We arrived safely in Athens early yesterday morning, around 9:30 local time (time difference is -7 EST, so it was close to 2:30). After checking into the hotel and throwing our bags down my roommate, my professor and I walked down into Omonia Square to grab a giro for lunch. Crashed back in the hotel for a 5 hour nap, when we all met in the lobby and headed down to Syntagma & Plaka for dinner, which are the major shopping areas in Athens.
While wandering around on the outskirts of Plaka I found myself in the middle of a police raid of building - about a dozen officers in full SWAT gear (plexiglass shields) jumped out of a van and ran into a building. All of the locals thought it was nothing out of the ordinary. During dinner at an outside cafe we found ourselves surrounded by Liverpool football fans, whose team had lost to Milan the night before in the Euro 2007 championship, all of who sang fight songs for hours.
Today we took a brief tour of the city by bus, stopping by the old modern Olympic Stadium before heading to the top of the Acropolis. We spent a few hours at the summit before heading down to Plaka for lunch. While in Plaka we caught a pickpocket, who was following us around for a few minutes. She was very, very bad at what she did - it was so obvious that she was following us around. Once we started staring at her and laughing she left.
One of the interesting things about Athens is the number of stray dogs that the entire city treats as their own - they're cared for by vets, and fed by shop owners, etc. They'll go to sleep whereever, whenever, and no one cares at all.
Tomorrow we head up to Delphi - I'll update again next week.
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