty sad when it comes down to it, but the dogs were very sweet.

 One of the better shots I got of the Parthenon, shot through the window of the nearby Acropolis museum.

 Same shot, zoomed out.

 This arch has a specific name, but I don't know it! Tried to be semi artsy and capture the Acropolis through the center.

 This is day 2 of our time in Athens. This day it was quite cloudy, but thankfully no wind or rain. Here we are looking at a large area of ruins (also free entry). Used the self timer to capture this shot. From left to right: Me, Chet, Kaydee, Erika, and Jason. Fun group.

 It's crazy to think how long ago these pillars were put up, with very little technology, yet they're able to stand tall literally millennia later. 

 Another different dog that tagged along through our walk in this park. He was just having a good ol' time. He even got to eat a pinecone! Was pretty sad, however, when we left, he definitely gave us that sad dog look as we walked away.

 Acropolis in background again. I'm so good at this!

 After that area of ruins, we walked through one of the main parks in Athens. Very pretty and clean.

 I couldn't even believe it when I saw this. Someone after my own heart. Even better? Natural juggling balls on the ground in the form of oranges.

 I couldn't miss this opportunity.

 At the top of the hour, we walked out of the garden and headed toward the Tomb of the Fallen Soldiers. They have two guards outside dressed in rather silly uniforms, and they have a very regimented process of moving around every hour.

 City hall

 Note the leg lifting. Kinda weird.

 Our next stop was the downtown shopping area, where we looked around for a couple hours. Stopped in the absolute smallest cafe known to man and got some pretty good sandwiches for cheap. Being frugal was hard to do here, but very welcomed. This photo above was taken on our way home. Nothing special to note, I just like the photo.

 Gelato shop. On our way home. A minute from our hostel. 1.50 for a cup. So so so delicious.

 I tried cookies and cream, lemon, and chocolate, and they were all lip-smackingly good.

 Pretty cool - Even in the middle of winter (winter is a joke by midwest standards, though) they have outdoor seating areas. Nearly every little restaurant and cafe you walk by here has a similar layout: nice chairs, tables, an awning, and heat lamps like the one pictured that do a good job of keeping you warm. Creates a nice atmosphere.

That covers days 1 and 2 of our three full days in Greece. I'm going to stop here for now,  because on day 3 I took more photos than the other days combined. We went the port town very close to Athens and took a ferry to a nearby island by the name of Aegina. It was beautiful, and we had the best weather all week. Check back soon for that update.

For the next two days (Saturday/Sunday) I'll be in Ronda and Malaga, two towns about an hours bus ride from Granada. This will be the first of our planned trips, and I'm looking forward to it immensely.

As always, if you have any questions, requests, comments, complaints; anything concerning this blog, feel free to email me at RyanAndrewBaxter@gmail.com. Especially when I get into the later months here, I'll probably be fishing for things to post, so don't be afraid and ask me to take photos of something. Cuidate (take care)

Hello! Sorry for the lack of updating in the past week or two, I've been pretty busy. (I know I mentioned in my last post that I'd be talking about the Albaicin, a part of Granada. I'm going to detour from that briefly and talk about my recent trip.) My month long intensive course had a final, and the next day I left for Greece with a group of friends. These next couple of posts will certainly be about the time spent in Greece, as well as our travels, which were very long (but totally enjoyable). Let's start with our layover, of 10 (ten) hours! in Amsterdam.

Arriving in Amsterdam around 11pm local time. The airport was quite empty. We began to look around for a place to sleep seeing as we had a long wait before boarding another plane.

All of our flights were through the Royal Dutch airline, KLM. This is a giant wall poster in Amsterdam I saw after we exited our plane. I would recommend KLM to anyone - the food was abundant and pretty decent, the crew was incredibly nice, the flights were nearly all on time. The flight attendants wear these throw back bright blue suits, which I found a little odd, but cool. During the emergency instructions, all the flight attendants demonstrate the procedure. Very old fashioned, very enjoyable.

We finally find a set of (somewhat) comfortable couches to rest on. I took this trip with 4 friends I have met since being on this trip, 2 guys and 2 girls. When we arrived at the couches, the girls mentioned they wanted to sleep, but the three of us guys decided that you don't go to Amsterdam everyday, so we decided to explore the city. At midnight. We began heading for the metro, attached to the airport.

I don't really get the name of this bar either.

Note the emptiness, the cleanliness, and the coolness. I know it's a bit weird to be mentioning how cool this airport was, but it really was nice. It was a pleasure to stop here.

We took the train out of the Schiphol airport to central Amsterdam. The train too was mostly empty, about 2 euros and very quick. Our goals for the evening were pretty simple: to get a couple of drinks, see what there is to see, and head back with enough time to get a bit of rest. Pictured is my friend Chet as we meander towards the nearest watering hole.

One thing to note - bikes here are plentiful. This is just a small example of how many bikes this city had. Wherever there is railing  in this city, we saw bikes. We probably saw as many people biking at midnight as we saw cars. Take note America!

The first street we turned down. The river down the middle is an interesting touch. This area felt cozy. Again, note the bikes. 

Molly Malone's, the first bar we came across that looked decent. An Irish bar nonetheless. The bartender had a thick Irish accent and mentioned that they were closing in about 15 minutes. We all ordered a pint of something (can't remember) and I took a few more photos.

Don't worry, this advice doesn't really apply anyway... they all ride bikes!

The bar closed, so we continued walking. Swans!

Continuing on walking, a big intersection here.

Around here we stopped by another bar called San Francisco. Pretty crowded, and beers/shots were 5euros a pop (which, compared to Granada, is expensive). Fun crowd in here.

We finished our beers, and being as it was pretty late, we began walking back to the train station (above). It was about 4am at this point.

Chet, Jason and I in front of the central Amsterdam train station.

At this point we had an interesting encounter. We entered the train station about bought our tickets, but learned that our train would not be arriving for 45 more minutes. We headed back from the platform to make sure with the ticket guy that it for sure wasn't arriving for 45 more minutes. Before we could get there, we ran into 3 mostly intoxicated dutch girls. And because it isn't the US, of course they know another language in addition to Dutch (English). At first, they were fun to talk to, and we were able to discuss things in a civil fashion. Later, one of the three girls (who had been talking to someone else) walked over and began making fun of us for no reason. It got somewhat awkward. They ended up being on our train. One of them passed out (thankfully) but the other two kept talking. One was being fair, and we had a decent conversation about how we wish we could learn a language from baby. The other...she just kept making fun of us. She called my friend Jason "Orangesicle" because of his orangish goatee, but she couldn't pronounce it perfectly. And that is how Jason obtained the nickname "Orangeschnickel."

Back at the airport.

Way more crowded than when we left. 

The couches we found to sleep. We thought they'd be pretty comfy, but in reality they were really difficult to sleep in. Combine that with the amount of people now nearby, and the music playing in the nearby sandwich shop, and the cold air blowing out of the vents above - it didn't make for a great nights sleep. 

I'm going to pause here for now, but stay tuned for quicker updates, as I'd like to update 2 more times in the next couple of days.