A Semester Abroad: October 2017

I can't help but think about how grateful I am to have this opportunity to travel and see so much of the world. We spent this past weekend in Athens, Greece and it was pretty amazing. The amount of history in this city is incredible and it was pretty crazy to think about how long a lot of the buildings there have been around. I went to Greece with Lea and two of my roommates, Bella and Olivia. We had a VERY early morning flight on Friday morning, leaving our apartment at 4 am to get to the airport for our flight at 6:30 am. We landed in Greece at about 8:30 am their time, which is an hour ahead of Rome. We got an Uber to our hostel and the Uber right took around 45 minutes (the traffic and congestion in Athens was CRAZY). Once we got to our hostel, we were all pretty wiped so we took a quick power nap before going out to explore the new city. Our hostel wasn't too far from the Acropolis, so we hiked up to the top of the city and got a really cool view of the whole city behind us. We hiked farther up to get up to the Acropolis and found out that it was 20 euro to tour it, but if you have a student ID then it's free. Bella and I had our ID's, but Lea and Olivia didn't, so Bella and I went up into the Acropolis and got to check out the Parthenon and the Temple of Athena Nike at sunset which was really gorgeous while getting a super cool view from the top of Athens over looking the whole city. Once Bella and I finished taking pictures, we met back up with Lea and Olivia and headed to dinner. We ended up eating at a little restaurant we found on our hike back down to the city and I got pork chops with french fries (these were a huge thing over there). The pork chops were so good. By the time we finished dinner, it was pretty late so we decided to head back to our hostel and get to bed early so that we could get up and go do things early the next day. Saturday was Bella's birthday, so we started the day out with some shopping, checking out all the shops and pretty cheap prices. We walked quite a bit of the city and even found a Forever 21! It's crazy how much more Americanized Greece was compared to Rome. They had a lot of "American stores" and even had KFC, McDonalds and Starbucks all over the place. After a morning/afternoon of shopping and exploring we went and got lunch at a Greek cafe where I had this amazing pita bread and chicken souvlaki. Honestly one of my favorite meals I've had abroad. It tasted so amazing! After lunch, we hiked back up to the Acropolis so Lea and Olivia could use their ID's to get in. We spent quite a bit of time there, taking a lot more pictures and taking in the sites that had been here since before Christ. It was pretty surreal to be standing next to these buildings that had survived wars, fires and years of wear and tear. Post Acropolis round 2, we headed back to the hostel to get ready for dinner to celebrate Bella's birthday. We ended up going to a really cool restaurant called Navanti and they had super good food. I don't think I ate a single bad meal my entire weekend in Greece. I got beef shank with garlic mashed potatoes and pita bread (I was eating all the meat I could get since it's not as big over here as pasta and pizza). We spent quite a bit of time at dinner just talking and enjoying the evening and then spent the rest of the night exploring the area around the restaurant before heading back into the hostel for the night. Sunday was our last day in Greece before we flew out at 8 that night. We woke up early again and headed out to see all the other landmarks we didn't make it to and had scoped out from our view at the top of the Acropolis. We went to the Acropolis museum which was really cool because it explained the history of the city of Athens and explained the purpose of all the buildings in the Acropolis as well has had a bunch of artifacts that had been found over the years. After the museum, we hiked over to find the Temple of Zeus, or at least what's remaining of it. On our hike over, we walked past a bunch of shops, so we stopped and did some shopping as well as got some sandwiches for lunch. While walking to the Temple of Zeus, we came across a little pedicure shop called Doctor Fish and realized that it was one of those places where you put your feet in a bowl and the fish eat the dead skin off of your feet. It was something that had been on all of our bucket lists to do at some point and it was 10 euro for 10 minutes of fish time so we stopped and decided to do it. It was one of the weirdest feelings I've ever experienced and it took a little bit to get used to it but in the end my feet were super smooth and it was such a cool thing to try out, especially in Greece. After our pit stop at Doctor Fish, we finished our walk to the Temple of Zeus. It was pretty insane to stand next to the i think 6 remaining pillars and try and picture them as a full temple that they used to be. We took some pictures there and then continued our tour to the Panathenaic Stadium, also known as the stadium of the modern Olympics. It was the stadium that hosted the 1896 Olympic games and is the only stadium in the world that is made entirely out of marble. Though we didn't make it to the 2004 Olympic grounds because they were farther outside the city, this was just as cool if not cooler to see. After our stop at the stadium, we still had a little bit of time to kill before we had to head to the airport, so we walked around and stumbled upon the Athens war museum, a museum that chronicled every single war that Greece has ever been involved in. Though it wasn't something we had originally planned on seeing, it was a super cool thing to walk through and see all of the history there. After the war museum, it was time to head to the airport for our flight. We got back to Rome around 9pm and got back to our apartment around 10. I spent the remainder of the night doing some studying and homework before heading to bed. All in all, it was a pretty successful weekend and I'm really glad that I had the opportunity to see Athens and the country of Greece. I'm super excited to head to London next weekend!