From Rome with Love: Independence Day!

I'm so sad I can't be in the US today! Our plan of celebration in Greece though is to get McDonalds so I'm not too upset. I'm yet to have it in Europe. We woke up at a sharp 5:30 and took a cab to the airport. We were there by 6:30 and by 6:45 were already waiting at the gate. Turns out we didn't need as much time as we thought!

The flight was a good one. It turned out that I sat next to someone in my group, Aaron.

Athens is incredible. For 5€, we took a bus from the airport to walk a little ways to the hostel. It's absolutely incredible. We walked down a cobblestone street to find it and its in the middle of everything. The beach is 20 minutes away, we're living in between the Acropolis and other ruins, there's a mountain that takes about a half an hour to climb that's just walking distance away and there's a ton of little shops open around the hostel. I couldn't be more excited about what's coming up in the next 4 days.

Shortly after getting to the hostel, we started out on a tour of various ruins. We saw the Akropolis, Parthenon, Zeus's Temple, and the Olympic Stadium. So cool! Ilove seeing old things like that. The stadium was reconstructed to look exactly like the old one that was built in 776BC. One thing they didn't touch, though was the main drainage system. It was put into place 1800 years ago and still works incredibly well. In a little room past the tunnel contained a lot of the Olympic torches. The Sydney torch was my favorite, though the one from London last year was pretty awesome. We were pretty beat after all of the walking so we went back to the hostel to regroup and after a bit went for dinner. An owner stopped us as we approached his restaurant and offered us free drinks and dessert. Needless to say, we dined there. I had my first gyro! It was incredible. On the pita was pork, tomato, onion, and a cucumber and spinach sauce. I'm going to get a gyro every day until we leave. I can't believe I went so long without having one! The vanilla ice cream we had was one of the best I've ever had. It was so fresh and full of vanilla flavor. The beer served was micros (I think); very good! We then wandered a ways to get out bearings on the location and came back just a little bit ago (12:45A now). We're going on a 3 island cruise tomorrow :) leaving the hostel at 7AM!

So tiredddd