His View 

Greece - Feliks' perspective

 

Thessaloniki

First city in Greece and I was pumped! I could not wait to get my mouth on a steaming hot gyro with a mountain of tiziki sauce! We arrived pretty late at night and had a decent walk to the place we were staying, so I would have to wait for the delicious Greek meal. 

We had plenty to do in the city and we got started early. We checked out a couple of churches, pretty small, very unique though - Hagios Demetrios and Church of St. Nicholas Orphans. They weren’t the type of place that you put on a postcard, but the type you read about in history books. Both churches were somewhat on the way to our destination at the top of the hill, the Acropolis Walls. It was pretty tall, brick, parts looked like they had a couple of battles with the weather. The wall stretched beyond what we were willing to walk but there were plenty of pass throughs for people and one that we saw for cars. I’m sure there were many more. As we got to the wall and looked back at the hill that we climbed, we got an awesome view of the city, all the way to the sea. Unfortunately for us it was somewhat foggy but we still got some good glimpses.

 

After the much shorter walk down, we checked out the Rotunda and the very closeby Arch of Galerius. The Rotunda was a weird building compared to what we had seen in the past. It was a round building, the name gives that away, but it was short, maybe 4 stories tall. Inside it felt the same way but for some reason it seemed wider and shorter. The Rotunda was my favorite so far because right outside the entrance was a nice little restaurant that had gyros for one euro! This would be the first of many gyros we would enjoy in Greece. I love tiziki sauce! 

 

The Arch of Galerius was not that interesting at first. It was when we walked down a couple blocks toward the ocean where we saw Galerius’s Palace that it really got my attention. The palace actually spanned this entire area, what looked like three blocks by six blocks, maybe even bigger. They had some ruins that were uncovered with theoretical drawings of what the palace looked like. Massive complex.  

We only had one more main stop, the White Tower: a tower right on the water that was now a museum. We go the audio guide inside and it definitely helped us not skip more than we did because there was a lot to read. The stairs to go up felt like they went on forever but the view from the top was worth it. We learned a lot about Thessaloniki and why it was such an important city for a lot of military campaigns. 

 

Overall, the city was pretty cool. It was one of those medium-size cities with the small town feel. I really liked that they had ruins from forever ago just sitting in the middle of the streets. Also, when we were walking from the train station, they were in the process of an archeological dig under the main road. We walked by and could see straight down into what they were doing while thousands of cars passed over their heads. I love gyros! I think this would be a good low key place to hang out and enjoy the city life of Greece. WiFi was easy to find and public bathrooms were around. 

 

 

Crete 

We had three solid days and not a lot planned, It was going to be a perfect break. We took the overnight ferry from Athens which took about 9 hours. The port apparently runs a little late because both times it was about an hour late arriving. Departure was scheduled for nine at night and we were some of the first on board at 7:00. Lucky we were because some people had to sleep on solid chairs in the restaurant while we were able to hold down a nice comfortable couch. 

 

Crete is a huge island. There was not a lot of places for us to walk to because everything was so spread out. We got a taxi to our AirBnB, which we conveniently picked to be close to the beach. Caywood found an awesome little spot; it was two studio apartments in an L shape setup on an olive orchard. Our room was pretty big with a king size bed, full kitchen, full bathroom, and a grill outside. Around the area were a couple houses that didn't make a single noise, minus the occasional dog bark. 

 

Most of the time we just lounged around and relaxed. We did walk to the beach one day and that was a fun experience. The walk took about 30 minutes and was pretty easy, It was what we encountered that was fun. There were quite a few houses along the way that had dogs, anywhere from 1 to 8 that I remember. As soon as the dogs heard the footsteps, it was "bark bark bark" until you were well out of sight. Most of the dogs were behind fences while some where chained up. We really had a nice surprise when a massive German Shepard jumped out of nowhere and voiced his opinion about 5 feet from Caywood's ear. We both ended up on the other side of the road.

 

The beach was a little different from what I was expecting, mostly because I did not read about the beaches on Crete. This particular beach was very rocky. The sandy stuff was almost exclusively by the water and even that had a couple of lines of rocks from the waves. It was almost entirely empty minus a few older locals weathering themselves in the freezing water. Well, it wasn't that cold just not pleasant. We both got a little sun and went back to doing nothing. It was awesome. 

 

Overall, I have nothing really to say about Crete. It was awesome not doing anything and relaxing for a few days. I would recommend renting a car if you go. The public transportation does nothing for tourists. From the area that we were in, we saw cliffs, rolling hills, valleys, and islands in the Mediterranean. I think that we would have explored a lot more had we had a mode of transportation. 

 

 

Athens

When I think about this city, I think about the movie 300. Not the characters but the city. The stone walls, columns, triangular roofs, huge courtyards, outdoor markets...things like that. Athens was just a little bit different. First thing that I will say is that either Athens residents all like the same style of housing or one architect built 70% of the apartment buildings from the same set of blueprints. There are so many apartment buildings that look identical, the concrete slab style with massive balconies sticking right out the side. Apart from anomaly the rest of Athens was breathtaking. You had mountains almost entirely surrounding the city, and in the center was Acropolis. Sitting high on a small mount of its own, you can almost see it from anywhere in Athens. Right next to it is Mt. Lycabettus, which is actually higher but has more greenery to hide the buildings. All around these two massive peaks is flat area that stretches to the mountains. I’ve never seen anything like it. 

 

Since Athens was so big and there was so much to do, we ended up splitting it into two visits. The first visit was before we went to Crete. Our train arrived early in the morning and the ferry did not leave until after dinner so we did most of the walking then. On our way back from Crete we arrived early but booked a hostel for the night so we had two more days. 

 

The first day we took our time and explored Philopappou Hill near Acropolis. There were remnants of a city all over the place. The foundations were very visible and some of the streets and stairs. We found some really awesome views of the city from here, especially by the Monument Philopappos. Perfect for panoramic pictures, and just to simply see the size of the city. There are also some random things that we found, like the seven chairs. Chairs that were carved into the stone all right next to each other. You also have to see the sewer that runs through the center which is impressive on the fact that they had one. Some countries today don't even have a waste management system. 

 

Walking through the park was somewhat exhausting so we took it easy from there. We strolled through the Plaka area. It starts by the exit for Acropolis and leads you down a walking street full of shops and then restaurants just before you reach the Roman Agora and the massive flea market. From a tourist point of view, it was very convenient. This pretty much rounded out our day as we had pretty much walked around most of the tourist attractions without actually going in. 

 

Our second and third day in Athens, after Crete, we were on a mission to experience all the attractions. On our first day, we found out that there is a twelve euro pass that gets you into all the ruins and is valid for four days. We bought ours at the Acropolis ticket gate. Oddly enough our fist stop was not on the list of included attractions, the Museum of Acropolis. It was a really interesting building, especially compared to the apartments around it. From a distance, it was a two story rectangular structure but someone rotated the second floor about fifteen degrees to offset the edges. When you approach the entrance, you are literally walking over a dig site that is being prepared for visitors. You can see through the glass floor the outlines of houses, walls, wells, and various other things. Inside the museum is the stuff you would expect: lots and lots and lots of old Greek stuff. Statues, sections of buildings, jewels, carvings, and other neat museum stuff. They did have a nice short film on the top floor that was decently entertaining. After the Museum we were ready for Acropolis. 

 

The walk to the top didn't seem as bad as I had expected when looking from a distance. It was a pretty cool climb to begin with, through the main entrance and up the stairs. I don't know a whole lot about construction, but I do know that the people that built this were limited on technology. How they managed to first get all the stones so straight and perfectly-aligned, and second move those stones into position on top of this hill, is mind boggling and impressive. I’ve seen it on TV and read about it but until you see it for yourself you just really can't appreciate the work that had to have gone into this city. 

We walked around and checked out the rest of the ruins, which were in the process of being reconstructed. It was pretty cool how they were doing it, basically filling in the holes with concrete and leaving as much original stone as possible. All around Acropolis are a handful of other ruins. Theatre of Dionysus, Odeon of Herodes Atticus, Roman Agora, and Ancient Agora. I’m sure there’s more but those are the ones we had on our list. The first couple ruins we looked at, I was floored, the size and precision that was needed to build these things was so impressive. After about the fourth site, I was getting over it. Ruins are cool, I just think we saw way too many in the two days. 

 

Overall, I really liked Athens. The city is huge but did not always feel like it was moving at the speed of light. I really liked where the city was located and the surrounding landscape. From Monument Philopappos you could see everything and I bet it's a highly visited spot by locals. The food is obviously awesome! I love tiziki sauce. They had a pretty good public transportation system too. Most of the tourist attractions had free bathrooms otherwise they were far and few in between. WiFi was also spotty, some of the indoor attractions had it but most were protected. I would love to come back and explore more of Athens, especially the nature side.