Day Thirty Five: Last day in Europe...

Today was our last full day in Europe. We took the bus into Athens (a 30min ride) and then found our way to the start of the Hop on Hop off bus. On our way to the stop we ran into a lot of police dressed in full riot gear. We had no idea what was going on. According to CNN, "Greek Golden Dawn lawmaker Christos Pappas is escorted to a court in Athens on October 3, 2013. Pappas, the second most powerful figure in Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party was taken into custody after he was charged with helping to run a criminal organization" (http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/07/business/greeces-golden-dawn-firebrand-right-wingers/index.html) and the police were out in the streets to make sure protesters didn't get out of hand. It was pretty scary. But we made it to the hop on hop off bus.

We were both pretty sick with head colds and it was a little chilly in Athens that day, so we spent most of the time on the bus. I think we only got off on two stops. Omonia square was one, where we had lunch at the greek restaurant Grill Square. It was a fast food style restaurant, but still better than McDonalds. I got the souvlaki, but it had a different sauce on it than the souvlaki I had in Santorini. We also went into the department store Hondos Center. The other stop we made was at the Acropolis/Parthenon, we walked around but didn't go up to the ruins, it was a little bit of a hike and we were both pretty tired.

I wasn't super impressed with Athens. Maybe it was because we only had half a day, maybe because we started out the day with police dressed in riot gear. Maybe because we were both exhausted and sick from our month of travel. But Athens was kind of dirty and not as pretty as previous cities we had explored. I think I might have enjoyed having a more guided tour of Athens, besides the recording that you listen to on the hop on hop off bus. Also would have enjoyed learning about the different Biblically historical sites. But we did get to see it even if only from the top of a bus.

After our tour on the hop on hop off bus we headed back to the airport and our hotel for the night. There was a very fancy nice restaurant on the top of the hotel that we decided to go to for our last dinner in Europe. Unfortunately the food wasn't that great, especially for how expensive it was, oh well. We toasted to an amazing adventure and spent the time reminiscing about all the things we saw, people we met, places we went. We also spent time thinking about how to answer the questions everyone would ask when we got home. "What was your favorite place, thing you saw, food you ate, etc.?" How could we ever answer that, there were so many wonderful things, but trying to answer that help us to remember all the great memories we had collected over the last month.

Tomorrow we had a 6am flight and a very very long day of travel, so after dinner we went to bed. Our last night in Europe. Bitter sweet; sad that this dream was over, but after a month of travel we were both happy to be headed home.

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