Day 8: Athens
By JoeBruin88. Filed in Travels |Tags: family, Food, Greece, shopping, Travels
Return of the Tourists: We took the metro back to Monastiraiki to do some more shopping. But since Aunt Voula had to get to work early, we arrived in downtown before any shops were open. The restaurants were preparing their meats for the days’ meals. We saw some fresh chicken, pork, and beef cooking for the souvlakis and gyros.
So we decided to visit the Theater of Dionyssus, which was at the foothill of the Acropolis (thank God). We had some difficulty trying to find it, but we finally did. When we got there we saw a homeless bum sleeping near the entrance to the theater.
Later we told Aunt Voula about the bum, but she seemed offended and insisted that it was not a bum, but rather some person sleeping on top of their backpack since many people like to backpack through Europe. Well, I guess each person can believe what they want, but I don’t think backpackers talk to themselves and look weird, nasty, and scummy.
Theater: The theater was somewhat interesting. I always wonder what these ruins must have looked like in their glory days thousands of years ago. One of the marble chairs was sticking out, so I sat on it, knowing that the curator watching us would tell me not to. But it was fun anyways. The most interesting thing we saw in the theater was the ruins of The Chapel for St. Parreskevi, the saint after whom Josephine’s sister Parris is named.
Spontaneous: After looking at the Theater of Dionyssus, we went back into downtown because we wanted to get the metro back to Syntagma so we could see the Byzantine Museum. But it started raining, strange weather for early summer here in Athens. We put our cameras away and waited for the rain to stop while standing next to a travel agency. Last night we had been talking about what to do for Thursday and Friday. I wanted to visit Corinth to see the city where the Apostle Paul spent much time and wrote two of the major letters of the bible. But transportation would be difficult since it’s pretty scary to drive in the big city where the traffic rules are much more lax than in the United States. People drive like maniacs. Aunt Voula had to work and couldn’t take more vacation time so she could not drive us so we were considering a bus tour.
While we were standing next to the travel agency looking at the prices for traveling to other Greek islands, a man befriended us and asked us if we were looking for a travel agency. So he told us about his brother’s travel agency. The man’s name was Christo (surprise, surprise). We ended up booking a 3rd class ticket on a ferry to the island of Mykonos for two days. Mykonos is a very popular island resort. Very cool!
Christo was very friendly. He brought us coffee while we were waiting to be helped in the travel agency and gave me some worry beads, a common toy similar to a squeeze ball that people squeeze to relieve stress in America. The tickets to Mykonos cost 240€ which is a little more than $320. It included a night’s stay and two days on the island in a nice hotel.
After the travel agency, Christo took us to his cousin’s custom jewelry shop, where we bought our final gift. Then Christo paid for a cab for all of us and took us to the best place in Athens for the Greek dessert, loukoumades, which Josephine had been craving. She hadn ‘t had it in many years since her father and yaya made them by hand.
Baby Caterina: We returned earlier today around 3:00 PM so that we could freshen up with a shower before going to visit Cousin Angela, her husband Socrates, and their two-week old baby Caterina. Angela is Aunt Voula’s and Uncle Chris’ daughter. Josephine had not seen Angela since she was six years old living in the United States and now she is a new mommy.
