Sicily & Athens

After 3 days in Rome we hopped on a cruise and set sail around the Mediterranean! Our first stop was in Messina, Sicily. We took a tour bus up to this cute town called Taormina  This town was possibly the cutest town in the world. It was up on a hill (actually, only 14% of Sicily is flat, so nearly everything is up on a hill!) and you had to climb stairs up to it- no traffic came into the town. Once we got there we saw this little town with overflowing flower boxes on every window sill, cobblestone streets, tiny churches that had been there for hundreds of years, and adorable small cafes (with free wifi, not too shabby). Sicily also has Mt. Etna, the largest active volcano in the Mediterranean. It last erupted in 2011. Yikes! Sicily was beautiful and well worth the trip if you ever want to visit! 

After a day in Sicily we sailed through the night and arrived in Athens early the next morning. Athens was a very interesting town. We could tell that, at one point, it was a very busy bustling city. Unfortunately with their economic decline it's more of the type of city that you don't want to spend a ton of time. As Rick Steve's put it, "Athens is a town that you want to get in and out of; you don't want to linger in Athens." A drive through the downtown area showed us run-down buildings, more graffiti than we've ever seen in one spot, and a lot of homeless people. It was sad to see. But the tour bus took us up to the Acropolis which is where ancient Athens was located. The Acopolis was like stepping into a different world. It is literally this tiny little city perched on a hill filled with ancient ruins. It was really hot and crowded at the Acropolis that day, so don't mind the pictures where I look like a wreck. 

The buildings were incredible. They told us that the ruins dated back to 5,000 BC. It was hard to even imagine buildings could withstand all of the chaos that has happened over 7,000 years! But it was relatively well-preserved and somewhere every person should go to once in their life.

Some of the ruins you will see in the pictures are

1) The Parthenon

2) The Temple of Zeus (in the picture behind the bus)

3) Hadrian's Arch

4) The Temple of Athena

5) The first Olympic Stadium

                               Here are the highlights from Sicily and Athens!