Wow, latest week in Athens passed way too fast and it feels that one week is never enough. But nonetheless, every week I spend in Greece turns out to be awesome. Just like this week was.
Note: best part is in the end of the blog when the biggest adventure from this week gets revealed. :)
We did lot of basic things couples do when enjoying their rare weeks together, lots of walking around, eating out, coffees and enjoying ourselves. Also a little bit of adventure. Greece during November was pretty much what I expected it to be, lot more sun than in Finland, about ten degrees warmer and people wearing winter jackets. I've never been able to fit in Finnish cold weather, and even in Greece I had some trouble when temperature went down for the night. Days were around 14-17°C, and nights around 6-10°C degrees. Even tho even I got a bit cold, it was quite interesting to see people wearing winter jackets that we wear in Finland when it's that much warmer.
The best coffee place ever - Public Café. Yet again we went there for a coffee and quick eats couple times, and it doesn't even matter that it's not very cheap, because the coffee is best I've ever had. Especially our current favorite, Espresso with cream and oreo cookies. Put that together with their tasty Club Sandwich or Caesar's Salad, you have the best brunch ever. We also tried out their waffles, and just as expected - yummy!
Sunsets in Athens seem to get more and more beautiful every time I go there, I don't know if it has something to do with the time of the year, but it's definitely something to see. I even got to capture one of the sunsets straight from the hotel balcony.
Shouldn't be a surprise that we also spend lot of money for Starbucks, since Finland doesn't have it and Starbucks is pretty much only place that has decent prices and good coffee. It was pretty much everyday deal for us, unless we actually decided to go with lot more expensive Public Cafe. Starbucks was also easy place to get coffee from, since we passed Panepistimio Starbucks many times while going out walking. Same problem was when going The Mall. It's definitely my favorite shopping center in Athens, and this time of the year it was also really pretty with all the christmas decorations!
On my first trip we visited the Athens National Garden and we wanted to do that again this week, even tho it was a lot colder than the first time I was there, but the place was still beautiful. Not much to tell, except that if you're visiting Athens you might wanna stop here. And of course couple pictures, and the rare thing is that this time even I was willing to be in the photos.
We had some nice time walking around Athens, took some beautiful pictures but this week was mostly about our time together, so there's not too much to tell about the times we didn't visit any cool places, or at least places we haven't visited already.
Going around Athens.. Monastiraki
Lycabettus Hill
During the last three days we got this crazy idea, we've been supposed to get up to Lycabettus Hill, highest spot in Athens but so far we never managed to get the time or inspiration.. or whatever excuse you can think of. So one evening we just thought that since I've seen really beautiful pictures taken by night up there, we should try to get there and see how it's for real.
Ok, it was nothing like we expected, for starters we ended up going totally to the wrong side of the hill and there didn't seem to be any kind of safe way up, except with a car (you know the feeling empty dark road in the woods gives you when there's no-one around and it's just too quiet? That's why). So we ended up going back to the streets we came from. We spotted place to eat which had wi-fi access and since I'm the kind of person that hates giving up, I tried to find a way up using google and maps. In the end we found out more information and ended up going to the right direction, and finally after lot of walking we found ourselves to the better side of the hill.
This was the point when we didn't think that clearly and we just tried to find some way up, we did think about going back several times so we can catch a metro before it closes, but as me and my boyfriend both seem to be rather spontaneous and adventurous, we ended up spending the time we had left going up the mountain the same road that many cars went up all the time. Apparently this specific road was lot of fun for younger people with cars, and as a carholic myself, I do have to admit that the road was tempting.
A lot later..
We found ourselves from the top of the hill, or at least from the huge parking lot which seemed to be the highest where we could get up at that point of night. View was unbelievable and there was no way my basic camera could have taken pretty picture that demonstrates the view even decently, so I'm gonna link this picture I found long time ago using google, that inspired me to try and get up there at night:
The view was literally unbelievable and there's just no picture that can match the real thing, so if you ever visit Athens, I highly recommend to get up there at night.. maybe not the way we did, or if you're walking, I recommend to do that daytime because when we reached the parking lot, people we're looking at us like we're crazy when getting up there by foot when everyone else came with cars. It's also a lot safer to take a tour up there instead of wandering on your own, especially if you don't have any clue where you're going. But we ended up well, even tho our feet were feeling it the next day.
Not to mention the last moment of unclear thinking, we walked the whole way back to the hotel. Down to the hill and so on, so it was about 5km late night walk after all the walking we already did. I don't even dare to count how much we walked during the whole evening. But it was nice, we just grabbed hot chocolate on our way back and ended up sleeping well after all the exercise we got.
Talking about the next day, I don't know what is wrong with our heads but maybe it was the whole problem with finding our way to the hill, we still wanted to get there by day time. There was supposed to be a funicular railway which we even tried to find the previous night but never even saw it anywhere near the place, which we tried to look for. And yet again we ended up going up the hill hoping to find that damn thing that was supposed to exist, which started to seem like a trick to get people clime up there while looking for it. This time we actually got up the way people usually walk there, without actually even realizing it. And this time even my camera was able to perform decently and we actually got the chance to make some beautiful memories.
The sunset we got to see that way, was also very beautiful. I'm just sad there was no-one to take a picture of our faces when we finally found the funicular railway, from the top of the hill! After getting up to the hill - twice - by foot, we decided to take the easy way down to actually see where we end up and see where that thing was that we possibly couldn't find those two days when going around the hill.
This was definitely a nice two-day adventure and we decided to skip the day three of our new workout which apparently includes running up and down hills, day and night, and actually do something normal that doesn't require any kind of workout that's worth of mentioning.
So that's about it for this time, december trip was about my boyfriend coming to Finland so now we're waiting the end of January/somewhere around February when I'm finally getting back to Athens, yet again.
