The last week of our trip!
(the temple of Athena. Painted Camouflage.)
DELPHI
It was a struggle getting to Delphi because this was our first real experience where NOBODY spoke English and we couldn't even tell what the road signs were saying. So we hopped on a few buses and just crossed our fingers that it was taking us the right place. We even rode for free because we didn't really understand the whole buying a ticket process. (ooopsy)
Delphi was great we took a short pilgrimage up half way to the Sanctuary of Apollo (just like Socrates and many others) but unfortunately the top portion of the ruins is closed because it was built on a giant fault and it may crumble at any moment. We also saw the training grounds of some original Olympic athleates. Lizzie and I even ran a foot race on the track. Guess who won?
We were lucky to just barely miss the rainy day in Delphi and we headed out of town back to Athens.
ATHENS!
(this is the temple of Thesion in Agora
)
We saw way too many ruins for me to tell you each one. Ruins were literally around every corner, surrounded by shops and metro stations. The highlights for me were... the Parthenon actually all of the Acropolis. The theater of Dionysus and the Herod Atticus theater. I actually sang a note while standing (almost) on stage. Now I can say I have performed in those theaters :)
While the ruins were mind boggling and spectacular, Athens itself leaves much to be desired. I am glad we waited to the very end to see Athens cause it is much busier and less attractive than the islands. But I did like the bakeries on every corner, and the gyro places that lined the streets. We would order a gyro and before we had even finished, we had bought our selves a second. We watched the changing of the guards for quite a while, because it was very interesting the way they marched and such. (and the boys in uniform didn't hurt keeping our attention)
We stayed the night in the very finest of places. A youth hostel, six girls to a room and a shared bathroom, with a very loud sleeper who was growling in her sleep. Plus the ipod decided to stop working. I never thought I would wish to be sleeping on the beach again.
ROME
I know it seems pretty random to suddenly be in ROME! But we were pretty lucky to have a 14 hour layover in Rome. SO although Rome wasn't built in a day we put in a solid effort to see it all in a day. Unfortunaly the transportation methods getting to Rome weren't really going our way, and resulted in me being extremely cranky and hungry because we we only had a couple more hours of daylight to see EVERYTHING! Once we finally arrived we were very cranky but Lizzie and I can't kill each other now only because we have already made it this far. We caught one of those very touristy hop on hop off buses and within an hour had already seen the Colosseum and other major sites. We even got to the Vatican before it was too dark, but unfortunately couldn't get in. Just another reason we have to go back to Italy.
We then ate an authentic Italian meal and had gellato as the very last thing to eat in Europe. And yes it was fantastic.
