grecia!

ok I think I'm gonna do a blog marathon today. like two whole blogs.

soooo greece. we left not last friday but the friday before that. I realized that the one english novel I brought to read was nearing its end, so I quickly went to FNAC (Fédération nationale d'achats des cadres), the French version of Borders fused with their version of Best Buy but it has 6 floors so it's way better. The international language books were on the 5th I think. so I went there around 2 p.m. and tried to buy four books with my credit card. but apparently FNAC doesn't take american cards without a passport. I tried showing the lady a copy of my passport but they wouldn't accept. how french.



so I broke a 50 and left with 4 American books and change in my pocket.

my flight was a little before 7. the best part about it was that it was on Iberia, so it took off from Barajas' new terminal - T4. They just built it a couple years ago and it is amazing. The ceiling looks like rolling sand dunes and there's a bunch of cool shops and it's just all sparkly and stuff. This was my favorite part of the trip....okay that's an exageration, but still it was pretty neat.







We got to Athina around midnight their time (just one hour ahead of Madrid). Took the bus to the city square - Syntagma, and took the metro to our hostal. Our hostal apprently overbooked and couldn't hold all 10 of us, so a couple of us got to go to the one next door (that's usually 20 euro a night) which was way better. oh we were spoiled.

Syntagma at night.


went out to eat at some local Greek cafe, these three old Greeks were playing cards at 2 a.m. I had a hot dog that was soo Greek. it had onions and Tzatziki sauce and oil and vinegar. should've taken a picture.

the next day we split up. I should have gone with the big group. they all went to Santorini, the ancient island of Thena (which had a volcano that distroyed the Minoans - =thanks archaeology) and it's supposed to be the most beautiful island in the world. just seeing Colleen's pictures of it on facebook makes me so jealous.

look how nice. but nope never went there. maybe I'll go back sometime in my life. doubt it.

but no I stayed back with Suz. we did get to see a bunch of amazing stuff though. like.....

the Agorra

and the National Gardens

and the original Olympic stadium

and some ancient ruins with a bunch of tourists

and the Acropolis

and some place with columns in the background

and Monastraki Square

which had the best gyros ever. (only 1.80 too!)

and the National Archaeological Museum more of that here: http://picasaweb.google.com/nathanancheta/4GreecePt2#

and Peace and Friendship Stadium (2004 Olympics)

and Vouliagmeni Beach.........wow that took a while.

but our hostal was terrible, in a terrible part of Athens. thank goodness they were all out of dorms, so we got our own room. we didn't risk showers. one of the owners got in a fight with some guy from Africa one night. the street it was on was so shady I don't want to worry my parents by describing it haha. we did meet some nice travelers though. there was this guy from Germany who is normally a grocery store mover who came to Athens on his vacation. he went to the Archaeological museum 4 times. and then there were these two Tunisians who only spoke French and Arabic, so we used my ipod's translate app to communicate. we showed each other where we're from on the google maps app and talked about how dirty Athens is. then after they went to bed, one of the owners from Guam basically accused them of being terrorists.


the best day was Monday, after the exhausting task of seeing all those sights, we took a day trip to Cape Sounion, the edge of the peninsula Athens is on. It was about a 2 hour bus ride. I read a good chunk of one of my FNAC books. At Sounion, there was the Temple of Poseidon, basically a tribute to the god of the sea. There we had lunch and watched the sunset.





there I took one of the best pictures of my life. Ironically it was on my small camera because my SLR battery ran out just then.



Tuesday we met up with the others and went home. Sent a couple postcards through the Hellenic post. Overall the trip was fine, probably not my favorite place. Wish I could have seen the white terrace houses overlooking the beach like that movie that's always on HBO with Rory Gilmore in Greece because that's the stereotypical view of it. But no Athens has a lot of history and a lot of grime.