Athens: Redux and beyond!

So it was that after a crazy overnight ferry (it was a lot like being at a hotel where you put a quarter in the bed to make it shake, but in chairs and for 8 hours). Also, people taking ferries are crazy. A) It takes eons for the boats to dock and unload, but people push up to the front of the line for like a half hour. B) People literally run to the boat. No joke, I had to push a girl, she pushed me first though, unsurprisingly, we both got on the ferry. Anywho, we were back in Athens. We had planned to take that day easy, and by easy, I mean, we went to the Acropolis. Ha. How silly are we. In any event, despite the sleepy delirium we had a nice time, minus the fact that we were expecting the Acropolis to be as well curated as the Acropolis museum. We were drastically mistaken. Whereas the Acropolis Museum is a gorgeous, informative and well thought out activity, the Acropolis itself is un-updated since G-d knows when crap. You’re right, I’m being too generous. It is cool to see though.


The next day we did a bunch of the other ancient bits (fun, although equally poorly curated, Joanna, I’d be happy to write a letter to Greece requesting that you fix it up for them), walked up that big hill (Litvonakas?), we were lazy and going to take the tram, but you know what? I’m not $6.50 euro lazy. It’s not even that big a hill. And we earned the treats that we had at the Kaufman-Potenzas fave bakery in Athens (Despina Cream Puff – to die for). We ended the day by going to a cute taverna with live music, gosh those singing Greeks are so adorable in a cranky old man way.

The following day we made an epic journey to go see Meteora. I’m fully willing to admit that 6 hours into travel, I was not thinking that it would be worth it for 24 hours there, but I was wrong. First, it was gorgeous. From the moment you got there it feels crisp mountain airy and you’re just happy about it. Oh, let me back up, what is Meteora? Out in the middle-o-nowhere Greece there are these giant stone hills? Small mountains? Who knows, they stick up out of the ground and vary in size but are mostly I would say, about a km from ground level. This would be independently cool, however when the Turks started invading a bunch of monks looking to go a little rogue/isolated started building monasteries on top of them, I think there are 6 still, and they used to be inaccessible unless they wanted you, I don’t know how they got there in the first place, but they used removable rope/wood ladders and if you were lazy/carrying something A NET WITH A GIANT WINCH. However, now there are stairs.

Back to our story, we got an amazing hotel in Kastraki, a little village right at the base. So we could sit on their back porch and just stair and the cool mountains, which we did all afternoon. The next morning we took the bus up and saw three of the monasteries, which is about what you can do in about a half day. We had a great time, they were beautiful (and for the most part we managed to stay ahead of the massive tour buses) and unique (one has a gorgeous fresco of Adam naming the animals, so cool, the best part being that it’s mostly run of the mill animals… and a dragon…. ‘you, I will call you sheep, and you DRAGON (perhaps Trogdor specifically…)’) and we met some lovely people. All told a pretty amazing day. Then we went in to town, had our last Pastitcio (greek version of lasagna) and began our EPIC journey to Italy.