Greece: Friday, January 15th

We have a break in the weather! Today was a beautiful day with high clouds and unusually warm weather. Well, any weather here is nice compared to back home, but it's still nice to have warm weather when you're spending the day touring Athens and the surrounding area. I have already seen a lot of the various neighborhoods within Athens so I decided it was time to move out to some of the suburbs. I started following some of the local professional soccer teams based out Athens like Panathinaikos and Olympiakos, both of which are huge rivals here in Greece. Olympiakos' stadium is in Piraeus while Panathinaikos' has two places they play, one about a half an hour away at the Olympic Stadium and the other one in Athens. I had read that the Olympic stadium was an impressive stadium so I took the metro out to the huge complex. A side note about the metro - rebuilt in 2004 for the Olympics, the whole metro is sparkling. Nearly all of the metro stations in the city have all new escalators, signs (both in English and Greek), and very helpful maps. The Athens Metro is a little different from your typical subway system in that they are very trusting when it comes to your ticket. There are no gates into the Metro so you have to insert your ticket and walk through rather than have a gate that opens for you. I guess the city trusts everyone! Also, when they were building Syntagme Station they uncovered a lot of buried buildings and ancient relics so the city made the station into a small museum with some of the artifacts they found. It's not a very complicated system, so navigation was very easy. So I got on the metro in Syntagma Sqaure right next to our hotel and had to change trains once in order to get onto the green line.
A half an hour later and I was standing in front of the enormous steel gateway entrance with the two reflecting pools and the stadium in the distance. The complex has the large stadium for soccer, an indoor pool, tennis courts, and a bunch of smaller soccer fields. Everything was closed up so I couldn't get a look at the field itself, but the stadium is impressive from the outside.
I had also read that there was a mall nearby, and I was missing some of the typical American food so I ventured into the nearby city to find some lunch. After grabbing a cheeseburger in the fancy new mall I was stuffed and ready to head back to Athens. When I got back I wanted to head over to the other famous soccer stadium in Athens, the original home of Panathinaikos. I had read that the soccer fans in Athens are an extremely dedicated bunch of hooligans, and that they had "decorated" the outside of the stadium in green and silver graffiti. Basically the entire exterior walls of the stadium are covered in Panathinaikos graffiti, especially Gate 13 where the players enter the stadium. Actually, if you pay attention to the gaffiti around the city you'll see a lot of references to Gate 13. But it was great to see the soccer culture in Athens and to see how sports fan show their loyalty for one of the most popular sports in the world.
I looked at my map and saw that I was right at the base of Lycabettus Hill, which is one of the highest points in Athens proper. Standing at 909 feet I prepped myself for the hike up the steep hill. When I got to the top I was greeted by an absolutely breathtaking panoramic view of the city. I was also greeted by two enthusiastic old men sitting in front of the church on the top, smoking cigarettes and making fun of the tourists no doubt. They offered to take my picture for 5 euros but I politely declined. I took a few pictures and then headed down the southern side of the hill.
When I got to the bottom I was in one of the more ritzy parts of the city, Dexameni and Kolonaki. These two neighborhoods have all of the fancy, expensive stores with all of made up ladies in their oversized sunglasses and undersized dogs. I took a quick tour of the area and then made my way out of the area and back to the hotel. After a long day I grabbed some dinner and planned for the next day - museums. The weather is supposed to be nasty until next Wednesday so I'm going to see if I can see a few museums in the rain. Until tomorrow, antio!

 Greece: Friday, January 15th Slideshow