Stories from Athens

We tried laying down for a bit in chairs at the airport, then decided it wasn’t comfortable or worth it, so we took a bus into the city intending to head to our hostel and at least drop our bags off. We ended up getting sidetracked into a 24-hour McDonald’s in a big square in Athens. It was around 4:30 and the place was hopping… there was a long line for food, with tons of customers. And the wonders didn’t cease – when we went to the basement to get to the bathroom, there was a massive (but not in use at the time) dance floor. Don’t ask, I don’t have a good answer.

We chilled at McDonald’s for a little while, ate some food, then took a taxi over to our hostel, where we dropped off our bags and tried to figure out what to do. By this point it was around 6am, and we realized that we weren’t far from the Acropolis, so we headed over there, hoping to beat the crowds and the heat and see it early in the time that we didn’t have available beds at our hostel. It was an awesome decision. Although we were all dying of exhaustion, as soon as we entered the Acropolis we sprinted ahead of the tour groups straight to the Parthenon, so we had about 20 minutes there basically alone before the crowds descended.

The Parthenon was truly breathtaking. I tend to be pretty skeptical of a lot of touristy crap and sightseeing, generally finding a lot of sites (especially stuff like “it’s the second biggest cathedral in Spain!” etc.) pretty underwhelming and not worth the hype/entrance fee. The Parthenon, however, will join the Pyramids and the Great Wall as sites which really leave a lasting impression, and would be hard pressed to disappoint. The view of the city is spectacular, and the Parthenon towers over you… even with a lot of construction work going on, the experience was pretty memorable.

One of the more memorable moments came when I saw a few older fat white men in polo shirts, shorts, baseball caps and sunglasses walk up the steps of the Parthenon. They were splitting images of tourists, so we assumed that we needed to figure out where the entrance was so we could go in too. Indeed near the back (front?) of the Parthenon there was a break in the rope barrier, so we walked in and started walking up the steps. At this point, this woman from outside who clearly works there starts screaming at us in Greek, and doesn’t stop. Obviously, we weren’t supposed to go there…. She kept screaming at us unintelligibly as we hurriedly and apologetically made our way back the way we came and to the outside of the rope barrier. As we walked over to Adam he asked “Dude, what the heck was she yelling at you?” to which I replied “I don’t know man, she was speaking Greek, probably saying ‘Get out of the Parthenon’ ” Whoops. Oh well, not that many tourists can say they actually walked up the Parthenon stairs!

The next day  was spent hitting the other ancient sites, like the Theater of Dionysus and Temple of Zeus, all very old/cool.