Αθήνα, Ελλάδα: You Live and Learn

Believe it or not, the first part of my title says "Athens, Greece." In Greek. Thank goodness most Grecians spoke English because that alphabet is nothing like mine! Anyway, the first four days of our spring break were spent in Athens where we had a moderately good time. Moderate is probably being generous. I'll do my best to recap our adventure and explain why we didn't love Greece.
Day One:
After arriving at the airport and being massively confused about how to get to center city, we found our hotel and tried to check in. However, our hotel reservation had been moved to a sister hotel down the street, so we had to try to find that one. Hotel Delta was not as nice (we think) as the Neos Olympos Hotel where we were supposed to be, but we made friends with the host (he made us tea in the evenings) and we were only paying 11 Euros a night. Fair I guess.

Our super lovely bathroom without a shower curtain

After checking in, we set out to explore. We found the beautiful old part of the city, admired the Acropolis, climbed Mars Hill and talked with a man named Apollo, and visited the Acropolis Museum. We finished the evening at a super touristy restaurant in the Plaka district where I had yummy spanakopita (spinach pies).

Day Two: This entire day was spent at the hospital. One of my roommates got really sick and decided she needed to go to the emergency room. Do you think it would be easy to find a hospital on Saturday? No, most of them are closed! I guess nobody gets sick on the weekend... After that fiasco was over we did get to see the changing of the guards at the Parliament Building in Syntagma Square.

Day Three: This day also happened to be a failure. We thought it would be fun to take a ferry to a Greek Isle, spend the day in a cute little town looking around, and admire a beautiful beach. We clearly didn't do our research, though, because the island of Aegina was dead as a doornail. And freezing cold. Very few shops were open, so we took a bus up to the monastery and church of Agios Nektarios. It was beautiful, but we definitely did not need three hours to explore there. Unfortunately, the bus did not return for two more hours and the area was desolate. We never did get to see the Aphaia Temple that day and were just thankful to get back to Athens.

We had to wear skirts to enter the monastery

Day Four: This was probably the best day in terms of seeing a lot of things. We did the mandatory visit of the Acropolis and admired the Parthenon.

We also walked through the ancient Agora (marketplace) and then went to the first Olympic Stadium. It held the first modern Olympics in 1896, but is also the site of the ancient Olympic stadium.

Finally, we went to the Archaeological Museum before returning to our hotel for the final evening. I forgot to mention that our hotel room was probably about -10 degrees Fahrenheit, so we slept with 2 sweaters, long sleeves, 2 scarves, and curled up in the tiniest balls imaginable to try to stay warm. While Greece was an interesting and alright trip, we were elated to return to our cozy apartment in Rome. After all, there's no place like Rome. ;)