Greece 2

Good evening people all over the world

As I promised at the beginning of the week, I’m here with a second blog about Greece. Today is our last evening in Greece and tomorrow we’ll go to our next destination.

We started the week in the a small hotel in the suburbs of Athens were we’ve met Archangelos. He learned us to appreciate the typical Greek dishes and he also gave us some interesting sites to visit in Athens. Archangelos carried us to the city centre and from there on we  discovered the city of Athens with the metro (in Athens also known as the Αττικό Mετρό) It was a very clever idea from Archangelos  to cross the city with the metro because traffic in the city is very hectic.

We started the day with visiting some nice museums in Athens such as the National Archaeological Museum and the New Acropolis Museum. The National Archaeological Museum houses some of the most important artifacts from a variety of archaeological locations around Greece from prehistory to late antiquity. It was very easy with the metro to find this museum because it located next to the Omonoia metro station. The second (and the last) museum we visited in Athens was the New Acropolis Museum. This is an archaeological museum focused on the findings of the archaeological site of the Acropolis of Athens. Nearly 4,000 objects are exhibited over an area of 14,000 square meters. As the museum is built over an extensive archaeological site, the floor, outside and inside, is often transparent using glass and thus the visitor can see the excavations below. The museum also provides an amphitheatre, a virtual theatre and a hall for temporary exhibitions.

So that was enough culture for this week. We ended our stay in Athens with a shopping afternoon for the girls. During the shopping we were surprised about the number of stores with are closed in the city center. The last year, we saw in the media that the Euro crisis had a enormous impact on the Economy, but if you see such a number of closed shops, you know that it is very hard to survive in Greece for the moment.

The next four days, we planned to enjoy life in a chill and relaxed way. The first days, we planned a visit to Crete and more specific to the party city Hersonissos because partying is also a very important part of discovering a country for students. The last days, we planned to chill out on the island Rhodes, which is located northeast of Crete.

In Belgium, there was a television program about Hersonissos called  Oh oh Cherso where some young people had the time of their lives in this city. For us, it was a little disappointment to stay 2 days in this city because the city was very commercial and there is nothing else to do excepted for partying at night.

In contrast with Crete, Rhodes was very nice. We hired a small wooden cottage on the beach with a very nice view over the Mediterranean sea and the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen in my life. During the day we did some surfing and some jet skiing and every night we’ve eaten freshly caught fish from the Mediterranean Sea in a typical Greek restaurant.

So as a conclusion, I can say that it was very nice country to visit. Even if it is very hard to survive in this country now due to the economic crisis, people stay very friendly and helpful.

Greetz

Stijn De Wulf