I don’t remember much of that night because we were kind of tired(we visited Athens all day)  and we got hammered pretty fast. At one point I woke up on the beach, while a friend was telling me … Hey man, it’s 5 o’clock, let’s go home.

The next day was the beach day. We managed to wake up before 12a.m. and  went to the beach.

Here’s a perfect way to get rid of a light hangover in Athens:

An interesting fact about the beaches in Athens: Are very polluted. And it is normal I think …  That’s why the best, non polluted beaches are found on the islands. But we didn’t have the time or the money to go to an island, so Thassos took us somewhere out of the city, in a nice beach resort, at about 30-40km from Athens.

Although it was around 10 of May, it was very hot and we actually managed to get some sun burns.

After the beach … we went back to Thassos’s  … the Finals of the Eurovision Contest were about to start.  Everyone was crazy about it. Thassos even placed some bets, but no luck. We watched the Finals(Serbia won), we said good bye and parted.  The coming home trip is one of the things I hate most in this world. Especially when you leave at night, tired, by car and it’s your turn to drive. I strongly don’t recommend   it.

You can check out my entire Greece photo gallery.

He has a big apartment on the last floor of a building, with a very nice terrace. Great place to throw a party or just to chill. Here’s the view:

He and his family welcomed us with a delicious traditional meal: some fish and cheese dishes and of course, a Greek salad made with home made olive oil:

The first thing we wanted to visit in Athens was The Acropolis(known as The “Sacred Rock”), one of the greatest ancient monuments in the world.  Here I have a nice tip for you: If you are a STUDENT, whenever you go on a trip, take your student card with you. You never know when it might come in handy. For example, the price for entering the Acropolis was(last year) 12Euros, but students had free entrance.  We were all students, but unfortunately some of us didn’t  have their student cards and couldn’t prove they were students, so they had to pay.

On the top of the Acropolis lies The Parthenon(the temple of the Greek goddess Athena):

Around the Acropolis you can find a lot of souvenir shops, bars and restaurants.  It’s a great place to try some Greek cuisine or just to relax, having a beer and enjoying the view of The Acropolis. A good Greek beer is MITHOS. I recommend it.

Walking through Athens, we were surprised to see so many orange trees. Everywhere you look, you see orange trees. Too bad that the oranges are not eatable. If they were, i think no one could sell oranges in Athens anymore.

We also visited Kallimarmaro Stadium( where took place the first modern Olympic Games – 1896),The Arch of Hadrian, The Temple of the Olympian Zeus, The University of Athens, and other important monuments and places that unfortunately I don’t remember anymore. Basically, you can visit most of the important sights in Athens in a single day.

You can check out my Greece photo gallery.

I will give you more than a few solid reasons and if you feel that I left something out, please don’t hesitate to share it:

1. The beaches in Greece are just amazing! Check out the top 5:  Sarakiniko beach (in Elafonisos Island, Peloponnese) ; Egremnoi beach (in Lefkada); Myrtos beach (in Kefalonia); Erimoupolis beach (in Crete Island) ; Myrtidiotissa beach (in Corfu Island);
2. The food is delicious and very very healthy. I bet everyone heard about  dishes like the famous “Greek Salad”, the moussaka, about the tzatziki sauce, the feta cheese and of course, for those that like to have a drink from time to time, ouzo and metaxa.
3. It has a great number of beautiful islands. The most popular are: Mykonos, Santorini(the top image), Crete(the biggest island in Greece – here was the center of  the oldest European civilisation – The Minoan Civilisation), Hydra, Corfu(Second biggest island), Rhodes, Skiathos, Ios;
4. Greece is the birthplace of the Olympic Games;
5. The capital of Greece is Athens, the  home of Plato‘s Academy and Aristotle‘s Lyceum( Athens was also the birthplace of Socrates, Pericles, Sophocles);
6. Greece  was a great ancient civilisation, it has an endless amount of artifacts;
7. Greece has many historical landmarks(statues , museums, theatres, temples), like the Parthenon, the Olympic stadium,  the Acropolis , The National Archaeological Museum, Mycenae, etc.
8. Greece is the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, Western literature and historiography, political science, major scientific and mathematical principles, and Western drama including both tragedy and comedy;

I had the opportunity to visit Greece last year.  I loved it very much. It was a short trip(3 days) and I could only visit Athens and stop for a coffee in Thessaloniki. But it was enough for me to remain with great memories and I hope to visit Greece again soon and see all the other stuff that I missed.

You can check out my own Greece photo gallery.