Current Obsession: mmmm Summer
Weather: 22°c

We were up early (6:15am) this morning after taking far too long to pack our bags last night.  We trained to Stansted, and our plane left on time at 10:20am.  It was a 3hr 20min flight, having us arrive at 3:40pm in Athens, Greece… ahead 2 hours from London time.

Mountains in one of the countries we flew over

Our first hurdle was getting through the smoking area which is right outside the gate as you exit the plane.  The second hurdle was getting into town from the airport as the metro was not working. A kind information lady showed us the route though, and we were on a bus which took us 50 mins to get to town before a change onto the metro.  It was lovely to see the outskirts of Athens.  It seemed very Spanish influenced with the sandy coloured houses and tiles.

We are staying at the Hotel Zeus (aka backpackers) for €11 each per night. Fantastic price, and the room was relatively nice for a mixed dorm with 2x bunk beds in it. We are going to be sharing with lots of randoms over the next 7 days.

We had a wander around the neighbouring streets, or first task to collect food from the local supermarket in the way of fruits (banana’s and apples) and other easy-to carry food (nuts and dried fruit) and local foods we’d want to try (namely chocolate and sweet almond bread with died eggs in it – in preparation for Easter), and a 2 cans of local beer and 2 cans of Amstel in hopes of getting fish and chips and eating them on a beach some where.  The fun part happened when Ants hadn’t put a barcode on the bananas, and he had to run back, match the letters to make sure he had the right thing, while I waited at the checkout and the checkout lady (in her 40s+) bitched and moaned to other waiting customers about our predicament.  I didn’t need to understand her language because she was gesturing enough for me to understand what she was saying.

Back at the Zeus we sampled our goodies.

mmm, foreign chocolate

Sweet almond bread – note the egg = a real egg that’s been dyed

After goodie tasting we wandered down to Monastiraki Square – the main tourist spot in town.

There were some wonderful knick-knack shops, lots of lovely bags and clothes.  We stopped at Nick’s Corner as I oogled at the bags *sigh* they were lovely.  We chatted to ‘Nick’ for a while, and found out that although it was Easter in London, the week after was Easter in Greece. Bonus for us because we didn’t have to plan around closed shops and such.

a market street

Monastiraki square with the Accropolis in the background

I’m very excited about how good a zoom my new camera has!

Dinner was souvlaki aka a pita bread with salad, chips and kebab meat which was really nice.

Later an ice-cream from a place called the Ice Grill.

Pruudy ice-creams

I had banana carmel + cinnamon apple, and Ants had baklava + triamasu.  They also sold souvlaki for €2 each, and they looked bigger and better than what we had at the other place, so we’ll try there again tomorrow.

We saw the Acropolis from afar.

Also quite a few dogs wandering around; they all had owners and were tame, just they were wandering around… and shagging. And we also saw lots of people trying to sell touristy stuff – purses and these funny little ball things which flattened when thrown onto the ground, and slowly shlooped back into shape. Weird.

It was getting late by this stage, so went back to Zeus.  There was no rec-room as it was being done up. This was disappointing because ther was no where to hang out except our room.  There was also very limited and useless wireless.  It’s in a very good location though to all the toursity bits and pieces so that does make it very handy.

Tags: Athens, Greece, travel