If someone asks me what’s the best part of Athens, the answer for me would be the people I met over the last ten days.

First there was Rodrigo, who bought my bicycle. I spent the most time with him hanging out at the hostel because the weather has been so hot during the day. He’s friends with a bunch of female travelers, Alba, Rosio, and Jenna. Together, we celebrated Rodrigo’s 38th birthday. I bought him a cake because I had told him that if I sell my bicycle before his birthday I would buy him a cake. It turned out that I sold my bike to him. Lol!

I sold my camping gears to an American girl named Sarah. She was also interested in my bike, but Rodrigo was at the hostel before her. I felt bad that I didn’t sell my bike to her and offered to treat her to lunch, but our schedule didn’t align. I hope she bought a bicycle somewhere else.

I also met up with Dale at a cafe. We had met last year in Nicosia, Cyprus. It was great catching up with her in Athens. She’s been traveling for five years and I need to learn from her on how to travel slowly.

At the Athens Hawks hostel, I had to switch to a different room. There I met Daniel, a young Brazilian guy who will try to get a job in Germany. I also met Max, a student studying business law. The three of us grabbed dinner at a gyro restaurant where the waiter didn’t think Max could finish his meal due to its large portion. After Max proved him wrong, the waiter, whose name is Dimitry, gave him a free can of Pepsi. I thought the whole thing was so funny because Max owed me a can of soda after losing a bet on the time of sunset over the mountains.

At night on the hostel rooftop bar, we caught up with our other roommates, Kacey and Catia. They are 18 and 19 years old Australian girls. I learned that Kacey’s mother is an opera singer who might have performed on the stage when my parents were living in New York City in the 90s. In fact, there was a good chance that my parents saw Kacey’s mom perform Madam Butterfly. What a small world!

I played three games of pool with two other roommates, Raf and Zoey. Raf is looking at perspective graduate schools and Zoey is almost done finishing a data science master degree from Columbia University.

Yesterday, after staying at Athens Hawks hostel for nine nights, I finally checked out and met up with Paweł, my Couchers host, near Nea Ionia district. Paweł is such an interesting person. He completed his data science master degree not too long ago and is really interested in data privacy. He’s the first person I met who has GrapheneOS installed on his phone. He showed me a bunch of resources online so I can learn more about privacy tools. Inspired by him, I made changes to my website where I removed Disqus commenting system since they were placing ads on my posts, and deleted Google Analytics in the html header so Google can’t track visitors to my website. Even though I won’t be able to see visitor information, I feel it’s a minor inconvenience for me.

Today, I met Marena and Eduardo. They are a couple who arrived at Paweł’s place and will also be staying with him for two nights. Marena is a singer and Eduardo is a saxophone player. They plan on busking at the Acropolis this afternoon to earn some money before going camping at one of the islands nearby.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time in Athens even though I didn’t go to any islands near Athens. Max and I did spent a morning hiking up to Lycabettus Hill to get a good view of the city and visiting Athens National Garden.

Athens, as a city, reminded me a lot of Philadelphia. It’s gritty in certain areas, such as the neighborhood where the hostel is located. Yet other parts of the city are cleaner and geared toward tourists. I hope to be back in Athens again so I can use it as a base to explore the Greek islands. I just didn’t feel like doing any more exploring now that my bike tour has ended.

Overall, my backpacking trip to Italy and Malta has been great and my bike tour from Wrocław, Poland, to Athens, Greece, has been amazing despite the heat. Tomorrow, I will take the 1 PM flight from Athens to Philadelphia. There are so many things I want to do at home, and I will write up a trip summary when I get back.

Celebrating Rodrigo’s birthday. From left to right: Alba, me, Rodrigo, Rosio, and Jenna

Met up with Dale in Athens

A traditional Greek dish with tomatoes, eggs, and meat

Walking around in a tourist area

The Greek gyro with fries inside

Cool mural

I just love this building for some reason.

Another sunset from the hostel rooftop bar

From left to right: me, Dimitry, Max, and Daniel

The moon and Acropolis from the hostel rooftop bar

Statue next to the Academy of Athens

Academy of Athens

Hiking up Lycabettus Hill

At the top

View of the city

The church at the top

Another view from the top

Turtles at the Athens National Garden

The pond at the garden

Someone famous at the garden

The common area inside the Athens Hawks hostel

Had to try the Greek orange cake from my friend’s recommendation

From left to right: me, Marena, Eduardo, and Paweł