Athens

Athens is a large city, and like every other large city, it is full of buildings, vehicles and people everywhere. 

But here, there are also ruins everywhere.

And prominently on display in the middle of the city is the Acropolis. It is the second highest mountain in the area, and the one on which the Parthenon sits and welcomes everyone to the ancient city.

Athens is Europe's oldest capital city, with a history that dates back over 3,400 years. It's one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.

Athens is recognized as the birthplace of democracy, and was established around 500 BCE. The word "democracy" itself comes from the Greek words "demos" (people) and "kratos" (power).

The city takes its name from Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom and warfare. According to mythology, Athena won a contest against Poseidon to become the patron deity of the city.

Athens is known as the "City of Philosophy," as it was the center of learning and philosophy in ancient times. Great philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle lived and taught there.

Athens hosted the first modern era Olympic Games in 1896. It is home to more theatrical stages than any other city in the world, including Broadway and London’s West End combined.

We arrived a little ahead of check-in time at our AirBnB, so we sat at a nearby cafe until our apartment was available. We had some morning beverages and got our first taste of the culture. 

The waitress spoke English quite well and gave us all kinds of useful information, including how to say a few basic phrases in Greek. After her little tutorial, it was, well, ‘all Greek to me’. I truly understand that phrase now. Just two minutes after learning them I couldn’t remember even the simplest word. I decided I would just smile a lot and nod. 

During one of our tours, the guide mentioned that phrase. But it obviously doesn’t work the same for the Greek people since they understand their own language. They have modified the phrase to be “Its all Chinese to me”.

Looking over the menu we again needed Joe to explain many of the items. We bought various drinks and snacks. Bryan decided to be a little daring and ordered a smoothie with exotic fruits. We were thinking passion fruit, dragon fruit or maybe guava. Apparently different parts of the world define ‘exotic’ differently. The exotic fruits turned out to be blueberries, raspberries and strawberries.

While we were sampling our snacks, Levi arrived and became the seventh member of our group, albeit temporarily. 

Levi is the eldest son of some close family friends of mine. He just happened to be traveling in Europe by himself, and today just happened to be his 35th birthday. 

When I found out it was his birthday, we invited him to join us. He had arrived a few days before we did, and planned to stay with us the remainder of his time in Athens. We were to go our separate ways on Tuesday when we fly out to Paris and he on to his next destination. 

Levi was a pleasure to have with us. He was an expert with his phone, as most young people are, and helped a lot with finding locations, restaurants and stores, among other things. 

After the apartment became available we dropped off our luggage and started a little walking tour of the area. Joe stayed behind because his coughing had gotten worse and he was loosing his breath easily. Walking was proving to be too much for him at this time. 

We found a really enjoyable local restaurant that served all the traditional foods we were anxious to try. The prices were a lot better than we expected, so that was a nice change.

We returned to the apartment and chose our bedrooms. The place was quite spacious. Just outside the back door was a large patio and a spiral staircase that went up to the roof, which was also available for us to use. 

The roof area was quite large, had a picnic table and chairs, another bathroom and another spiral staircase to yet another even higher deck with additional seating. We had the most incredible views of the city and a breathtaking view of the Acropolis. It really was stunning to witness from this vantage point. We were so close we could see the mobs of people walking up the long path to the top of the mountain. 

Joe was feeling worse to the point he had to find a pharmacy for something to help him feel better. The only problem was that it was Sunday, and many stores were closed. To make things worse, our next and final day here was a Greek holiday and everything was expected to be closed again. 

We had to do some research and after several closed stores, we finally found an open pharmacy in the middle of a popular tourist area. I went with Joe and we found it. The pharmacist told him to take his meds with food. It was amazing how Joe had such a hard time finding a pharmacy but had built in radar for a bakery or pastry shop.

I decided I better sample some deserts too just to be sure they were ok for Joe to eat.

We met up with the others at a restaurant that Levi had discovered and we had an amazing meal. Most of the dishes were designed to be shared, and we got more than we expected. We were all stuffed but still we shared a couple of deserts for Levi’s birthday, and the waiter brought us all some kind of complimentary drink. 

It was a nice evening, but we were soon ready to go to bed. Upon arriving back to the apartment, we first had to climb the 53 steps to the roof top and marvel once again  at the view of the Acropolis - this time all lit up.

We stared at the sight under a starry sky, and for a little while we completely forgot all about the buffet.