Dear Diary,
Back in Athens, Greece blogging. Here we go,Day 7 - 10th April 2019
We woke up pretty late since we came back to Athens in the wee hours. Got up, laze around on bed and then feeling hungry yet again. The cool weather of the spring season never fail to make us hungry often. Probably telling us to fuel ourselves with food so that our body can continue keeping us warm. Lol! 😄
Got ourselves dress up and headed down to the stretch of restaurants just down the streets of Monastiraki which was nearby our Airbnb. I honestly, wanted to go back to O Thanasis Kebab but then I decided to settle down for something different this time. Since we're here we gotta explore the different food places.
Brunch was at - THE GRECO'S PROJECT
The reason why I came here was also because the staff there was friendly. But then again, the food did not disappoint as well.
This crunchy fried zucchini is 😋.
D had chicken souvlaki with chips
And I had Chicken on pita bread
We were given cakes (Orange & Chocolate flavoured) too at the end of our meal.
After food, we definitely had more energy to do our last tour in Athens before heading back to Singapore the day after.
MONASTIRAKI - Tzistarakis Mosque.
At Monastiraki itself is where this mosque was located. I love traveling around the world and discovering parts and pieces of Muslims' history or even visiting the Islamic side of a country. Though, the 'halal' version of the Greece, Omonia really isn't a safe place. 😶
The Tzistarakis Mosque is an Ottomon Mosque which now function as Museum of Greek Folk art, however you can see the design inside and how it was used as a mosque back then.
😍
And something to note while visiting here is you're allowed to take pictures of the decorations and buildings inside BUT you're NOT allowed to take pictures with yourselves posing inside. We didn't know because there wasn't any sign stating that we can't but the staff inside stopped us from doing so. We do have a few pictures of us posing, lol! But not in a rude way or so, just us standing and walking that kind. But I guess they don't allow picture posing maybe they wanted to avoid people taking inappropriate poses while inside the mosque I guess?
Walking down the stretch after the visiting the mosque, of course I see more things, I end up buying more things. Lol! 😅
I was like did she just HIT YOU?! Of course D got so angry and I had to calm him down. Always remember, no matter how right we are and wrong they are, I always plant the thought to myself that I'm in a foreign country. If anything happens, God knows. I want to go back homeeeeee and don't want to get ourselves into trouble and even be stuck there. Worse if the girl selling roses had a whole gang watching out for her if D happen to quarrel with her. While that happened, I was actually taking pictures of the view around and GUESS WHAT?! I managed to capture another 2 con girls on camera. HAHAHA! But these ain't the one who hit D. Lol!
You can see them holding roses and was trying to approach us and tourists but these ain't the girls that hit D, I didn't manage to catch their photos. Lol!
This is for you, for hitting my husband.
Okay enough of the angry part, on a other note, this is how Monastiraki looks before you enter the different stretch of restaurant on the left and street shop on the right.
It can get real crowded than this at peak hours.
It can get real crowded than this at peak hours.
And just blogging this in 2021, before Covid19 hit. If u ask me to stand there nowwww, without mask. Gosh! I'll be so scared. The thoughts to even travel now. 😖
❁❁❁
It was almost 1700 hours and we had to make a rush to one last trip to Syntagma. Something that I did a research last minute on about (because we walk past by it) and it close at 1900 hours but we didn't want to stay too late as we gotta pack our bags to head home the day after.
SYNTAGMA - Panathenaic Stadium.
The outside of it was already so beautiful, can you just imagine the inside.
Bought our tickets and all ready to explore,
Yes it was about 5 Euros per person.
And something to note when you're visiting here, NO food and drinks are allowed. We wanted to enter with just water bottle and was told to finish up our drinks then only we could enter. Tskkk. So if you're thirsty while inside, you've got to hold on to that thirst till you exit. Hehe! Maybe they want to discourage people from littering inside.
Upon entering,
You can choose to take this audio guide with you. They have in many different languages. Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Korean etc. But no Malay, so English it is. Lol! Well it's not mandatory to take but I decided to take it because I wanted to learn and know more. But then again, I got distracted mostly from listening with the beauty of it and the audio was too soft anyway.
The beautiful tour starts,
From the front spectator view on the running track.
This are VIP chairs.
The stairs looks okay but it's actually high and steep. Imagine climbing all the steps up.
Yes we climb up to the top,
Just to get this spectacular view of the whole stadium.
Spam photos of it because it's just so picturesque, the colours, the shape, pattern and the fact, there wasn't many people around.
Niceeeee right?
After the tiring climb, we went down to visit another area in the Panathenaic Stadium known as the 'Vaulted Passage'.
Walking inside it leads to a Museum.
Entrance to the museum.
The 'Olympic torch' was displayed so nicely here and since young, I always pretended running like as if I was holding the Olympic torch. Thus, being here is just like a dream came true.
The different torches from different year and which country Olympic took place,
Year 1936 - Berlin
Year 1948 - London
Year 1952 - Helsinki
Year 1960 - Rome
Year 1964 - Tokyo
Year 1968 - Mexico
Year 1972 - Munich
Year 1976 - Montreal
Year 1980 - Moscow
Year 1984 - Los Angeles
Year 1988 - Seoul
Olympic that happened twice:
Year 1976 - Innsbruck, Year 1980 - Lake Placio, Year 1988 - Calgary
Year 1992 - Barcelona
Year 1996 - Atlanta
Year 2000 - Sydney
Year 2008 - Beijing
Year 2010: Vancouver
Year 2014: Sochi
Year 2012 - London
Year 2016 - Rio
I always thought the torch were all the same and little did I know that the torch design varies from each year. We headed back to the stadium to look this time decided to pretend like as if we were running in Olympic games. Hahahah! 😝 And we're not alone, there were many who were running and even challenging who ran the fastest.
Continued exploring the stadium,
And before it started to crowd even more, we made our way back to our Airbnb and already feeling tired from the long walk.
Before heading back, we always drop by at this cafe - M+S Cafe where D will get his coffee and me, their hot chocolate 🍫 which tasted any unlike other I've tasted. We will get salads too for our supper, to a point the staff there recognize us, give us extra food or discount. 🤎
Reached our Airbnb, had supper and started packing. All set to head back to Singapore. Missing Singapore food so bad already. Lol!
Day 8 - 11th April 2019
Our flight was before noon at 1100 hours. Thus, we had to get up early and make our way to the airport 2 hours before departure. We plan to leave our Airbnb by 8am and then I realized I had,
Unfinished ice-creamssss! 😰
Imagine finishing all 4 ice-creams one after another. LOL! I didn't want to throw them away because we don't have this in Singapore and it's such a waste. So I finished all 4 in one sitting. 😂
Also we had leftover notes which I wanted to spend them away but D being D... 😏
And one last look at our cozy Airbnb before saying goodbye, which have been such a good shelter for us for the past 1 week ++ that we're in Greece,
The entrance and the small kitchen and the dining table.
Next to it is the toilet and the bed.
Our cozy bed and the window which has no view basically. Lol! But yerps, not really sound proof, so you can hear the pub playing all sorts of songs every single night.
And the TV infront
Next to it is the cupboard and also a cozy sofa to sit.
And toilet with washing machine inside too. We managed to wash our clothes too. Hehehe!
Athens, Airport.
On board the flight,
Got my window seat again. Hehe!
Funny thing, I didn't want to eat and so neither did D because the on-board meal are just so expensive and the portion so little. 😭 We wanted to try to last for 11 hours in the flight without food, but gosh we couldn't because we didn't have breakfast anyway too before leaving Athens and I kept waking up despite the airsick pill (it was supposed to knock me out all the way) because hungry > sleepy. Haha!
Flipping through the menu
There goes the credit card. We were so hungry we decided to heck care about price and get separate meals, no sharing. 😹
We were sort of still hungry but it was enough to help us sustain a few hours before arriving back to Singapore. Capture the moment when we left Athens in the daylight and almost reaching Singapore in the wee hours. Lol!
The moment we landed, I decided to connect back to my 4G and check out the flight status app. Hehe!
Yes safely landed, Syukur Alhamdulilah! We even landed like 30 minutes earlier. 👏💃 As much as I enjoyed Greece and Santorini, honestly, nothing beats being back in your own country, your own homeland. 💝
Some of our loot from Greece,
These chocolates are the bestttt!
If you ask me if I would go back to Greece again, I would but D's answer is a no. Lol! But he don't mind going back to Santorini though and at the end of our trip this is what I felt,
And one week later,
We were still trying to fix our jet-lagged when we were back in Singapore. HAHAHA! Took us at least 2-3 weeks to adjust back. 😂
XOXO,
Princess Azie Anni ♥
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