November 12
We had to wake up around 5:30 this morning to be downstairs at 5:50 for our taxi to take us to the airport. It was this huge van with blue and purple lights inside of it. It was pretty fancy. We got to the airport around 6:10 and our flight left at like 8. We just wanted to make sure we wouldn’t have any delays. The security wasn’t even open yet so we had to wait for like 20 minutes. When it opened, we went through and it was the most low tech security I’ve ever seen. I got randomly checked though so that was a bit annoying because they checked my bags and me and they didn’t really know what to do so it was kind of disorganized. After that we waited for our gate which was 2 feet after security. It finally opened and for once in my flying career they were checking carry on sizes. This freaked us out because we never worry about size and our bags are kind of big. I started moving some stuff around and hoped for the best. Annah was the only one who had to check hers and we all felt so bad they made her do that. They put tags on all ours though to check plane side. This made us nervous too because we have breakables in our carry ons. We had to wait to board a bus to board the plane for like another 20 minutes. We finally boarded and they took my bag. The flight was like an hour. I was exhausted and annoyed the whole time. I’m broke and annoyed about all these Europeans telling us how we have to spend our money on their dumb fees they never tell us about. We are just done with Europe at this point. We made it to Athens and got our bags. We left and our driver was waiting for us. We tried getting money out to pay him and none of the cards were working so we were panicking but finally one worked and we got his money. He drove us to our Airbnb and it took like 40 minutes. It was a nice van with leather seats and the two rows faced each other. It was so relaxing. The Athens marathon was happening today so he said all the roads were closed and he had to find a new route to take. The Athens marathon is the original marathon route and is once a year in November, how cool is it that we were there on the day!!!?? We had to wait a little for the cleaning lady to finish and to get us the keys but we finally made it to our nice Airbnb. We had heard horror stories about Athens and we had been staying in the worst hostel ever for 3 days so we were so so so relieved with our nice place. We dropped our stuff and collapsed. We then prepared to go out and get food. We are all poor and starving so we chose McDonald’s because we know they are cheap and accept credit cards. At this point, we survive. We walked to it and ordered our supa cheap meals and chowed down. We all ate too fast and too much because our stomachs have adjusted to small amounts of food at dispersed times. This intake was just too much. We slowly began to walk towards the Olympic stadium and this is where the marathon ends so there were boards of people. Everywhere. We walked into the stadium seats to look around and then left because the amount of people was crazy. The runners make their last last around the track to finish so all the family and friends are there to cheer them on. We made our way to mars hill next. We weren’t really sure where we were going but we walked around the bottom of the Parthenon and then stumbled upon a big rock. We randomly decided to go up on it and then discovered it was the Areopagus aka mars hill. It’s very rocky and slippery but has a great view of Athens. We found a spot to sit and we read Paul’s sermon. We then took communion and worshipped. It was pretty crazy to be in the same spot that Paul had been. And to see the surroundings of the people he was talking to. All the temples they had for all their gods. It makes it more understandable. We then walked to the Parthenon and used our student ids to get free admission to it. I'm not sure if we were supposed to but we made it happen. We walked to the top and saw the Dionysus amphitheater and an old Athena’s temple. We made it to the top and took lots of pictures. We saw a lot of cats and ruins. Claire sat on the wall and debated if she could fly and we sat on benches and just tried to talk some logic into her. No flying for her today, just more Parthenon looking haha. We walked down and went back to our Airbnb because we were exhausted and told not to be out in Athens at night. We gave ourselves plenty of buffer room. We stopped at a store and bought some food first. Athens was not as bad as I was expecting, a lot of the people were really nice and it just reminded me of Rome. I think it helped that there were so many people there for the marathon. We ate and relaxed and watched movies and fought with the water heater for the rest of the night. It was a good relaxing last night. I’m ready to go home!!

Fun facts: dhl sponsored the marathon. There were tons of dhl trucks everywhere. The owl is the symbol for Greece. Rome reminds me of Athens because they stole everything they knew except domes and roads from Greece. The official name of Greece is Hellas.

Shoutout: thanks Dad for waking up in the middle of the night to help a girl out.