Greece Part #1 - Athens

i'm having a bit of blogger inertia right now, so my posts will be relatively few and relatively late these days. so just pardon my laziness.

Day 3 & 4 - Athens

Our hostel at Athens Studio :) it came with a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom & our very own living room!

We headed down to Acropolis the next day. In Greek, Acropolis means "Highest City". Acropolis was dedicated to the goddess Athena and as opposed to what some people may believe, it's not a single structure on its own but a historical site with many individual site monuments, the most famous of which is the Parthenon(used to be one of the world's 7 wonders).

Behind us is the famous Parthenon dedicated to Athena Parthenos, the patron of their city and the most magnificent creation of Athenian democracy at the height of its power.

The above structure would be the Temple of Athena Nike, which in the Mycenaen times protected the entrance of Acropolis.

The above structure is the Temple of Olympian Zeus (most famousy known as Hercules' father). There are only 15 columns remainingin the structure.

Acropolis is a very popular tourist attraction and there was just an enormous amount of tourists visiting the sites of acropolis, its kinda crazy cause everywhere we went, there were just people and people and people. We couldn't stand in a single spot and not have a group of tourists right behind blocking the monuments we wanted to capture! it kinda ruined the whole atmosphere.

As you've already noticed, Athens seems filled with remains of historical buildings, all of which are built with high columns and looking very like the other. We later found out that the different monuments differed by the columns. Apparantly, if you look closely enough, you'll notice that the upper part of the columns differ in their designs. The temple of Zeus columns had leaf motifs while the Parthenon had a normal curvature.

The site monuments have been excavated of all their marbles and artefacts. The elgin marbles, marble sculptures, inscriptions and architectural members taken from the Parthenon and other buildings in the Acropolis of Athens, are ironically located in the National Gallery of London instead of Athens. Why? A British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in the past was granted controversial permission to remove pieces from the Acropolis. Till date,there has been alot of debate as to where these elgin marbles truly belong. Because in actual fact, the removal of the pieces was legal and the British empire claimed it was for better preservation of the marbles cause Athens did not have proper preservation facilities in their musuems at that time. However, recently Athens have reconstructed their musuem, added modern preservation facilities and reserved a storey for the elgin marbles that they believe rightfully belongs to them and in time to come, they hope to gain ownership of the elgin marbles that they had lost to the British many fateful years ago.

We had lunch at the Plaka, which is a charming historic district at the foot of Acropolis, with its neoclassical houses, shops and restaurants and picturesque ruins fro the city's Roman era. Lunch was a typical affair and above is a typical food found in Greece. It's called stuffed tomatoes! it was delicious by the way :)

Pretty flowers along the streets!

We then headed down to Mount Sounion for about 5.70eur. We enjoyed a scenic view of the coast while on the bus ride down to the out-of-city attraction. Mount Sounion is popular for the view of sunset.

We soaked our feets in the clear waters of the beach at Mt Sounion.

It was warm and nice in Mount Sounion, just like the rest of Athens. The only problem i had with Athens was the dust filled air that clogs up your nose at the end of a day's walk. Your feet gets dusty and sandy after walking for a short distance because of all the sand from the ruins. Certainly wouldn't be my number one destination for a permanent home.

Went to the top of the hill, and right at the top is the Temple of Poisedon, right beside it was a cafe where we decided to rest and eat some ice-cream. Ultimate pleasure to be sitting at the top of a hill, under a shade with the warm, sunny weather.

There! When we were done with our ice-cream, we went to pose with the temple of Poisedon! You're probably thinking..."This looks just the same as the temple of Olympian Zeus and well, everything else"....actually, we thought the same too! hurhur. we are so un-cultured people.

I'm at the top of the world! Look at the view! Awesome-ness!

the cute couple at the edge of the cliff, the backdrop almost certainly looks fake and i would have completely thought it was photoshopped in if not for the fact that i was actually there at that single point of time! it's completely REAL! x3

we didn't manage to catch the famous sunset at mount sounion! argh! the last bus back to athens was at 8pm and even at that time, the sun had yet to set! -_-" but we did manage to catch some parts of it on the bus ride back :)

Day 5 - Delphi day trip



We headed to Delphi, a pretty town perched on top of a mountain. The Delphi archaeological sites are also a UNESCO World Heritage site. In ancient times, it was the most important site of the oracle of the god Apollo. Delphi was revered throughout the Greek world as the site of the omphalos stone, the centre of the universe.


breathtaking view from the top,it was absolutely amazing. the quaint town was kinda french-like in a way.





acting cool at the archaeological sites:)


whee! addy & i found a tree our height!aww, i'm in love with the tree, i wish i could pluck it and transport it back home! too bad it's part of a UNESCO site and i'll probably go to jail for






the only museum we went and paid for on the trip. it was full of nude statues and barely there artefacts, which were missing so many parts that you could barely recognise what it was trying to repsresent. example, there was a ceramic portrait of some soldier on a horse but all we could see was the leg of the horse? lol. ridiculous.

Day 6 - Athens (Victoria Street & Omonia Street)

We almost got robbed on this day. Addy and I got off the train and were rushing towards the escalator leading out of the train station when, oblivious to us, 2 punksters came running after us. Jon saw the 2 men running after us and quickly called out to us, that was when Addy turned around and the 2 men got frightened and quickly ran off. Some black man then came up to us and asked "Where are you from? Those 2 men were trying to rob you. Be careful"

This all happened at the Victoria Street Station, which is a very seedy area with a lot of blacks around the area. We were not only targetted once but twice in the same station! When we were heading back, another group of blacks wanted to rob us! But at that point of time, we were all on high alert and we noticed the suspicious behaviour of the group of men. SC immediately said "Quick, let's all diao them so they know that we're aware of their movements". So the 6 of us turned and stared hard at the gang of pickpockets, it was kinda funny though cause the gang immediately dispersed and decided against robbing us.

Victoria Street also happens to be the street where my friend was pickpocketed! And honestly speaking, the police system in Athens is horrendous. Different districts have their own police post and when we wanted to report the stolen wallet, the police tried to push responsibilty to the other district police, giving all sorta excuse like "Oh, you should go to the police post where you lost the wallet", "oh you should go to the police post where you realised you lost the wallet!". WTH. It was really a pain in the ass. thank goodness we have a respectable and lawful police system in Singapore.