Greece is the Word // Part two…

Last updated on 1 October 2016

This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase with one of these links, I recieve a small commission at no additional cost to you. Read the full Affiliate Policy.

We left off at Sunday yesterday. As I was saying, Sunday was a day where we didn’t do much at all. We wandered around in town a bit, but didn’t do anything too exciting. So let’s carry on…

Monday

On Monday, we decided to buy tickets for one of the Hop On Hop Off sightseeing buses. You may recall I did this in Amsterdam a few weeks ago, and I loved it. It was such a great way to see the city. It turned out that if you bought a 24 hour ticket, you’d get a day free. Score! So off we went. No, that’s a lie. We walked down into town again, and did the bigger more main-stream shops (as opposed to the little businesses and tourist shops), and then after lunch we jumped on the bus.

These tours are great. They have head phones that you plug into the bus wall and as you drive around, the lady on the voice-over/headphone thing talks about the land marks and points of interest as you go around. They have a bunch of different languages too, so you’re always on the bus with people from all over the world. On the top deck, there’s no roof, so you get an amazing look of the city from a different view.

We got off at the Agora…but it turned out it wasn’t actually open on a Monday…so we got ice cream instead. A good substitute, I think.

Tuesday

Tuesday was our last day in Athens, but our flight wasn’t until about 8pm, and our shuttle driver was coming to get us at 5pm, so we had all day. We jumped on the bus again, and did a take two of the Agora. I’m glad we went back there. It was really cool. It’s the place where people like Socrates spoke and thought about stuff, and also where Paul in the bible spoke to the people of Athens about Christianity. It was really amazing to be able to go there.

After walking around there, we took a stroll down the road and found the Kerameikos cemetery and museum. It’s this incredibly old cemetery with amazing head stones and burial sites. In the same place, there is also a small museum, where they have a lot of things that they have found in the graves over the years. It was really interesting.

We had lunch in a lovely little restaurant, before jumping on the bus again, and heading back to the hotel. We got our flight no troubles and eventually got back to English soil.

The city of Athens is confusing. It’s a city of contrasts: old and new, clean and grubby, shiny buildings next to abandoned ones, rich and poor, sheltered and homeless, traditional and tourist-y…I know most cities are like this, but I noticed it a lot more in Athens than any other country I’ve been to. Perhaps it’s because of all the unrest and economic stuff that’s been happening recently, maybe it is more noticeable…I don’t know. But it was a great city to visit, and the history is amazing.

If you’re a fan of philosophy, or classics, or even the history of Christianity, then I highly recommend a trip to Athens. Or even if you just think it looks interesting. Go.

Beware of a few things though:
– don’t put toilet paper down the loo. They have little bins that you put the paper in. It’s weird, I know, but the plumbing is ridiculous and freaks out with toilet paper.

– stray dogs. There are stray dogs everywhere. Normally, we found, they just slept in the shade and didn’t bother anyone.

– the heat. If you’re used to humidity, then Greece will be a breeze for you. It was in the 30s all the days we were there, but it was such a different type of heat that we didn’t really get sweaty or anything! Dry heat is way better than humid heat.

– water. Drink lots of it.

– Sneaky sellers. There are a lot of people who walk around and try to sell you things. But we found if you just said ‘no thank you’ once, then they’d go away and not bother you again. So it was actually fine.

And I think that’s it. That’s all I can think of anyway. Stay tuned for a post about our time in London! The adventure continues!