European Adventure: Athens
The final leg of our adventure took us to Greece - Athens, to be exact! I have never ventured to Greece before, so I was excited to add something to my passport! We took our 2 hour flight from Bologna and landed in the evening to Athens. After grabbing a taxi to our Airbnb, we grabbed some delicious food before heading to bed to get a fresh start the next day. We were welcomed with a shot of vodka before our meal, food twice the size of our heads, and amazing energetic ambiance of the streets. The next day, we grabbed breakfast at This is Loco - a cute little breakfast spot right across from our Airbnb and then headed on a little hike to check out the Acropolis from afar. We wandered through the park looking at Socrates Prison and a variety of other extremely ancient buildings. It was a hot, hot, hot one - but we kept hydrated and tried to find the shade as much as possible. Because we were crushed for time (we had 3 days!) we decided to do a Hop on Hop off bus tour where we could maximize our site seeing. This was a fab way to save our feet AND see so much goodness Athens has to offer - in fact, it was by being on the bus that we caught sight of a cool building with some big balloons and tons of flowers on the outside that we hopped off to go exploring! It was there we found the flea market and the COOLEST cafe ever called The Fairytale Cafe. The decor was insane and the treats were equally intense and delicious - a lovely surprising hidden gem we didn’t expect!
On Day 2 of Athens, we spent the morning in the park enjoying the birds & nature before grabbing a taxi to the marina to hop on a boat cruise to go swimming in the Aegean sea! I mean, I promised Aroha we would get her back to the water, so I couldn’t go back on that promise! We enjoyed watching the sunset from the boat with our new friends and just really appreciate being in Greece with each other. It was a really relaxing, beautiful, magnificent experience and our tour courtesy of Sail Adventures Athens was…top notch - like they made us delicious food, filled us in on a lot of the history, and gave us time to play in the cool green/blue waters.
Finally, day 3 is when we started saying goodbye - but not before we got tattoos at Babylon Tattoos! Jen got 3 noodles, Aroha got 3 waves, and I got 3 olives on a branch - each of our tattoos to symbolize a part of the trip that was important AND that we did it together! It was a really great way to commemorate an amazing experience with my friends and I cannot wait to see where the world takes me next! I forgot just how much I loved to travel with friends, to just wander the streets of Europe, and enjoy taking in delicious food and hidden delights. All that’s left is to wait for my film to get developed so I can relive the experience all over again!
