July 26
Our flight from Barcelona arrives to Athens at 3:30 a.m soooo we sleep a few hours at the greek airport because we can't entry to the hostel till 7:00 (comfortable airport, by the way!). Later we take a bus to Sintagma Square, the heart of Athens, and metro to Omonia. The Hostel Zeus is a few minutes from there, in a small, scary, dirty street. Our first impression is running out of that place inmediatly but that it's one of the cheaper hostels in the city so... there's no choice! we'll survive two nights here!
After leaving our baggage in the room we go to a café in Kotzia Square, right behing the hostel, and I have my first frappé in Greece. Totally delicious!!! Ooooh Good! iced coffee with creamy milk, veeery sweet - orgasmic to me ;)
Later we go for a walk to Monastiraki Sq, Ermou Street... It surprises me that this city is even more chaotic than Barcelona (where I'm from). I can't believe that this could exist! This zone is full of life, with lots of shops (gifts, clothes, shoes,etc), people (locals and tourists), restaurants...
It's lunch time and we eat a good and cheap tyropita as we walk through the strait streets.
Then in the afternoon we visit the old district, Plaka, the best part of Athens in my humble opinion! clean, well kept, with its charming small and tortuous cobbled streets (full of souvenir shops but logical, there's thousand of tourists everywhere you look! in fact I'm a damned tourist too!). As a good typical tourist, I take a small train (€5) that takes you for an hour through the surroundings of Acropolis. Sorry but the weather is so hot that we can't walk anymore!
At night we stay at Plaka and we go to a cool bar called IceDog. It has a cute terrace in the street with sofas and it isn't expensive. You can have informal dinners as hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries, etc and sweet waffles, ice cream, crepes, and then beer, mixed drinks and cocktails too.
At 1:00 a.m aprox we go back to the hostel and our room mates (two Californian girls) are sleeping. It's so difficult to undress, put pyjamas, brush teeth and climb to a bunk bed in the dark!
July 27
Get up early, shower and be prepared to a hard tourism day maaan! We spend almost the whole day visiting the imperative Acropolis and the Agora. Ticket for both places costs €12 but fortunately I've got my student card so it's for free (being an student rocks yeah ;) Acropolis is so impressive I can't describe it; you have to think that's the civilization's crib, all that art, the ruines of those awesome buildings... it makes you feel like you were in the Socrates or Platon era. Yes, I know it sounds like a topical but it's absolutely true! I even liked classical mythology before I visited Greece and now I can't stop reading books about it! Seriously, you have to be there to understand it.
At 4:30 p.m we go to Plaka and have a typical greek lunch: greek salad (tomatoes, cucumber, black olives and feta cheese) and a bit of zatziki (a thick sauce made of yoghurt, cucumber and garlic) with delicious bread slices.
With our stomachs full we go to Omonia to visit the National Library and the University, we are at the culture and democracy's homeland so let's pretend we are intellectuals for a while haha.
Later, plenty of wisdom, we walk through Elefterios Venizelou Street, a trading and modern street which has few expensive shops and shopping malls, and end up in Sintagma Square -as I said before- the heart of Athens, big and clean, where we can find the Parliament.
At night we decide going to Psiri, a part of the city with lots and lots of pubs, some of them big and fahion, and other smaller, informal and more accessible. (and 10 prostitutes per square meter too)
