People!

Anonymous It's amazing to me how the crowd of people you see in a big city is vastly different based on the time you travel. I've been to a number of tourist destinations in the U.S. and abroad, but always during summer: aka prime tourist season. When you travel during this time of year, not only are you often forced to cope with unbearable weather conditions, but you also encounter throngs of tourists anywhere you go. Today our group hiked up the hill to the Acropolis - a spot that during the summer is, I'm sure, packed with tourists. However, traveling in January you have a lot more space to yourself. Not only are there less tourists, but the most common nationality seems to be different too. I like to play a game with myself where I guess where other tourists hail from: are they dressed nicely? what language are they speaking? do they have an accent if they're speaking English? From my observations, it seems as if a lot more of the tourists around Athens at this time of year are from other parts of Greece, which makes sense to me - you might not go to Germany for your winter vacation, but traveling to California wouldn't be too bad. I'm sure it's similar for people who live in Greece. All in all, I feel like our experience so far has been better than many of my past trips if only for that very reason: time of year is key. Now I know that if you want to see a city like the natives do, January is a much better time to travel than August.