Baklava, Baklava, and more Baklava!

Thursday brought a flight from Charlotte to Philly to Frankfurt, Germany and finally to Athens, Greece. Greece was absolutely beautiful and the temperature was perfect! When I came out of the airport, Siusan was there waiting and then we were off to Hostel Aphrodite. We took a short nap and then wandered around Syntagma Square for, oh 5 hours, waiting to meet up with Hannah and Kathleen. We ate near the ancient Agora. This was when I was first introduced to the amazing grilled feta. Then we walked around the ritzy streets with all the fancy shops, where we found a flower stand. The man that ran it did not speak English, so he had an officer explain to us in English all of the beautiful flowers that I had not seen before. The freesia (sp?) were absolutely magnificent. And well the officer was very nice looking himself. Later we ate some baklava, twice, because lets face it, its amazing. We also ran into some elderly ladies from Tennessee, whom ended up being on our cruise ship as well. All in all the first night was a fun experience. Also, on the street that night the performers were out, and one girl was dancing with fire on rope like things, it was really cool. Well, another performer with pink cabbage patch like hair came over and was yelling at her in Greek, obviously because her music was too loud. Then she slightly touched his arm with her ashy hands and that was it, he was livid. He started to almost threaten her with his body movements as to say try and touch me again. It was not until later that I realized that the yelling had become English. So, it was a funny mix of things. The cops straightened it out, but not like Americans would. Just calmly made siren beeps until the man came to the car, yelled at and touched the cop and the cop simply told him to go somewhere else. Later that night we saw him still wiping the barely there ash off his sleeve.

The next day we went to the Acropolis. It was a really warm day, shorts weather, so it was great. I also saw the same cat I saw there 6 months previous. When we were leaving these young boys were asking me in broken English to take a picture, so I took their photo for them with their camera and then they were like no with us. It was so funny we took a photo with them and took one too to remember. They were 18 from Sicily on a school trip, so we think they just wanted to have a funny story about Americans. We ate some delicious gyros of course, but we also managed to find the worst place to eat in Athens, luckily it was cheap. They did not even have real chicken it was freezer burned patty stuff, eck. We did do a lot of shopping at only one shop because that old man gave us the best prices. I bought two vases, one with Aphrodite because of the magnificent hostel and one of Athena because of Athens. I also bought a charm. And when we were leaving he gave us all free evil eye charms.

The next day we went to Piraeus, where Siusan was almost pickpocketed. These gypsy women opened her purse and took her wallet, but luckilz Siusan noticed and smacked it out of her hand and was able to retrieve it. We just stayed in Piraeus for the day and walked to the beach, a very sharp rocked beach. We played on the seesaw though, it was really nice. We also were able to meet up with 3 of the other girls going on the cruise, Julie, Bethany, and Leslie for a little while.

The next morning was early, especially for Kathleen and I, we went on a mission to find some baklava for the receptionist, Andrea, who was especially helpful to us. We went in around 10 different bakeries before finally finding some, which is very ironic. Then we ran back brought our stuff downstairs, while we waited on the other girls I ran to Hondos Center to buy some hair dye. Then we walked with all of our bags for around 30 minutes to get to the cruise ship. We finally boarded and met up with everyone and then ate lunch after the life boat drill.