We're In Ruins

Athens, home to the Greeks and the Gods. The breath taking views we saw were stunning, the amount of history it left behind was unreal! Many of you may not know, that if I didn't get into University for the arts, it would of been for anything majoring in history. I absolutely love anything from war to architecture to people who made things but not to mention- very old architecture. So of course, Athens was the perfect spot to start off our Greece vacation!

After two long flights and being sick throughout both (it was really difficult I'll tell yeah that) we finally made it to the city of the Gods. Once reaching our beautiful stay in the heart of the city called Athens Tiare Hotel - we instantly fell in love, it was clean, quiet and extremely relaxing on top of the staff being so incredibly kind? it couldn't of been a more better welcome than that. Since Jenna and I landed so early into the country we decided to sleep for a few hours, as our journey felt like forever. We needed to re-energize and also, being it was 7AM not many places were open.

Our first stop once we awakened was on our way to the Acropolis- was Hadrian's Library which was constructed in circa 132-134 CE as part of the Roman Empire. The building was primarily used for storing literature and legal documents and on occasion it was used to lecture. It's amazing to be able to not only be near such a beautiful structure, but to be able to breathe it in, and explore it. I didn't think this was possible, being the state of the structures were decently weak but still standing.

From Hadiran's Library, we continued our search on how to reach the top of the Acropolis. I know this sounds silly, we could see it all the way down from Hadrian's Library but how to actually find where to get up there was our little adventure. We really didn't ask for any help as we wanted to explore in our own way- a friend of mine suggested we find a place called Plaka. She said it's slightly hidden but when found is so beautiful, colourful and fun. Little did we know we found ourselves in Plaka without even realizing till we ended up in a store and asked!

Below are some shots we took, you can just tell with the surroundings of how gorgeous every building, restaurant and store was! There's way more clips on my instagram if you guys are interested in more POV shots of what we actually saw and went through. I'll leave my instagram at the very end!

Not only was this area full of of places to eat, things to do and a tun of shops- it was photography HEAVEN. Every inch and corner was so beautiful that we had so many options for portraits. Why must this be so far from home!

Eventually we reached the top, not to mention even though it was March- which normally in Canada is FREAKING COLD. However, in Greece is BEAUTIFUL. I had multiple people tell me that it would be cold, not summer like at all. To those who told me this, you were oh so wrong. And I couldn't have been happier soaking in all the sun while embracing art history.

We decided to play, embrace and be confident as we channeled our inner greek goddesses Aphrodite and Athena in front of the Parthenon which was dedicated to greek goddess Athena who was the goddess of wisdom, warfare, and courage. The Parthenon is 45 feet tall, and its base is 228 feet by 101 feet which It sits on a hill called the Acropolis ( which holds many more pieces of architecture) overlooking Athens as you can see down below.

For only 48 hours in Athens, we couldn't believe how much we were able to do in such a relaxed manner. There's a lot I didn't include in this post because I wanted to make sure I wasn't always looking through a lens, however- Jenna will have a vlog up very soon on Athens, so you guys can get a in depth look on everything we did! I'll be sure to link it on the blog as well as my instgram stories so you don't miss out.

We made sure to not rush any sort of parts of our itinerary, if we couldn't make it to one area we told ourselves we'd come back another time and continue to explore. It's really not worth rushing and potentially missing something really beautiful. I don't know about you guys, but I'm not one to rush art, history or scenery. I love breathing in everything, making sure I record everything in my memory first before my camera. If you'd like to see more on our time in Athens, be sure to check out my instagram @moderndayshivalry or my best friend Jenna's instagram @new_jennaration22

xo

Shivani

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