Thursday (Nov 27th) was our first full day in Athens, so it
was full of discovering the city. We had an alarm ringing quite early to take
the most out of the day. The day started with a breakfast at the hotel as it
was included in the price. The breakfast included bread, ham, cheese, eggs,
coffee, tea, juice and cereals. It wasn't anything major, but good enough to
fill the stomach. However, for someone, who prefers big breakfast in fancy
places, this wouldn't have been enough.
Our plan (well, it was more of my plan) for the day was to
take a metro and go visit Acropolis. We walked to Omonia Square, because it's
the closest metro station from our hotel. When arriving there we noticed the
metro wasn't working, maybe because of a strike or something? We could have
taken a trolley bus, but we had no idea, which number to take. That's why we
ended up walking again.
The plan changed while walking towards Acropolis. Instead of
going there, we walked through a nice park and went to visit the Panathenaic
Stadium – a stadium of the first modern Olympic Games. Even though it's just a
stadium (+ a small museum about the Olympics), I still think it was worth
seeing. It's so different compared to the Olympics stadiums they built
nowadays, tho I haven't been to any other than the one in Munich (Germany) for
live.
Our next step was the Jewish cemetery of Athens. Before the
trip I read from touristic webpages, this cemetery being worth visiting because
it's the oldest cemetery in Athens. It sure was different compared to the
Finnish cemeteries, but also similar to the one I visited in Thessaloniki
earlier. What I remember best about it is its size as the cemetery was huge! I
don't know why I have been into visiting cemeteries in different places lately;
maybe it has something to do with my previous summer job on a grave yard.
Our next goal was to find a place to eat at. It's difficult
as both, my mom and I, don't like restaurants, where someone is standing on the
street and trying to get people inside to their restaurant. We tried to look
for a restaurant, where we could look at the menu without someone interrupting
us all the time. We did find a lovely restaurant tho it was a bit cold even
inside. The food was delicious, and presented in a nice way.
The rest of the evening we spent wondering around the
streets near to the Ermou street. We visited some clothing stores, but we didn't
find anything interesting enough to buy. We didn't want to buy any too basic
clothes because those could be bought from Finland, so it made the search more
difficult. Later we did find ourselves from a café again, which had nice
Christmas decorations hanging from the sealing.
Once again we were very tired of walking around the city
that it was nice to return to the hotel, watch some TV and go to sleep. That
concludes the second day of our amazing trip.