Exploring Athens
The alarm was set for 8:30am on Friday morning. We planned to go on a 9:45am walking tour. But I definitely shut that 8:30am alarm off and neither one of us woke again until 10:30am.
We were groggy but pushed ourselves to get up and ready. It was a little harder without a specific plan. What else did we want to see? We hadn’t researched well for this trip really and we were both having trouble shaking off the tiredness. Jet lag? I guess so.
We walked up to the Central Market which was not really what I expected. When I hear “meats” I imagine dried sausages and such. This was more like a gigantic butcher shop with 50 stalls of hanging skinned pigs and goats and rabbits. Yuck. Everyone was yelling and it had an odd smell and there was the sound of knives chopping meat and butchers with their bloody aprons offering you their best cuts and not my style. I prefer my meat cooked on the plate.
After the meat market we sat on a bench for a bit just to rest. Couldn’t shake the grogginess. Then we decided to go to the Panathenic Stadium since it looked pretty neat. However, it was quite a walk away and we were tired so we decided on a cab.
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But the stadium was interesting and only $5 for an audio guide tour that lasted about an hour. It was super sunny and hot out though especially as we were now touring during the hottest part of the day (around 2pm)
The best part of the stadium is my new favorite picture of all time:
While we were at the top row of the stadium, we looked down and saw a street market so we decided to head over there once we finished. It was getting close to 3pm and about 4 hours since my last feeding so I was very very hungry. It took us awhile to find this market we spotted, we climbed up a ton of stairs and in the end, it was a fruit and veggie market...no lunch foods!
Remember how I said traveling is tough when you wander for food and can’t find anything? Well this is it. Again. We were in a mostly residential area and there was no food nearby. We walked and walked and walked and finally found a main road! Except it was a highway with no food again. We passed an archaeological site that I would have wanted to see but we need food!
It was probably closer to 4pm by the time we finally found a place to sit for lunch. Will the food be good? Are we getting tourist prices? Sometimes, you just have to take a risk.
This one turned out well. We enjoyed some Aperol Spritzes, a plate of mixed Greek apps (grape leaves, hummus, feta, beans, olives, falafel, etc.), Adam had souvlaki (meat on a stick) and I had delicious pork gyro. We relaxed while we had a very long lunch ending with espresso. It was super nice to finally just chill.
