Jeanmarie comes to visit!

This latest weekend my dear friend Jeanmarie came to visit. She got here Thursday afternoon, which is cool because I don't have class on Friday, but I do have class Thursday afternoon, so I went to go pick her up at the airport at about 1 with about 3 hours to spare until my 3:50. We found each other really quickly and we got on the metro to get back to my apartment so we could grab a bite to eat before my class. We had made it a good 10-15 minutes on the metro when Jeanmarie got a phone call from her mother, which is strange because it was like 5 am there. Someone had called Jeanmarie's home phone to alert someone that she had picked up the wrong suitcase from the airport, so we jumped off at the next stop and got back to the airport. It took a while to get through reverse security to get her bag back, and then we waited to get the next metro back into the city. We had just missed one, and the next one didn't leave for another half hour, so we waited. It was now about 2, and since it takes about an hour to get from the airport to my apartment, as well as a good 15 minutes to get from my apartment to school, I was getting a little nervous about making it to my class. I did make it back in time, but just. That night since she had spent 12 hours traveling and I was exhausted we watched Kung Fu Panda and I fell asleep.

Friday I had plans to go to the fresh fruit market, Lykkivetos hill, lunch, the acropolis, the agora, some museums, and laundry, but when we woke up it was raining. We walked up the hill past the fresh fruit market, but didn't stop. We made it to the top still relatively dry, and we could see the sea, something that it pretty spectacular as usually it is too smoggy to see anything. We could also see a huge rain cloud coming our direction, so we decided to go down. We didn't even make it half way down the first part before it started absolutely pouring. By the time we got to the bottom, even with my umbrella it looked like I had just taken a shower in my clothes. So discouraged, we decided to go to the acropolis, the agora, and do laundry on Sunday. Instead we went to a museum, talked about going to another museum, but didn't get our act together in time, and just spent the rest of the day relaxing and planning what we should do with the rest of the weekend.

We decided that on Saturday we would go to Delphi. I had already been to Delphi twice previously, but I thought it was a good representation of Greece outside of Athens, as well as being a easy place to get to and bring a beautiful place. We woke up at about 5:30, left the apartment at 6, and made it to the bus station by 7, in time to catch our 7:30 bus. We got to Delphi at 10:30 and bought our return tickets for 4, giving ourselves ample time to explore. Probably more I thought as it was cloudy and had rained on our way there. We walked through the adorable town of Delphi and I gave half of my granola bar to the gods as a votive offering for good weather. It worked. The rest of the day was beautiful. It did not get too hot or too cold, and the sun was out the whole time. I gave Jeanmarie the tour of the site, and gave her my camera as she didn't have one, and I had 2 sets of pictures from Delphi already. She went crazy and took like 250 in the time we were there. We ended up just sitting on top of the theater for like 30 minutes just people watching and enjoying the view. We got to know an absolutely adorable kitten that followed us from the bottom of the theater up to the stadium. I tried feeding it half of my other granola bar, but it wouldn't eat anything. After we finished with the upper part of the site, we went down to the gymnasium and temple to Athena. I did not fall and scrape up my hand this time which was good. After that we went to the museum and took our time. Then we went to lunch, recommended by Rick Steves, at this beautiful restaurant on top of the town overlooking the valley. The food wasn't half bad either (in fact it too was wonderful). We looked into a couple tourist shops and realized how fast the time had flown by, as it was already a quarter to 4. We walked back to the bus stop, got on the bus and made our way back to Athens. I fell asleep on the bus. When we got back Jeanmarie, Hannah, and I went to Crepa-Crepa and ate delicious Crepes. Then we got back to the apartment and I fell asleep.

Sunday we had lots to do before about 3:30, which is when Jeanmarie had to leave for the airport. We looked around for a laundromat, but apearently everyone in Greece has their own washers and dryer, because there are no laundromats in all of Athens, except like 2 that were closed for the elections. We went over to the Acropolis museum before lunch, and explored. It was a pretty cool museum. I hadn't been there before, and it was cool to see. Then we walked over to the Acropolis. It was closed for the elections too. So we sat on the hill next to it and looked at it. Then we decided to find somewhere for lunch, and just got some pies at a shop near the acropolis metro stop. Then we went tourist shopping. We both bought lots of slippers. After we had spent entirely too much money on slippers, we went to get another type of shoe, some sandals by the Poet for Jeanmarie. In case I haven't explained the Poet before, he is now an 80 year old man who had been making sandals his entire life and sold shoes to people like John Lennon and Jackie O and Becca LaFoy and Jeanmarie Youngblood, also he writes poetry and gives some of his work to everyone who buys sandals from him. He is now retired, and now his son is in charge, and a young man who is probably his son. After Jeanmarie got sandals fit to her feet, we walked back to the apartment, Jeanmarie realized that she had bought way too much and had to repack everything. I saw her off at the metro station at about 4:15.