Merry Christmas...

Thursday, December 25th:
Merry Christmas. We go and walk down the Spanish steps, head north and eventually had a sweet picnic at Piazza del Popolo. Afterwards, we walked down south and saw the Pantheon, the huge fountain that I never know the name of, and various little things. Eventually, we came back and had a free dinner/wine and champagne party hosted by the strange Indian hostel owner. Dude was crazy, but whatever. It was a good time, followed up by a half hour visit to a nearby bar before retiring early for the next day's flight.



Fun at Piazza del Popolo, Texas style


Pantheon...unfortunately we couldn't go inside

Aforementioned fountain

Friday, December 26th:
Head to Rome Fiumcino airport. I eat some strange ham panini and potato chips in the airport (useful information, I tell you!). Get on the plane, we're all separate. I don't know what to speak to the couple next to me, until I found out the lady is a Californian and the man is from the Parisian suburbs. Huh? Turns out the dude is 6'8", a pro b-baller in Euroland that's just been traded from an Italian team to a team in Athens. He also played back in the day (age 16-18) on the French team with Tony P and Boris Diaw. Sweet.
Anywho, we get there and say goodbye, me and the boys go to our Athens hostel, where we have a room to ourselves. Weather totally stinks, as it's cold and rainy. We go and find some sweet food, where I had some delicious chicken brochette, Kevin hit some gyro, and Scott lamb chopped. Afterwards, we walked back but slid by this pastry shop we'd seen. I got this AMAZING chocolate ball thing that was like several crepes wrapped up and filled with two different forms of chocolate cream inside, and then covered with chocolate sprinkles on the outside. Geezamother, it was awesome. Also, we walked around and Scott got some good nightshots of the Acropolis. Meanwhile, I was dancing Tecktonik and Kevin was busy spotting, as he called it, "The Grail." What this means is that they sold gelato, the love of Kevin's life, and pastries, the love of my life. We went in and did our thang, I ended up with some piece of cake that was pretty good. No chocolate ball, though. Then more Tecktonik.
I think we also went to an internet cafe that night.


Acropolis at night


THE Dessert

Dancing with lights!

Saturday, December 27th:
We wake up to our cold room, eat our "breadfast," as we decided to call our morning meal consisting of little more than sliced baguette, and head out to see the Acropolis. We preceeded this with a frantic search for Scott's debit card, which was apparently left in an ATM, never to be found again. Fortunately, however, no charges had been placed upon it, and he was able to cancel it.
It was a pretty cool walk up the hill to the Acropolis with a nice view of the city. Once we got there, we got tickets to see the Parthenon, Temple of Nike, and some other things that were up there. While the setting itself was really impressive, I think we were all a little disappointed in the significant construction ocurring on the buildings. The damn things last from 400 BC until the 1800s with no renovations, but we're now on our third renovation in the past 200 years. Anyone else get the feeling we might be doing something wrong?
Anywho, we take pictures and "flanons sur la colline" until the cold and rain become unbearable, which means....lunch time! After what was to become our daily struggle to find nourishment (and a stroll by EVERY motorcycle/car shop in Athens), we enter a resto and have another amazing meal...I had a gyro with some sort of sausage, and a double portion of tzaziki sauce, as scott didn't want his. Afterwards, I think we went back to the hostel for a bit and took a siesta to dry off/rest. (I am owning this French keyboard at the library, by the way. The slashes are in retarded places, but I've already overcome and have it mastered.)
We eventually woke up and left, and then found the tourist office closed about 10 mins before we got there. Blast. Thus, we decided to go by the old olympic stadium, which was kinda cool. After that, we walked up to some huge hill (the BFH, as Kevin called it) to get a view of the city. We took a funicular to the top and Scott went wild with pictures, as it provided a pretty incredible view of Athens. Rain got unbearable, so we eventually left and found a grocery store. Dinner for 3 was provided by 2 bags of potato chips, a pack of butter cookies, about 3 bars of chocolate, and 3 bottles of wine (they foolishly chose Greek wines, while I went with my trusty French Beaujolais Nouveau). We went back to the hostel and dined this dinner of homeless kings, then made a return to our favorite internet cafe.

At about 11pm, we leave en route to our hostel, but I spot a pastry shop...with a large selection of goodies. I don't know who buys pastries at 11pm, but I went in and did my normal long look-around at each available product while the girl behind the counter did the normal 'greet and wait until the food-crazed American decides which product is likely to stop his heart first, unless of course his heart stops in the long process of analysis.' I finally spot something that appears to have an absurd amount of chocolate in the form of a log surrounded by powdered sugar. I ask in broken English (so that vendor can understand, of course) what this particular pastry contains. "Honey," she replies. Oh? That doesn't look like honey from here...Being stubborn and perhaps slightly feeling the remaining effects of dinner, I doubt the person selling me the item and buy it anyway, because that's a lot of chocolate. Well, as it turns out, that's not chocolate. That's honey. And that's not powdered sugar. That tastes like flour. WHO puts a log of honey around a few nuts and covers this with flour? In disbelief, I took a few bites before getting disgusted. A few bites later (to really confirm, you know, that this is honey and not chocolate), I get totally disgusted. As one of the most expensive pastries I've ever bought (3 euros), this is also one of the most disappointing. It is now January 14, and said pastry remains in my room in Toulouse, as a reminder that sometimes gold turns out to be fool's gold, and sometimes chocolate turns out to be honey.


Parthenon. Construction.


Delicious lunch gyro

Athens from hill at night

Bad idea

Sunday, December 28th:
We wake up and I'm still mad about biting into a log of honey. To spite the stupid thing, I smear some of it on my morning breadfast.
I think this day began a long wild goose chase trying to find a train station. Eventually, we end up just walking around the city and in this plaza where loud music/speaking is occuring, lots of cops are walking around, and hand-written banners are hanging from buildings. As this seems like a probable location for one of those protests and/or riots we've been reading about, we decide it's best not to be there for too long. We leave and walk through this street with tons of markets, and possibly the largest meat market you've ever seen. Eventually, we arrive back to our area of Athens. The difficult food search ended with us stopping in a little bakery. The boys got sandwiches, and I got some sort of Calzone type thing and I think a cheese-filled thing of some sort. We ate them in a little square outside, which was kinda cool.
Eventually, we take the local tram for 45 minutes for a visit to the coast. I talked for a bit to some Belgian woman who didn't like the Francophones in Brussels. Scott decided he didn't like her because she made some comment that made it sound like she didn't like Texas. Anyhizzle, we arrive to see the Agean Sea and a cool little town and say goodbye to Belgium. As it's Sunday, not much is happening, however. Also, the beach, I believe we decided, was, well, less impressive than Galveston, Texas. Nonetheless, we walked around and enjoyed ourselves. Eventually, we were....HUNGER-STRUCK (cue AC/DC).
We enter the one place we found open and we all get gyros, again lol. Again, delicious. Also, we had some wine with our meal that was surprisingly cheap but tasty. Afterwards, we pass a pastry shop. Having sworn off pastries out of anger, I said I would buy nothing. I think Scott wanted to enter, so, shaking the hand of the devil, I walk in, and guess who ends up buying pastries? Not Scott. Kevin and Greg. The latter 2, however, were blown away by some sort of solid chocolate shell with this thick chocolate mousse/cream inside. Before leaving, I inquired about an interesting-looking closed pastry that appeared to be filled. The answer regarding the filling, however, neither intrigued nor amused me. I think you can guess what it was.
We trammed to the other terminus, where we found the 2004 Olympic stadiums. Those being less than impressive, we headed back to our hostel.






Monday, December 29th:
Day trip to Delphi. Get to bus station by taxi, I buy some baked goody filled with feta cheese, as well as a cucumber and ham sandwich and butter cookies to have as lunch. We had a sweet bus ride through the mountains, although some dude showed up late into it and appeared to not have showered in a while. He stood right next to me and raised his arms to hold onto the bus supports. Kevin and I gasped for unstenched air, he by covering his nose, me by asking him to burp into my face after he ate a few pringles.
Anywho, we arrive in Delphi, which is this tiny little town with a beautiful view of the mountains and a lake down below. We were rather impressed, and the view sort of reminded me of Geneva and Luzerne, Switzerland (the town wasn't really much, though).

We entered some of the ancient ruins and walked around some more for a bit. We also saw some priests having a footrace at the location of the ancient gymnasium. Twas a pretty humorous sight, as they were being cheered on by some seminarians. We talked to them for a few mins, and they were all living in Rome but were retracing the path of St. Paul from the north to the south of Greece, which was pretty cool.

After hanging out there for most of the day, we peaced out in the evening on the bus, which became extremely crowded on the way back. I sat Spaniard style (holler, Marta!)...on the floor. Eventually we got back to our neighborhood, and Kevin happened to find the souvenir bottle of Absinth he was looking for. We went by our favorite pastry shop to find it was closed, so we retired for the evening after Kevin and Scott had a rather girly pillow-fight in our hostel room.








Tuesday, December 30th:
I get up early and go to airport, talking to a pretty cool dude from Lebanon on the way. Find out my flight to Paris is delayed (ice in France), so I goof around on the free internet at the airport for a bit. Flight eventually leaves, although I thought I might be going to Spain, as it seemed like Spanish and Greek were all I heard at the terminal.
I go to my friend Thomas's apartment, but go to meet my friend Hélène (whom I met over summer at Air Liquide) for dinner with her friends. We had some sweet Laotian and Vietnamese food, and then we headed to Hotel de Ville to see the ice-skating rink. Unfortunately, it had just closed, so we met up with her Canadian friend who turned out to be hilarious. We all went to an Irish pub, had a beer and played some billiards. Apparently billiards aren't popular here, so the Canadian and I had a hilarious time watching our French friend hehe. Eventually it got late and we all headed out. Said goodbye to Hélène, as she was leaving Paris the next day to spend some time in Nice.