Athens & the Acropolis

Hello from Greece! What an incredible country! I have been here for less than 24 hours, and it has already become my favorite port so far.

 

Today I did the SAS field program, "Sights of Athens and the Acropolis." My roommate, Amanda, signed up for it as well, so it was really fun to get to do it with her! We hopped on the bus and were given a city orientation of Piraeus (the port city) and Athens (which, fortunately, is only 6 miles away). We got to stop and take pictures of the first Olympic stadium!!! I thought that was so cool! I LOVE the Olympics. We drove around some more, but we had to get off of the bus earlier than expected because the road to the Acropolis was blocked off. Guess why it was blocked off! Hillary Clinton is in town! Half of the city streets were blocked off today because she is here. How funny. We walked about ten minutes up to the Acropolis, and there it was in all of its glory! I have never seen anything more incredible (well, the Colosseum is up there with it). Being there, surrounded by something that is such a huge part of history was an amazing feeling. It was absolutely beautiful. I got to see the Pantheon and how it really, truly was built without mortar. I thought that was fascinating. There was another really cool building, I can't remember how to spell the name, but we got to walk all the way around it, and it was just so neat to see. The Acropolis, which means "high city," really was a high city; you could see all of Athens from up there. It was the most spectacular view. I got a lot of great pictures. Visiting the Acropolis has definitely been the highlight of my voyage so far. I had the absolute best time today. Even the weather was great. Croatia was so miserably hot and humid, and here there was no humidity, plus there was a really nice breeze, so it seemed much cooler than it was. I even managed to get some color today! Woo!

 

We came back and had dinner on the ship. Dottie invited us to sit with her and Beth, who is the Dean of Students for our voyage. She sat next to me in Global Studies yesterday too. She is wonderfully nice. It's good to get yourself on the Deans' good sides!

 

After dinner, Amanda, Lindsay, Jeff, and I took a cab into Athens and explored! Our first stop was to get YOGURT! That was my main mission for Greece: getting real Greek yogurt! Oh man, it was SO good!!! I got the traditional yogurt with a scoop of forest berries. I have a feeling I will be consuming enormous amounts of yogurt over the next four days (we get 5 whole days in Greece!! I'm so excited!!). We walked around some more and got some touristy things. I bought a tshirt that has the Greek flag on it with "Greece" written in Cyrillic above the flag and in English below. It's pretty cool. I also got some postcards and a 5 Euro pair of knockoff Ray-Ban sunglasses from a street vendor. He tried to get me to pay 21 for them...ha! We did some further exploring of Plaka, a major touristy part of Athens, before heading back to Piraeus and the port.

 

OH ALSO...We got our passports stamped here!!! I'm so happy!!

 

I went out into the terminal, where they have free wifi, and was able to Skype my parents for a while, which was nice. It's 1:30am here, and I am about ready to pass out. I'm going to the island of Mykonos tomorrow with my friend Craig! I think we might be staying two nights there. Our plans aren't really set yet. I'm very excited though. I've heard Mykonos is so beautiful.

 

I love, love, love Greece. It makes me so sad to know that this beautiful country is so close to facing its downfall. I want to talk about this more, but my brain has already shut off for the night. I will get into it more later. Goodnight, Greece. Goodnight, World.