Afternoon atop the Acropolis

We dedicated our second day in Athens to the Acropolis, and rightfully so.  I could have spent all day exploring the area.  It was so amazing!  I just wish everything wasn’t being restored and covered in scaffolding, but what can you do.

After visiting the actual Acropolis, we went to see the collection at the Acropolis Museum. Before visiting the museum, we grabbed lunch at the cafe on the roof. I had this really amazing chic pea salad with sun dried tomatoes.  and of course, I had a mid-afternoon cappuccino to push through the rest of the day.

I love, love, loved this museum.  It was designed by Bernard Tschumi and I was just so impressed with how closely the building and the collection were tied together.  The entire top floor houses the Parthenon frieze, and is laid out exactly as it would have been if it were still atop the Acropolis.

After the museum we returned to the area of our hotel to do some shopping before we headed to the airport to fly to Santorini.

Overall I was really impressed with Athens.  I had low expectations of the city from friends who had visited in the past, but I have nothing bad to say about the city.  We had a lovely time there- I only wish we had a few more days.

καλημέρα Αθήνα – Good morning Athens

We arrived in Athens around midday today. We checked in to our lovely hotel, Electra Palace, located at the base of the Acropolis.

We had a light lunch and wine in the hotel lobby before heading to the Archeological Museum, the only tourist spot open on ‘Clean Monday’- which is apparently the kickoff to the Greek Easter season.
The National Archeological Museum was amazing, but they closed early for the holiday and we did not have enough time to finish seeing the collection.
Being the small world that it is, we managed to run into my classmates Kat, Emily, Lisa, Ally, Colleen and Sarah in the museum.
We found a cute place in Plaka, our neighborhood, for dinner. We just ordered a few appetizers and a bottle of wine, that way we got to try a little bit of everything. We had dolmas, fried feta, and spetsofai which was a spicy sags age mixed with peppers and tomato sauce. It was all delicious!

We also had a traditional Greek desert the waiter recommended, which was like cold cream of wheat with cinnamon and nutmeg on top. No one else liked it, but I grew up eating cream of wheat with cinnamon for breakfast so I loved it! After dinner we did a little souviner shopping and walked around the very nice area of Plaka. Later we went to a cafe to get some baklava and ouzo.