Athens

DAY ONE

We caught the bus out to the airport with fellow Croatian sailing friends, were we chatted and waited to board our plane at 12pm.  To get to Athens we needed to connect with another flight, the check in lady told us to collect our next boarding passes at the Rome terminal.

Once we landed in Rome it was a rat race around the Rome terminal to try and find where we were to get our boarding passes from.  We ran from one terminal to another being told a different story each time.  Eventually with not much time to spare (the lady told us the check in had just closed) we got our boarding passes.

Our plane ended up being delayed by about an hour . . . . typical!

Once we had landed in Athens we made our way on the subway to our accommodation.  The lady really like Mike, and keep calling him “Michelle”.  That night we went out for dinner which was such a bargain, we handed the guy over what we thought was 20 Euro and he gave us 35 Euro change, thinking we had given him 50 Euro.  We didn’t work this all out until we re-evaluated our finances back at the hotel and confirmed we had in fact handed him a 20 Euro – better than winning lotto!

    The view of the Acropolis from our hotel balcony

DAY TWO

We had a much needed sleep in and then ventured out into the hot sticky climate to see the Acropolis after meeting up with Josh and Pip.

  

Once we had endured the steep climb up to the Acropolis it was an amazing view of Athens with some great ruins.

After descending from the Acropolis we looked around the shops, which had 50 to 70% sale signs!  We assume this is due to their crashing economy.  To Trace’s disappointment most of these were shut due to it being a public holiday.  However, we did manage to purchase some rain proof jackets, marked down from 70 Euro to 20.

Street View of Athens

After that it was back to the hotel for a rest and to escape the heat for a little while (air con set to min temp and max fan!). 

Good marketing???? Mike loved it!

We had our final dinner with Josh and Pip before we waved our fellow travelling buddies farewell.  A tear or two were shed.  A part of us wished we were going back to NZ, we miss you guys!!!

 

Now the adventures of Mike, Trace and Tiki (Josh gave this to us, to look after us) begin . . . . .