national gardens, a park, and the old Olympic stadium. Now I know the Olympic stadium is ridiculously close but then it was so cool to leave our apartment, wander a few blocks, and stumble across panathinaikos- the stadium for the first modern Olympic games hosted in Athens. According to Wikipedia it was built around 566 BC, rebuilt in 329 with marble, renovated in 1869 for the 1870 and 1875 Olympic games. Its capacity was 50,000 in 140 and 80,000 in 1896. It’s really cool- an all white marble stadium two blocks away. (*it’s now where I take the trolley to work everyday). Plaka was nice. We walked around a bit. I bought a royal blue hat with white stripes floppy (kind of like the greek flag)- so useful! We found the children’s museum in plaka which was fun- did cute kiddy activities. Marj made a ribbon flower and put it on a cork. We also stumbled on a baptism with maracas, an accordion, balloons, etc. It was really nice! The church was cute- it was just a small one but across it was a small ancient arch- nothing big, not even labeled. It’s funny that there are ruins everyone and no one really cares- it’s totally normal, nbd. We had a really long lunch (2.5 hours). It was unexpected but earlier we had passed this restaurant. The heckler wasn’t heckling us like other places. I think here he was actually the owner and stopped to talk to us- he knew several language including mandarin.
He was genuinely curious and really cool. We had a fixed menu (wine, salad, kalamari, and desert for me for 11 euros). An American lady (40+) sat behind us and we talked to her. She was in marketing for years, went to culinary school in france when she was 40, and now is a chef on yachts. She was really interesting to talk to- she recommended some places for us to go to get fresh groceries. It’s cool all three of us (angela, marj, and i) really enjoy cooking.After lunch we kept wandering- we saw Hadrian’s library and arch and some other ruins (we’re not sure what they are…haha). It’s cool everywhere down in plaka/syntagma you can see the acropolis- which is incredible (*for the first weeks…now I’m used to it haha). In plaka they had some very nice longchamp knock offs- I was and am extremely tempted. They also had three giant shops in a row of just beads…which was really weird.
One of the shops had a huge automated dinosaur that moved/made noise- it was hilarious. We also heard Lady Gaga three times that day- they’re really into her here (I probably hear her playing at least once a day...even at work...)We went to the metro to check it out. Tried to get the student pass but you need an international student id. Dionysus didn’t know what to do. It’s been a pain- I’ve had to get the pass twice now bc it’s only for a month and usually I have to try 3 stations before one person doesn’t know/doesn’t care about the rules and gives me the pass. The second time I went to get it renewed the guy wouldn’t do it and I was like screw it I’m not buying a ticket for the metro but then there were police and I freaked out and flashed my old pass- fortunately they didn’t check the date. Other checks they have made sure the pass wasn’t expired. We took the metro back- I was impressed that we figured it out/how easy it was. We ran into Liz/Emma (two of the other girls) on our way back and stopped by their apartment. They had toilet paper (we'd been using napkins) and Angela knew how to fix the wireless so we traded (marj and i got the best deal, we just got to chill in their apartment and got toilet paper. It sucks- our apartments are in a no flush zone meaning we can't flush toilet paper down the toilet...eww...Didn’t if we should drink tap water so we’ve been boiling/refrigerating it which is a pain (turns out we can thank god).
Dinner was nice- we went to a tavern and after went to a bar with a gorgeous view of the Acropolis. For dinner we had greek salad, fries, and kebabs. There are thirteen of us on the trip- we finally got to meet everyone which was nice. Dionysus is a character. He advised us how to go to clubs and pick people up (apparently sleeping with married people is common). He also told us not to go onto any yachts because we might end up in turkey or someplace…also to protect against aids and not get arrested with marijuana. He didn’t have any advise on subjects like how to get a student metro pass or get the wifi to work though….haha.
Also I asked him many times if we had work the next day- he said we didn’t (never was clear on the reason though). So we all went out. I had DELICIOUS ferrero rocher gelato. Some people bought cigars and then we sat in another bar/taverna. We got back at 3:30. I had emailed the person at Accenture asking what time to come in and she hadn’t responded by the time we went out to dinner. She responded while we were out, however, saying we had to go to work at 9 am. The Accenture building is an hour and forty five minutes away. I was so tired/frustrated.
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