93 Days: Pre-Weddingmoon - Greece Part 1

I feel like I was at the airport a lot last year.  It was mostly wedding planning trips back to Northern Ireland which were lovely since we got to catch up with friends and family.  But it had been a really long time since we had a holiday somewhere, to just relax and explore.

In December, Jim surprised me with a trip to Greece as my Christmas present.

We had never been in mainland Greece before so it was going to be an adventure for both of us. Also, two friends, Giannis and Stefania who we'd met in Leicester had returned to Greece after Stefania had finished university and we'd spent the last year and a half telling them how much we wanted to visit. Greece was the perfect destination.

Greece is beautiful!  As it was January the weather wasn’t exactly cocktails and swimsuits on the beach (hottest we had was 16 degrees, down as far as a brisk 5 degrees at night) but it definitely felt less wintery and was much brighter than the weather we'd left back in England.

Athens was wonderful.  Our friend’s sister and her partner were kind enough to let us stay with them and we quickly learned how to negotiate the 3 line underground system in and out of the city centre.  We spent a lot of our time in an area called Exharia where there were lots of great places to eat (all happy to cater for vegans) and some great bars. It was also full of book shops! We met some lovely new people who were all really interested in chatting with us and recommended places to visit and different local delicacies to try.

We visited the brand new Acropolis Museum on our first full day in Athens (and got told off for taking pictures in a no picture area - the illicit snaps are below...). 

There is a walk way right round the Acropolis (but outside the actual pay-in bit).  After our visit to the museum and some Souvalki (tasty and veggie, of course) we walked the whole way round and up some tiny steep pedestrian streets that wound their way up between little houses.  We kept thinking we’d reached a dead end, and we’d almost get ready to turn round and climb down, only to find another, almost hidden, tiny path.  When we got to the top we climbed up a big piece of rock and admired the view as the sun set.

After being so close to the Acropolis but not inside I was pretty excited to get there the next day.  I thought it was pretty reasonably priced at 12 Euros per person, and Jim got in free as a PHD student.  It was spectacular!! Annoyingly my phone died so I couldn’t take any pictures so all Acropolis pictures are by my lovely friend Stefania and she takes much better pictures than I ever could!! (She did get a bit frustrated by the construction work that was going on, and all the photos feature just a hint of scaffolding - ancient scaffolding of course.)

Odeon of Herodes Atticus

Erechtheion

Parthenon

To be continued....

Amy

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