A Night in Athens

Erin is SOOO diligently typing away about our amazing day here in Athens but I don't want her to get carpel tunnel so I thought I would help out. Here is an overview of our night here in the beautiful city of Athens.

We took a long hike to Mount Likavitos to see the sunset as this is apparently "the place" to watch sunsets in Athens. Our hike was amazing(ly hard). We took a very steep route up the hill and clocked our HRs in the 120s. About 45 minutes later when we had finally reached the top (and were -2L of water), we saw a beatufiful chapel called St. George's that stands perched atop this mountain. Inside it was incredibly ornate with beautiful paintings on the walls and old remnants from when services were conducted. Outside of the chapel was a very small area lined with stone walls and benches (not park benches the kind of benches that are just carved outpouchings of the wall itself). One look out at the city of Athens is enough to amaze anyone! It was gorgeous. You could see the vast expanse of Athens: houses lining the streets, mountains that surround the city, the Aegean sea hugging the eastern border, and the Acropolis perched out among its surroundings. After we took in this beautiful view, we realized we were about three hours early for sunset and decided to grab a drink at the cafe slightly down the mountain. We had a couple of drinks and the waitress brought out soom nuts to accompany our beverages. As we sat talking about how enjoyable our vacation has been thusfar we began to realize that we were being watched. Concerning?! Yes and you will never guess the perpetrators . . . two birds. One of the birds, a chubby guy, decided to inch closer and closer to us. They gave us a look like "I want those nuts and you better watch out cuz I can take you". Erin noted this odd behavior and I brushed it off because I thought "Really, how are birds going to hurt us?". I was wrong!! This bird and his partner would get in really close to our table when our waitress was away and then once she came scoot away as if not to get caught. Finally, the chubby bird decided to make his move and jumped on our table! And then he began pecking at and eating our nuts (inches away from us!). Erin and I freaked out started screaming and Erin started making some weird hand movements in an effort to scare the bird away. Then the bird just looked at her like "You foolish little girl. I am not afraid of you." Then his partner and crime came onto our table and started eating the nuts. Now we were completely freaking out! Thank goodness for the UK cuz some nice British guy came and scared them away. Well, for a second anyway . . . They came back with a vengeance so our hero came to the rescue and we got the nuts to another nearby table. The birds then attacked the nuts like nothing I have ever seen before. One bird even got mad at the other bird for taking the last piece and they started fighting! It was crazy! All we could think was at least we didn't order dinner.
After this ridiculousness was over, we made it back to the top of the mountain for the sunset. It was as beautiful as everyone said and we got lots of pictures and video.

Another day, another adventure . . . tomorrow we will head for Delphi and hope that all meals from here on are lacking aggressive animals of any kind :)

Thanks for reading!

Kelly