This leg of the trip was a bit of a disappointment. We had planned on seeing the famous white and blue buildings that grace the postcards all over Greece, and yet those buildings are only to be found on one of the islands that is about 4 hours ferry ride from Athens. We didn’t make it out to any of the islands- Santorini is the most famous one and it was 75 euro round trip to go there; plus we couldn’t do it in a day and would have had to pay for a hotel for the night. We stayed in Athens, and although we all knew that the Greek economy recently went downhill (to put it politely), we were surprised by the overall poverty of the city. It wasn’t new poverty caused by the state of the economy, but the city is just generally poor. The areas around the main tourist attractions like Acropolis are quite nice, but very small. I didn’t feel like there was an entire street in Athens that was nice from beginning to end.
There is also a very odd ratio of men to women, and I’m guessing it’s about 4:1. This being said, we saw hardly any women the whole time that we were there, and the men are all middle aged, which was weird too. They have no problem being quite vulgar and saying whatever they want to you while you’re passing on the street whether it is daytime or nighttime. Our hotel actually ended up being in a pretty shady area (prostitutes on the street corner, you know), and we didn’t feel safe going out at night at all, so we were always back to the hotel by dark.
On the other hand, the food was really great and extremely cheap. We had gyros for lunch and dinner most days and you could get a gyro and a Coke for 3 euro! Such a steal. The baklava was to die for until we made the mistake of sitting down in the café to order some. The price quadruple and they feel no need to warn you of this, so between the four of us we accidentally spent 43 euro on cake in one sitting. Surprise.
The ruins were nice, but I had imagined them to be bigger. Somehow they look really huge in all the pictures, but in reality it’s a hill above the city with three stone buildings on top (and a million people taking pictures). We did go to the beach one day and it was very nice, we were just there too early. The official tourism season was starting the following week so a lot of the beaches were not open and there was hardly anyone on them. It was still very nice and you know I love a good beach!
I don’t regret going to Athens at all, but my word of advice would be that if you go to Greece, you should just go to the islands. Athens is nice, and perhaps worth a day trip, but not worth staying in and certainly not for four days.
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