[Wow, there are lots of days left] Monastiraki

Don't know if I mentioned the drowning in humidity thing we had the first night of the hostel, but we did. Since then we've left our downstairs window open and locked the shutters as tightly as we can. Out of all of us, I was the only one who caught a cold though. So now we can't go out in the rain, because like hell I'm letting it turn into something worse.



Today the roads are rivers, so we can't do any of the planned things we wanted to do. The one museum we can do is in Piraeus, and the metro line has maintenance on it until tomorrow (when we leave for Corinth). Our other options are the Sounion (outdoors) or the Kerameikos (outdoors). We're saving those for our last two days in Athens as I want to get rid of my cold before I even try to go outside in rain like this. I'm hoping Corinth is exempt from Athens' bad weather.



We went to the Monastiraki yesterday! I bought lots of things and had the best moussaka. We're definitely going back to that place. I think I'll have moussaka for the rest of the trip. I'm going to so have to learn how to make it the Greek way and make some at home. It's so nice (and so unhealthy but we've yet to find any healthy greek food! Apart from salad of course and even then it's coated in feta cheese!).



I bought some gifts for people. I still need to get a few more things though~ Of course I can't say what they are, but they're very 'greek' and touristy. I want to get a few more things but I'll wait until we get back from Corinth to buy them...

Today is a washout so I'm grabbing my blanket and huddling up next to a heater with my sniffles.

[7 days til home?] National Park

One word about National Park. Wild. Tortoise. I have no idea why there was a wild tortoise, but there was. He was awesome. We fed him some of our salted sunflower seeds and Tunafish tried to feed him a flower. He was a brave little guy though, only hiding in his shell once and letting me pick him up to bring him back to the Italian One to show her how cute he was. I didn't realise that their heads were so soft either. His head was all warm and silky <3

Anyway, after National Park we went back to the hostel, where I preceded to empty an entire 500ml bottle of Sprite Zero all over my clothes. I was not impressed by this... So a change of clothes later I was on my way to dinner. We ate at a Greek taverna that had souvlaki, because I wanted some vegetables and it came with garlic flavoured spinach.

Tuna then proceeded to knock my drink over. Despite 'greek hospitality' we were not offered a replacement drink and I ended up paying over about 6 euros in total on drinks that night (cola here is roughly 3 euros in restaurants). This did not put me in a good mood for the rest of the night, nor did it put the Italian one in a good mood, as the coke went all over her side of the table...

After food we went to get ice cream. I was daring (or thought I was being) and had a bright blue ice cream with sprinkles in the shape of stars on it. When I say blue, I mean Dr Manhattan blue. It was vanilla flavoured. But at least it turned my lips, teeth and tongue luminous blue...

I'm such a kid 8D

Back at the hostel we finally managed to pry the PSP from the Italian One and get her started on Phoenix Wright. A far better game anyway =P Tuna now has my PSP and is playing Crisis Core. I think I lost out somewhere along the line 8D

I dreamed of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy having a dance off last night. Draco Malfoy had the moves, man. He was boneless. Harry was too stiff. He lost. So he randomly had to collect cardboard for the Third World with Claire from Heroes and Zack Efron. My subconscious was clearly influenced by the blue ice cream last night...

Today we go to the Monastiraki Flea Market. Let's hope it's as awesome as everyone says it's going to be...

[We don't even know what day it is] Notes Day

Today we are getting all our notes together. This generally means we'll play with cards, play DS/PSP games, read books and do everything else OTHER than discuss what we have learned so far. HOwever, I shall crack my whip at least once!

The hostel has gone down in my estimation. The room was so humid last night that we felt like we were swimming. We woke up this morning with a heavy chest, blocked noses and chesty coughs. Luckily, this retard brought cough drops with her on a whim, so at least one of us is alright.

Also, we're murdering the parrot... And the french students who all got up at about 6am and stood outside our room shouting.

[Day Can't Remember] New Hostel and Benaki Museum

After getting lost, despite clear instructions, we found the San Remo hostel. It's in a pretty rundown tired out kind of area and on a main road. It reminds me of Lowesmoor I guess... It's just an inner city area that suffers from quite a bit of graffiti and doesn't get many tourists. My guess is that it's the kind of place that the Greeks stay when in Athens (an average Greek salary is only 600-700 euros a month!).

There is a shared bathroom and a roof terrace here. There is only one plug socket between the three of us. The sink is out of order in our room. The beds are nicer than S&T though. I guess that does make up for it a little. Somewhere there is a kitchen, but we haven't found it yet... Everything is clean though, so I guess we shouldn't grumble too much...

We've reassessed our budget as well. San Remo has a pretty good information board and it has all the times for trains and buses (and where to catch them from). To get to Corinth by train (2 mins walk away) it will only cost us 6 euros. However, to get to Olympia it's going to cost us 5o euros return. We've decided, after not much deliberation at all, to strike Olympia off the list. Maybe if they offer an excusion or cheaper route from Corinth, but as it stands, we just can't go.

There is a parrot in this hostel. He is an African Grey. He can't speak but he shrieks like mad. He has right outside our room and right next to my ear. In a minute I'm going to politely as that he is moved because he is annoying me and my ears hurt.

We went to the Benaki Museum today. It was pretty useless to us. We learned nothing from it and only took one picture. Although it was recommended by our lecturer, there was nothing there for us to see, so it was a wasted journey. The only good thing out of it was that I got to try a greek pie (finally). Greek pies have sweet pastry compared to English ones, but other than that they're pretty normal. I'm going to try the Feta and Spinach ones next though, for a bit of Athenian flavour.

Tomorrow is either the Kerameikos or an internet research day. It all depends on the weather...

New hostel and Benaki Museum today. Will update from the hostel if I can with an accommodation report~

Meanwhile, we have managed to play Square Enix games and cards at every major monument in Athens. Somehow, I feel awesome.

Day Four - Olympeion and Panathanaic Stadium

Yesterday ended with us eating carbonara at 'world famous' greek taverna that was two houses away. Expensive but filling <3 The place was called Byzantino Vizantino and was really nice. We ended up spending a little over our normal meal budget but it was totally worth it. The restaurant near the hotel tried to bully us to a table, something that there was no way that I was going to do... I mean, come on, no matter how charming Maximus was the first night in trying to get us to eat there, we don't need virtually marching to a cash point and being told to sit down and he'll be right with us when we've been consistently saying 'no thank you' to him...

We got up fairly late this morning and ate breakfast at a crepery place. It was the most epic bacon butty I've ever had. Feta cheese, tomato, green peppers and black olives... The Italian one promptly scraped everything off hers and just ate the bacon. What a waste of 6 euros...

We then went to the Temple of Olympian Zeus. It's mostly a ruin, but there are lots of daisies. There are lots of daisies and apple grass around temples I've noticed. Delphi was the same. This has led us to the conclusion that the Greek gods had a thing for them. To be honest, I can believe that of Apollo. He was probably a bit of a daisy lover. As well as Hyacinths. Okay, geeky classics joke. Moving on...

There was a protest today going on outside the temple. Don't know what it was about but I took a picture. The roads were closed. In any case, it just made our journey to the Panathenaic Stadium quicker as we walked along a closed road. Of course, while we were at the Panathenaic Stadium, the roads reopened and we got trapped in an island of traffic with protest shouting and drumming happening in the background. Talk about deafening.

Panathenaic stadium looks like it should be impressive, but seeing as you can't get into it and can only look at it from the outside, it is a moment where you go "Wow" then "Now what". We played cards in front of it for ten minutes and then we went back to the hostel, where I had an ice cream and typed this up.

Second and Third Days - Delphos and National Archaeological Museum Athens

Yesterday we went to Delphi. This meant a 6am start. We got the metro to Larissa Station and then we followed the hostel's directions. About 3 hours later, we managed to find Terminal B of the KTEL bus... This involved walking the entire length of Liosson st (Λιοσιων). To give you an idea, here is a link to Google Map. Check the scale against the length of the street. Needless to say, we missed the 7:30am bus. We did catch the 10:30am bus though, and arrived in Delphos/Delphi at 2pm. Yes. That's a three and a half hour bus journey from Athens. It cost us 30 euros to go as well and we couldn't get the bus back until 6pm (back in Athens for 9pm). We were pooped.

Once we got there we discovered that 1) Delphos is a beautiful little town with lots of nice restaurants and hotels named after Greek gods 2) there is one cash point in the town and 3) that everything closes at 3pm. We had a mad rush around the archaeological site, never made it to the museum and then sat playing cards and listening to stupid Japanese pop songs and the Nightmare Before Christmas Revisited soundtrack.

Getting back to our hostel was an easier affair as we found a metro stop next to the bus station. Our hostel had told us to get off at the wrong station before... We got back to Syntagma at about 10pm and got a McDonalds. The McDonalds in Greece is perhaps the only McD's in the world that serves black tiger prawn salads for under 5 pounds.

Today we slept in while 11am, got ready, had lunch (gyros again) and went to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. It's a pretty good museum. Not as big as the British Museum, nor as varied. They also don't let you take pictures of the most important stuff. I had to delete some of my photos when someone caught me, luckily the rest I managed to keep because my camera (which got broken by Tuna on the acropolis) has been playing up and randomly went to a photo from teh British Museum instead of the ones I had just taken.

One thing I will point out though. Never ever stay in the Omonia area of Athens. I had heard it had a bad reputation, but I didn't expect it to be as bad during the day all the same. There were prostitutes plying for trade on the main road that the museum was on. It was rather strange. No one else apart from tourists seemed bothered by it. I guess it's the Athenian version of Soho or something...

We returned to the Plaka, had a milkshake (banana split flavour) and got warned that there are Bulgarian and Romanian 'mafia' working in the area. It took us a while to realise the man meant 'pickpockets' not mafia XD As in all tourist spots, we have to watch out bags, even in the classier areas like Plaka.

Tonight I think I'm going to have Lamb Souvlaki skewers. It might be 10 euros, but today I have only spent a grand total of 2 euros getting to the museum and back and 3 euros on lunch. The milkshake was the left overs from yesterdays budget XD

Signing out~

Day 1 - What I did today...

It's only 2pm but we're already pooped. We did quite a lot today! Although we assigned a day for the Acropolis, we ended up moving through it rather quickly as we knew what we wanted to see. Also, a lot of things we wanted to see were closed to the public - the Temple of Athene Nike and the Herodeion. The Acropolis itself was an awesome sight - but the site is spoiled by the allowance of too many tour groups and school parties in at a time. 'Cattle market' springs to mind. I wouldn't mind that much, but we weren't allowed to be 'touristy' and pose for photographs on the sight. While I knew that we weren't supposed to, I still thought it was a little... strict...

From the Acropolis we saw the Greek Agora, so we decided to head down and take a look at it, particularly as we spotted a temple down there and it pretty much fell under our 'Greek Religion' project title.

Needless to say, we got completely and utterly lost somehow and ended up climbing the Hill of Nymphs. We saw an altar of Zeus up there as well as some random stoa and a Sanctuary of Pan. (http://www.greg-hand.com/pics/sanctuary_of_pan.jpg <- the floor mosaic we saw outside, the sanctuary itself was a cave but the relief inside of Pan with a nymph had either been removed or it was too dark to see it.)

Eventually, we found the Agora and immediately we headed for the Hephaiston (seen here with the Greek Agora in the foreground http://k43.pbase.com/v3/45/310145/2/49075005.Agora.jpg). It was a pretty awesome temple and while we were there we realised a few things - either the Greeks made the same scenes for metopes in Athens over and over inspired by the parthanon, or some handy restoration has happened. A lot of the scenes from the Parthanon's sculptures seemed repeated on the Hephaiston. We're going to research into this as it'll be important to our project.

We went to the Stoa of Attalos as well (in the Agora) while we were there. There wasn't much there that concerned us apart from an original vase by the painter Exekias. That only concerned us because we like him so much!

After the Agora we decided it was time to head back to the hostel, having done more than enough for the day and our aching feet hurting. Naturally we got lost and had to find our way back to the hostel with a map that doesn't name the streets - so we relied on a Greek couple who showed us the way XD

Walked past the Roman Agora and a lot of ruins that we don't know what they were. Then had gyros from a local vendor with tsatzuki in it <- they were lovely and cheap at only 2 euros. Today I spent a grand total of about 5 euros. That leaves a lot of my budget left for dinner! At least I can try something new...

Anything coated in tsatzuki would be nice actually...

First Day - Yesterday

We got here safe. I don't have much time to update so I'll do that later when I have more time!

Acropolis today!

first day so far...

I'm updating from my phone so forgive any spelling errors or stuff like that.

We arrived in Athens at 2pm local time, so about midday in england. Our first sight of greece was the giant ikea outside the airport. perhaps not the most greek of things to see but the mountains were plenty greek enough.

We spent our bus journey looking for monuments and museums. We saw a grand total of 0. I'm pretty sure the route into Athens purposefully drives round them or something.

We have seen the parthanon however. Heading towards our hostel for the night (yes we got lost) we walked along the road that lezds to it. Speaking of the hostel, its in a great area and wevw just got the toilet to work so we should be well set out for the next few days.

Trip to Athens 2009

This is my travel blog for my two week study tour to Athens in March/April 2009. I intend to try to update it daily with information from my Study Tour, to tell my family I'm okay and to keep a lasting record of what looks to be a good few weeks in a foreign country.

I'm travelling with two friends who I'll call Tunafish and The Italian One (which will probably become shortened to Tuna and Italian pretty quickly). They may be in any pictures I get the chance to upload.

Our itinerary is shown left.

You'll notice it says 'church' on the Sunday. This isn't because we intend to attend some Orthodox masses but actually because we need a day off to gather our notes together...

A little more in depth is as follows...

We travel to Tunafish's house for a stopover before our flights. We're taking the opportunity to see the bits of the Parthenon that are at the British Museum at that time. We then go back to Tunafish's house to stuff our faces with the last good meal we will have for two weeks (I'm thinking fish and chips <3) href="http://www.hostels.com/hostels/athens/students-&-travellers-inn/15729">Student and Traveller's Inn for five nights, mostly for it's central location and good reviews on hostels.com. We're going to spend the afternoon and evening either sleeping or exploring in order to find ATMs, food and various other amenities.

The next day is the Sounion. The plan is to catch the bus, though there is some dispute on exactly where to catch the bus. Some require us to catch various buses and metro lines to get to a bus station, others say we need to walk five minutes down the street. Either way, we are going to the Sounion to see the Temple of Poseidon. We are, unfortunately, probably unlikely to see 'the best sunset in the Mediterranean' as it appears that sunset on that day is at 19.44 and our bus leaves at 18.30. We may see a little of the sunset though. At least, I hope so...

The next day is the National Archaeological Museum. We've set aside a full day for this so we hope that it's going to be quite a leisurely stroll round here and then back to Ice Grill, Plaka. (Ice Grill is an ice cream parlour known for it's cheap but delicious ice cream. We may not be able to afford food, but there will be a special ice cream budget I'm sure).

Tuesday is the Acropolis. Obviously, this is the one place in Greece that most people would head to first, but we like to be backwards. Besides, we've seen most of the site already in the British Museum and the NAM. We're mostly going to see the beautiful Parthenon, even if it is covered in scaffolding. Apparently the little decorative Temple of Athena Nike (picture next to this text) and the Propylaea is completely invisible under the construction tarpaulin...

The Olympeion and the Herodeion, while sounding similar, are actually completely irelevant from each other. The Olympeion is the Collosol Temple of Olympian Zeus and is one of the largest temples on mainland Greece. This isn't to be confused with the Temple of Zeus at Olympia however. The temple at Athens is mostly in ruins now, but I have it on good information that if you follow the signs for the toilets you can find some pretty temples dedicated to Zeus' son Apollo out the back. The Herodeion is a reconstructed theatre and, while of absolutely no interest to me, makes up Tunafish's third of our total mark.

The Stoa of Attalos is a museum now, and wholly uninteresting to those of you who don't enjoy either grave stelae or pottery. Much more interesting is the Panathenaic Stadium. The Panathenaic games were held here during (betcha can't guess) the Panathenaic Festival. These were games held in the honour of Pallas Athene and, in ancient Greece, weren't as obscure as they appear to be now, being about on par with the Olympic Games for significance.

The Kerameikos is my personal specialist area, as I'm studying death cult as my individual project whilst on tour. The Kerameikos, so named after the ceramics workshops that used to stand on the site, was the ancient burial ground along the main road into Athens. The graves along the Panathenaic Way (processional route into Athens) are beautiful examples of grave markers from Classical Athens. The Kerameikos can also tell us something of Athen's social history, with the graves of Hegeso, Deixileos and the abrupt changes of types of graves in later years telling us not just about what the Greeks believed after death, but also what those left alive wanted to portray their dead loved one as.

Then to Delphi. The Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi is something that is held up to every Classics student as the important one. Neither covered in scaffolding nor completely destroyed by rivers changing course and earthquakes, it remains one of the more intact Sanctuaries and, due to lying outside Athens, it has fared better on the acid rain front. Maybe it is some snobbery from classicists, who see the Acropolis as too touristy and Olympia as a little too boring, but there is something about Delphi that is more interesting than first appears. One part of Delphi that catches the attention is the presence of the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi, who inhales toxic gases and proceeds to babble out prophecies to all who will listen. The Oracle of Delphi became world famous with kings from all over Greece and all over the world coming to hear her prophesy. Of course, the prophecies were always rather open to interpretation, as can be read about here. It was also believed that there was no way to avoid the Delphic Oracle's predictions - to do so is to think you are better than the gods and to share a fate similar to Oedipus who, despite his best intentions to avoid killing his father and marrying his mother, through his ignorance did it anyway.

Corinth. Temple of Apollo. Odeion. There is not much to say about this apart from that it's a time filler before we move on to other things. And yes, the Odeion is where we get Odeon Cinemas from. No, it's not Greek but it's in Greece, so it must have meant something to them!

Epidaurus is the Greek theatre to see. It's the Sanctuary of the Greek God Asklepios, god of Healing. As a god, Asklepios is a rather latecomer (later even than Dionysus whose creation is some time in between Homeric times and Classical times during the Dark Ages). His Sanctuary however, is pretty impressive. The theatre is the biggest and best preserved in Greece and, yes, we're going for Tunafish.

Our next port of call is Olympia. The Sanctuary of Olympian Zeus was the largest temple of its kind in the world at one point. Now it's pretty much just rubble. The home of the Olympic Games, but all in all a rather boring site to those who are wandering around it without archaeological plans. Not much left to see but worth it to build up more information on our Sanctuaries.

Monastiraki. This is a shopping district. It can't all be work. There are souvenirs to buy!

Our final visits are to the Theatre of Dionysus on the south slope of the Acropolis and the Museum of Piraeus. The theatre is another Tunafish thing, and by this point I imagine we'll have no money and be living off whatever bits of cheese and bread we stole from the continental breakfast hotel in Corinth two days before. Even so, we'll probably still get some work done on that day.

Maybe it'll aid the weightloss?

Our flight home is quite late on Easter Sunday (leaves Athens about 19.00) so we have plenty of time to get aquainted with the airport. At this point in time we'll be sick to death of each other anyway, so I predict there will be plenty of burying our head in books/DS/staring into space with headphones on rather than talking to each other at this point. Either that or we'll be planning to emigrate. One or the other...