Cruising the Mediterranean Part 4: Athens and Corfu, Greece

I apologize for the long delay since my last post. Work got extremely crazy and all of my downtime has been spent trying to catch up on things around the house. Anyway...
After an amazing time in Santorini, we headed towards Athens, Greece, to explore the capital city.

The Parthenon.

We got to Athens very early in the morning, so we got to watch the sun raising on the city. Once off the boat, we took a bus from the dock to the Acropolis, which also stopped along the way to explain some of the highlights of the city. Our first stop was the 1896 Olympic Stadium, the only one to be made entirely of marble. The tour guide on the bus told us that you can pay to go inside, but that it's not really worth the cost.

From there, we toured downtown Athens a little, which looked similar to most other European cities. It was the first day back to school for children in Athens, so the streets were packed with school buses and kids walking to school. This was the first place we went in Greece that didn't appear so obviously effected by the economic crisis. In reality, we know that it was, but it was less apparent here than everywhere else we visited.

The main destination was, of course, the Acropolis of Athens. We took a guided tour, but ended up wondering away from the guide most of the time. It was extremely crowded, but our guide told us it was actually much less crowded than it has been in past years. She explained that tourism has reduced since the economic crisis and it used to be so packed at the Acropolis that you could barely move. There were still some areas that stayed pretty packed full of tourists, but most of it was open enough to walk around and get some good pictures.

Our tour guide also told us the story of how Athens got it's name. The myth explains that the city was to vote between naming it after the God Poseidon or Goddess Athena. All of the men voted for Poseidon and all of the woman voted for Athena. Unfortunately, there was one more woman in the city than the men, so Athens gained it's name. After that, the men were so outraged that they decided the women wouldn't be allowed to vote again, introducing the world's first major democratic society.

There are several monuments and temples on Acropolis Hill, but the most well know is the Parthenon, the temple to the Goddess Athena. The Acropolis is still undergoing a significant restoration project, most of which is focused on the Parthenon. Just like in Olympia, Greeks were on hand with whistles to scare away any tourists who try to touch the ruins.

Ionic Columns (ones with scrolls) being restored

Doric columns are the plain ones with no design.

We walked by the Acropolis museum on our way to Plaka, the historical neighborhood of Athens. We debated going into the museum, but it was huge and we didn't really have time to see it all. Plus, we had been to the museum in Olympia and read online that it was much better than the one at the Acropolis. Instead, we walked over to the ruins of the temple of Zeus. It was much, much less crowded there than at the Acropolis or in Plaka.

Temple of Zeus from the Acropolis

Temple of Zeus and the Acropolis. The Temple of Zeus was made with
Corinthian columns, which look like leaves on the top.

After walking around Plaka, we grew kind of bored and ended up sitting next to where the Athens police were patrolling. There were 4 gigantic cops with AK-47's standing around 2 mopeds. They got a call on their radios, hopped on two to a moped and took off to the end of the street where they started arresting two women. Of course, we had to walk down and check it out. The whole process included them standing around and calling a car to pick these women up while they sat on the ground patiently waiting without handcuffs or anything to prevent them from leaving. Other tourists headed over and started taking pictures with the police and their guns. The tourists drew the attention of a gypsy boy, who came over to play accordion and dance.

It seriously looks like Athens never ends.

The history of Athens was amazing and impressive, but after seeing the Acropolis, it felt like there wasn't much else to do. I couldn't imagine spending more than a day there. Don't get me wrong, seeing the Acropolis and all of the ruins was an awesome experience that I will remember for the rest of my life, but the city itself was pretty unremarkable. After seeing Santorini the day before, it felt like just another European city to walk through.



The next day, we arrived at the island of Corfu. When I looked up things to do in Corfu, it seemed mainly like a popular beach destination. So, we decided just to spend our day there on the beach and bought a ticket for a connecting bus to a local beach. Unfortunately, it was raining on our way into the port, so they canceled the bus connection. It stopped raining, but we made the unfortunate mistake so buying a bus ticket to the city of Corfu. We found out later that we could have asked the tourist information center at the cruise port for a bus to the beach and they would have set it up for us. We really, really wish we would have done this.

There wasn't much to do in Corfu Old Town. A man handing out maps pointed us in the direction of a "beach" which was actually just a pile of rocks in the bay. The water was absolutely beautiful, but it certainly wasn't a beach. It seems Corfu island is really more of a destination for beach goers than tourists. I really wish we would have gone to the beach because the pictures of the beaches in Corfu look as beautiful as the one in Santorini. I guess you win some and you loose some.

The "beach."

My last installment will cover our time in the beautiful city of Dubrovnik, Croatia as well as our trip back home. Since this was our first cruise experience, we learned a lot and definitely know what to do differently next time. Hopefully, it won't take me several weeks to finish my next post!