Arrival in Athens

So after around 18 hours of travel, I am finally writing this journal at the desk in my hotel in Athens. It is a pretty incredible experience, and it is my first time traveling alone, as well as my first time transferring alone.
There are a bunch of timezone changes: I’ve gone from Eastern Winter Time (I know there’s an official name, but I forgot) to EST (Eastern Saving Time? I might have got this wrong as well), and then to Paris, which is 5 hours ahead of EST, and then to Athens, which is an hour ahead of Paris. My total flight time is around 11 hours, and there is a 4-hour transfer time in between.
Enough about my flight. Actually, one more complaint. I know when people are at high altitude on a plane, your sense of taste can deteriorate. However, that does not justify how bad the airplane food can be. And it interrupts my sleep. OK, enough of that.
Back to my actual trip. It is my first time being in Europe, so I just want to talk a little about how I feel. Paris, first of all, is huge compared to Boston. The first three images are Boston and the second three pictures are Paris. It is not really easy to compare these two cities from the pictures, but CDG Airport is also much larger and nicer than Logan Airport, which makes sense because it is the capital city of France. (Sadly, this does not apply to Washington, D.C.) The French people are also really nice, and surprisingly, they have better English than I expected. Just during my time transferring, you can already glimpse into the difference between Americans and the French. The French are chiller with time; my shuttle took more than 40 minutes, but people on the bus weren’t anxious or annoyed at all. I also like how French sounds; it just feels elegant, especially the announcements on my shuttle.
But I didn’t stay in Paris for long, and then I came to Athens. It took me a while to realize the pronunciation, but it is also a cool name. The streets and architectural style are very distinct from the U.S. In the city, the first level is shops and then it is apartments, but usually not beyond 3 floors. It feels like a Chinese town back in the '80s or '90s, or a more modern and cleaner version of Chinatown with wider roads. There are a lot of taxis, and very few pedestrians are walking on the streets. The life here also feels really relaxed, and a very fun part is that every wall is painted with graffiti, and it is literally everywhere, even on second-floor walls. I don’t even know how people get up there.