So here it finally is: the long-awaited blog entry about our trip. Actually this is just about Greece. It'll probably be a little while before we get everything up to date. A lot has happened since we touched down in Athens more than a month ago. And trust me, it's all blogworthy. So you know, the most time-consuming part of these entries is getting all the pictures in and making them look nice, and since time is of the essence in these last few days we have in Cairo, I'm killing two birds with one stone and just attaching links to each of the photo albums I've posted on Facebook of our trip. The blog entries won't look quite as pretty, and you'll have to open another window, but this way you get more pics and I save time.
Here is the link to Greece's.
The night of our departure was filled with frantic packing while simultaneously trying to book my mom a hotel in Cairo, write out postcards (which many of you hopefully received), as well as finish "To Helwan and Back." I managed to get everything done except for the last one, and we headed out around 11:30 PM for the airport. By the time we finally got on the plane, all three of us were beyond exhausted, and none of us really have any memory of the flight. We just passed out and the next thing we knew we were on the runway in Athens. We got off the plane and wandered confusedly through the airport until we found the metro into town. We finally made it into Athens around 7 AM or so, and we went straight to get breakfast in Kolonaki Square, which was more expensive than I remembered it. After that we wandered through the national gardens until we came to the Temple of Zeus, which was much more impressive than I recalled. Greek ruins are cool. From there we hit the Olympic Stadium (the old one), Hadrian's Arch, and then the Acropolis. We failed to consider just how heavy our backpacks would get, and carrying them around with us as long as we did that day was a mistake we would not repeat. By the time we made it past the Parthenon (impressive as usual), our backs were aching horribly. We wound up stopping several times at the agora and at the Temple of Hephaestus. I don't believe we visited either of those when I was in Athens the first time, and that's really too bad, since they were probably my favorite part of the city this time. After our whirlwind tour of Athens' most impressive ancient sites, we stopped to get some lunch at another place that was too expensive. I guess that's just what happens when traveling after living in a place as cheap as Cairo though; everything is too expensive. At the restaurant we met some New Yorkers who have a place in Bethel, which is where Peter has his ski camp, for those of you who weren't aware. Small world experience number one.
After lunch, we headed to the train station to pick up some tickets. We'd already bought the ones that evening at midnight to Thessaloniki, but the international ticket office was closed. Now that it was open, we went to book our tickets for Saturday night, but unfortunately they were sold out. As a result we had to shoot for Sunday night, which meant we'd only get one day in Istanbul. On the bright side, though, we'd get an extra hour with Kasia in Thessaloniki. We bought the tickets and made our way to the Archaeological Museum, but we got there too late, so we went to the next best center of learning: an internet cafe. Like most cities, the major sites in Athens shut down around dinner time, which meant we had to figure out something else to do until our train at midnight. Athens is in a big valley, flanked by mountains and dotted with abrupt hills, some of which we decided to climb. First we went up some random little hill which was pretty neat and had a nice view of the city, but that was just warming up. After that we walked across town to Mount Lykavittos, the highest point in the city. The climb took longer than it should have since we didn't really know the best way, but after forty minutes or so, we reached the top, just in time for a pretty amazing sunset. We could see the entire city: the Acropolis, the Olympic Stadium, ships moving back and forth by the port of Piraeus. It was pretty nice, but it got really freaking cold as soon as the sun started to disappear.
So we came back down... via a monorail! It actually sucked real bad. Biggest waste of three euros of my life. From the bottom we decided to try to walk back to the Acropolis area to get some dinner, and after much searching, we found a cheapish place. Food was definitely expensive in Greece, but it was amazing. I love souvlaki and gyros and whatnot. After dinner it was time to head to the train station, so we decided to take the metro, which would've gotten us there in plenty of time... if it had been RUNNING! It was around eleven and the whole metro was already shut down! We realized that it was too far to walk, so we'd have to take a cab... which of course were impossible to find. I mean, there were plenty, but they all had people in them. Just when we were really starting to get nervous, we nabbed one and made our train no problem.
The ride should have taken five hours, but we didn't get to Thessaloniki until seven or so. Peter and I both slept pretty well, but Matt didn't manage to get any sleep, so when we finally made our way to Kasia's apartment, he collapsed on her roommate's bed. It was great to see her again, especially for Peter, and we just hung out and shot the breeze until she had to go to class. We tried to plan our time there, but most of the plans we made at that point fell through, namely climbing Mt. Olympus, which it turns out is covered in ice in April, so the trails aren't even open. Oh well. Kasia went to class so Peter and I took naps as well. We woke up later that afternoon and Kasia had made us lunch, which was wonderful. After bumming around her apartment for a while and getting cleaned up, we decided to go out... which we didn't succeed in doing for another couple of hours or so. We got together with some friends of hers, Alyssa and Rob. Alyssa is a very nice and extra hospitable girl who also goes to Northeastern, and Rob is one of the most ridiculous people I've ever met in my life. He's from Norway and is just consistently bizarre and hilarious. Perhaps the most perfect anecdote about him pertains to his sock habits. He has a separate pair of socks for every day of the week, and each day says its day on it. We met him on Friday, and he was still wearing Thursday's socks, since he had gotten drunk the night before and not woken up until the early afternoon. Kasia told us a story about how one time he got in a fight with his girlfriend and broke a glass on her head. Later, telling Kasia about the incident, he claimed that the whole relationship was doomed anyway. He told her, "our relationship was fragile, like the glass."
Anyway, we finally got ourselves together and walked all the way downtown along the harbor, which was really beautiful. It's a much cuter town than Athens is, though it didn't seem to have as much to offer. When we finally found the taverna Kasia had in mind, we were blown away to find that it really did in fact offer the deal she had told us about: all you can eat [em]and[/em] drink for ten euros. Amazing! Needless to say we ate and drank our share, and everything was phenomenal. Afterwards we wandered around some more, stopped in a bar but found we were too tired to move, and so we returned to Kasia's pad to go to sleep. The next day we devoted to seeing the city's sites, which consisted of some neat Greek and Roman ruins as well as a few pretty badass Orthodox churches. To top it all off, we hit up the Museum of Byzantine Culture, which got some big award recently for being an awesome museum in Europe or something, and it was. We were constantly reminded of the region's importance to one of the world's great conquerors, Alexander the Great. He was from Macedonia, of which Thessaloniki is historically the capital. This became an interesting trend of the trip: the fact that as far as we traveled, there were several empires that each at one time had ruled all the area we traversed: Alexander's Macedonian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and finally the Ottoman Empire. As a result, as diverse as the places we went were, architectural marks can be found the whole way from each of those four empires. Crazy!
In spite of a decent night's sleep, we were apparently still pretty exhausted from our traveling, so we decided to go back and take a nap at this point. It was around 5 or 6 PM, so we hoped to pass out for just an hour or so. Before we knew it, the morning had come and Kasia had left for her crazy spring break trip (she went to Italy, Spain, and England... also awesome). We woke up early to get going, as we planned on taking the bus to Dion, a very well-preserved ancient Macedonian city at the foot of Mt. Olympus. We got all our stuff together and were terrified to realize that Peter couldn't find his debit card. After searching crazily, Peter realized that his card looks identical to Kasia's, and he'd left it out the night before. We reasoned that she had most likely grabbed it thinking it was her own. And so began our real financial difficulties. Matt had his identity stolen a few months ago, so he's been working off money his parents have been wiring him here and there. Along the trip it would be tough to work out wirings, so we decided just to have his mom deposit money into my account. With Peter's card gone, the three of us were now all going to be relying on my card, which at the time didn't have enough to last us more than a couple days. Peter thus decided to call his mom and wake her up to ask her to put a good chunk of his money into my account so that we wouldn't get stranded a few days down the road.
And so we headed off to Dion. We first had to take a bus to Katerini, the nearest major town, and then a city bus to Dion. The ruins themselves were really well-preserved and beautiful, and it was neat to know that this ancient city was the place where Alexander gathered his troops and held a celebration before heading out on his great campaign, but the biggest attraction was definitely Mount Olympus. It was amazingly gorgeous. It really is no wonder that the ancient Greeks believed that gods and goddesses lived up there. The pictures we took cannot even begin to do justice to its majesty. I really wish we had been able to climb it, and after seeing it, climbing it became a definite goal of mine. It was also very nice to see some significant greenery. It was a beautiful day, and a good end to our time in Greece. After we finished there, we headed back to Thessaloniki and hopped on the train to Istanbul. It was a fantastic ride, and it really made me wish we could take sleeper trains everywhere. The train left around 8 PM, and we got to the Turkish border in the middle of the night. We bought our visas and then got back on the train, hoping to wake up and be in Istanbul.
For an idea of the scale, keep in mind that Egypt is twice the size of France, just a little bit smaller than Alaska, and bigger than Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas combined. 
