Athens Night Life

Every time I head into Athens I'm amazed by the fact that I'm really here... in Greece... eating gelato while staring up at the Acropolis. It's memories like this that will "haunt" my dreams till the day I die. A couple weekends ago ,was our "free-weekend". No one wanted to spend a fortune, having spent almost all our money in Egypt, so Athens was the obvious choice.
So Saturday afternoon, 8 other girls and myself headed into Athens. We arrived at the Metro and bought our tickets. Being savvy college students we realized that we could buy a student ticket and it would 30 Euro cents cheaper. So we stood there, debating the pros and cons and whether we actually qualify. Some piped up and said, "Colby said we could buy them." Which was quickly followed by, "Well if Colby said we could buy them, then lets go ahead.
We got onto the Metro and 2 stops later one of the girls said, "We need to get off". I looked at her kind-of funny and whispered, Why? This isn't our stop. She said... Just trust me. I looked over her shoulder and low and behold there is a man coming down the center of the train checking everyone's metro ticket. Fear and panic sliced through me because I had NO CLUE whether I could actually use my ticket or not. All I knew was that there's a large fine for breaking the rules. Unfortuantly some of our girls were a little too loud asking why we were getting off at the wrong stop so the man skipped all the other passangers and makes a beeline for our group. We handed him our tickets and he got a really mad look on his face. He started demanding to see our student cards so I pull mine out. I breathed a large sigh of relief when he nodded his head and handed back my ticket. Three of the girls in our group didn't end up so lucky. They didn't have their International Student IDs on them so the man wrote them a ticket for 48 euro. Thankfully they were able to avoid paying the fine by simply going to the main metro station and proving they had a student card. So we now have international felons in our group.
By this time we have missed our stop but as the saying goes 2 heads are better than 1 so 9 must be the the equivalent to a genius. Or not. But anyway the 9 of us manage to figure out how to get back to the mall and set in on the arduous task of picking out a movie to see. Mind you the titles are in Greek and the the times based on a 24 hour clock. We finally agreed on Journey to the Center of the Earth. Eagle Eye wasn't showing till 10 something and we had no clue where our hostel was so we decided THAT wasn't a good idea. Kung Fu Panda had shown on the plane ride over and the rest wasn't fit to watch. I'm guessing it's this way all over Europe but in Greece for certain you are assigned a movie seat. So for all of us to sit together we had to make one payment. As I handed over my debit card the woman looked at me incredulously and said, "You are a very brave woman."
I handed my ticket to the woman taking them and she says something to me in Greek. I look at her in confusion and said, "Huh?" She laughed, "Oh, Theater 2, all the way to the end, on your right." We made our way down to the theater and walked in. The man standing there handed everyone a pair of glasses. We looked at each other in confusion wondering if we had gotten the wrong theater. Nope. Turns out we had picked out a 3D movie. As we sat there watching the previews we were all silently praying the movie was in English. I definitely recommend going to see that movie in 3D though. It was great!
We finally made it to our hostel, after stopping a couple of places for directions. As we were checking in some of our guys, who were also staying in our hostel, walked in. I don't remember the last time when I was so glad to see someone. Once we got settled in we still had about an hour and a half till midnight so I did something quite out of character for me... I went out on the town to experience the Athens night life. Brenda, Kathleen, John, and I walked up out of Syntagma Station to the pounding sound of a Greek Rapper concert. We stayed there for a little bit then made our way towards our favorite gellato shop. There's no feeling like eating gellato while staring up at the Parthenon lighting the night sky.
The next day I say the Byzantine Art Museum, the Islamic Art Museum, a Greek Cemetery, and went shopping in the Plaka. Just a typical Sunday in Athens. I loved the content of the Islamic Museum. It was very unique and a welcome relief from all the greek sculptures I've been looking at over the past couple of months. The Byzantine Art Museum's presentation was much more impressive but the content was as interesting.
Overall... I had a wonderful time!

Since my free weekend I have paid a visit to the National Museum of Athens and taken a trip to the Southern Peloponnese. There isn't a lot to write about the Museum but I saw some amazing things in Southern Greece. I'm going to try my hardest to write about it before Sunday. Why Sunday you might ask... Well if I don't write about it soon I will forget exactly why these places were important. But more importantly I am leaving for ISRAEL on Sunday!

God Bless and you'll be hearing from me soon.

Love, Rebeca