July 5th

We got up and traveled back to Rome (flights were a lot cheaper out of Rome). It was decided that one night in a really nice hotel to spend a day relaxing was certainly worth it. Our hotel was super cool and we used their memberships to the gym next door to enjoy the sauna and Turkish steam bath for the rest of the night. We decided in the sauna that having to wear bathing suits to this one really sucked and nude hippie sauna in Amsterdam HAS to be the best in the world. If we get the Hoock house, or any house really, we're building a sauna for sure. When we got back from the sauna, we found out that instead of the shortened stay with Kostas, we weren't going to be able to stay with him at all, so we sent out last minute couch surfing requests, but didn't get responses. While waiting for responses, we didn't want to book a hostel, so we wrote down some decent ones and their addresses and went to bed hoping for the best.

July 6th

Apparently, I freaked Ryan out in the middle of the night (he was still awake b/c he couldn't sleep) because I was suddenly cowering into a little ball next to him, staring at the headboard and whispering to him that there was "a man right on the other side of that wall". In my dream/nightmare, the bed was in the middle of some Italian style piazza and a shadowy man in a pope hat (he was just a silhouette) was walking around the colonnade and staring at me. So anyway, I was really freaked out and it was strange. We woke up early and headed to the bus stop, then the metro and then to Termini. From Termini, we caught the train to Rome's FCO Airport. Our flight to Athens was great! Our bags were checked free, no line for check-in, security was a breeze and for just a 2 hour flight, we were served a full, warm and delicious lunch complete with dessert and coffee! The islands below the plane were gorgeous too! When we got to the airport, we found a tourist place and the lady gave us maps and directions to the hostels we had written down and we headed for the metro. We finally got to a hostel with an open room and grabbed dinner. After dinner, we watched the Netherlands/Uruguay semi-final game with a guy named Mike that we met (from the Netherlands) before heading out with our friend Kostas. He took us to a neat little area not far from our hostel where there were a lot of outdoor restaurants where from 11pm-2:30am every seat was filled with people relaxing, drinking and smoking the hookah. We were taught how to enjoy Ouzo and ice. Ouzo tastes a lot like Sambuca but a little stronger, and instead of taking shots, they sip Ouzo. It's their summertime drink, and in the winter, they boil ouzo and add honey and call it something else. We had a fantastic time talking with Kostas :) Around 2:30 we got very tired, but Kostas pointed out the "best ice cream ever" shop so we could go there tomorrow and we picked up some traditional Greek dessert/snack bread fresh from the bakery. We got the soft plain kind, and both soft and hard raisin kind and they were all great! We got back to the hostel pretty late and headed to bed.

June 7th

This morning, I got up to have free breakfast and we switched to a four bed ensuite. We were really tired from being out late and decided to go back to sleep. It was 36 degrees in Athens, so walking around the bright sunny tourist places didn't seem like fun given that we hardly ever see temps that high. We slept until 1:30 and headed out of the hostel around 2:30 to explore. We found some awesome shops and bought our 4-day tickets for the archaeological sites for 12 euro each. We visited the Roman Agora and Hadrian's Library, but these spots weren't very exciting. We went shopping after that (which Ryan hated) looking for Daniel's souvenir. We eventually found a cool shop and while looking around, we randomly found a painting by an art student of Michelangelo's "hands" - the subject we wanted to take home for our song lyric thing we're doing. We will put the lyric from the Counting Crows song When I dream of Michelangelo, "He seems so close as he reaches out his hand but he I never quite a close as we are led to understand" -Michelangelo #:## (the numbers will be the time when the lyrics comes in during the song, the "chapter and verse"). So we bought the painting, which wasn't too expensive, and are really really excited to have it! After shopping, we went back to the hostel and met up with Mike and some others to watch the Germany/Spain semi-final. The game was kinda boring, so we started looking on the internet to check our Hoock house's situation, but suddenly it was listed as "off the market" on Trulia real estate search. We contacted the realtor and Ryan's dad just to make sure it hasn't sold or done anything crazy, but haven't really heard back. Hopefully there is still an opportunity to possibly buy it when we get back! Spain scored and brought our attention back to the game and the last 10 minutes were better and then we headed to bed early.

June 8th

Today at breakfast, Mike and I decided that he'd come with us on our tourist adventure to all the sights and we also brought along Jeffrey from Texas and Tanya from Australia with us from the hostel crew. They had all been on the walking tour yesterday and so they basically gave us the tour backward. Greece was having "yet another" general strike so all the transportation was shut down, so really seeing all the sights was the only thing to do. Luckily it was cooler today and slightly overcast so the weather was very nice. On the way to the parliament building and the palace, we saw a lot of the strikers organizing for their march. It was just a lot of people with signs and considering that there were few police and the couple police that we did see weren't concerned in the slightest, we could tell it wasn't any sort of dangerous strike. All the strikers were one side of the debate and the other side was the government, so like a ghost entity, so there really wasn't anyone to fight with the strikers.

We went to the parliament building and saw our first Greek guards who wear funny outfits with shoes that have fuzzy balls on the toes. Ryan loved their "kick scuff stomp" thing they do. Then we walked on around to the back of the National Gardens and then off to the Palace and saw more scuffler stompers on the way. We made it to the first ever Olympic stadium which was built for the games in 1876. Apparently, Greece won the ability to host the games in part because some rich family started building the appropriate facilities. We walked past a large house of theirs that was pretty cool. Then we visited the Temple of Zeus which was very very large and pretty awesome. One massive pillar that had fallen down and really emphasized the magnitude of these columns. I really loved this temple. Right next to the temple was Hadrian's Arch which Hadrian built to designate the difference between Ancient Athens and Hadrian's Athens. Then we went on to the theater of Dionysis and though only a small part remains, it was amazing. There were some carved marble chairs that had backs, armrests and were decorated and labeled. After grabbing some gyro pittas for lunch, we hit the Acropolis Museum. It was sort of neat, but sad at the same time, because they had a lot of casts of pieces of the Parthenon that we saw in the British museum. I firmly believe the pieces should be returned to Greece to this awesome museum. The museum is built on top of ancient ruins that were found while construction was starting on the museum, but large parts of the floor are see through and you can see everything below - very neat. We went on to the Acropolis and the Parthenon was very impressive. We saw everything up there and even the smaller temples were very cool to see. The views from the Acropolis were awesome and you can see both mountains and ocean. <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } -->

At the base of the acropolis, we found a huge rock where apparently the apostle Paul converted Pagans to Christianity. There was a great view from the top and Ryan found a funny way to get down by just sliding down the smoothed marble.

Lastly, we stopped at the Ancient Agora and went in a neat little museum and to the almost complete temple on the hill. That area is really huge and I wish Stephen was in Greece with us to give us a tour!! We went out to dinner and are back at the hostel blogging before heading to bed. Hopefully tomorrow we are going to the islands with Kostas to camp, but we haven't heard yet what we're doing, so we may end up with very spontaneous plans for the weekend!