From London to Athens and Beyond!

When we last left off, we were lazing about in London, sleeping in until 4pm, staying up all night, living the life of leisure… Yeah, that's changed. I'm typing now from a lovely hotel on the beach in Mykonos, but I don't know when I'll actually post this considering it's about $9 an hour for internet out here!

After a few gorgeously lazy days in London, chilling with Mal and Chris, meeting with Drew and friends, and living a life of leisure, we headed to Gatwick to hop to Athens to begin our Olympic Link touring adventure. Getting into our hotel at around midnight was adventure itself as the streets are poorly labeled and our hotel was in the shadiest of shady areas of the city. The rumors of cabs not going there after dark turned out to be true, and I now know the Greek pronunciation for just about every drug known to man, as it was all offered to me within 5 minutes of arriving in Omonia Square. But once we found our hotel, the front desk guy was helpful enough to order in some moussaka for us that was big and delicious and I burned my tongue fiercely on it.

We slept through my measly Filipino watch alarm and missed our free breakfast (but found out the next morning it was nothing to wake up early for), but we got up around 11a, several hours earlier than our London "mornings" so that was a plus. We hit the streets and Metro, heading to Syntagma Square, where video screens shouted propaganda for some upcoming election. We passed the Parliament building and headed into a huge park where there were playgrounds, post offices, ancient ruins and more.

After wandering across the park, we stumbled into the Olympia Zeus Temple ruins and managed to score a 6 euro student discount to the ancient Greek complex. Wandering around the huge columns was amazing, but I wished we had a guide to tell us more about what we were seeing. There were excavated home plots around the giant temple remains and we wandered for quite a while before heading out to Hadrian's Arch just on the corner, where the ancient gateway separated Athens from Hadrian's land apparently. (Again, a guide would have been handy there.

We broke for lunch at a local cafe nearby where we had interesting but small sandwiches, which was ok as we had dinner later and had learned our lesson after an unexpectedly big lunch in London nearly ruined our Wagamama dinner a night or two earlier. after eating we headed towards the Acropolis and the Parthenon, straying from the path to the museum to accidentally find the entrance. The slopes up the huge hill were mercifully low-grade, and we stopped several times along the way to see ancient theaters and temples. When we reached the top there was a breathtaking panorama view of the city, not to mention amazing Greek ruins, which were partially scaffolded due to ongoing reconstruction efforts. We looked down on Zeus's temple we had just left, and across the rest of the city. It was beautiful and fascinating and well worth the climb.

On the way back, we got a bit lost walking past local shops and cafes and wondered fairly far in the wrong direction before discovering that we had past the metro station only about 2 blocks from our walk's original starting point! We raced to our neighborhood, stopping at a few local stores to try and buy cheap t-shirts and shorts, as the weather prediction had warmed about 10 degrees Fahrenheit in just about every destination we were heading for. Sach and I each scored one plain t-shirt for 5 euro, but that was about it. We got back to our dive hotel, and beat the arrival of our tour group, so we hit the showers. As Sach finished showering, I met Louise and Brooke, 2 other add-ons to the group we were joining in progress, and then we got a call that the group had arrived.

We did our intros and paperwork, and joined the crowd of over 50 at this point (due to 10 new joiners and 10 people getting ready to end in a few day's time) for a short stroll to a delicious dinner. We sat with our tour leader Maggie from Slovakia (but with a mean Aussie accent mixed in) and driver Dines (short from Nadine) and a couple from Brazil and a girl from Mexico City. We met more people along the way and headed to the old town square after dinner. As people split off, we had no clue or direction, until a group announced it's beeline towards the gelato shop, where I ordered 2 overpriced scoops, admittedly mainly to make Soua jealous.

After that, we discovered it was Jamie's birthday the next day, so we tried to rally some troops to go out for drinks. We quickly learned that gathering any group was a hassle, but a guy called Blair declared he was walking up the road and grabbing a drink, and that seemed to spur people to action. Everyone got beers to go, and I snuck off with 2 others to buy out the only mixed bottled cocktails we could find - I had something with gin, lemon and ginseng - as we wandered around town. It was a fun jaunt and we ended at James Joyce, the local Irish pub, where a basic cocktail was 6 euros, and I resorted to drinking someone's leftovers rather than pay for a second. There was a guy playing guitar and singing and we socialized and had fun before deciding to find our way back home since we had a 5.30a departure the next morning!

After a tiny bit of sleep and a lot of tossing and turning, it was 5a, and we packed up, loaded our bags on the bus, scarfed down a rather dull breakfast, and piled onto the bus for the first time for the 40 minute drive to the port. We dropped our stuff at the bottom of the ferry, the headed up the escalator into a rather posh main room for the ferry ride. The waiters were fiendish about people sprawling out to sleep (I'd heard this warning from several people) but one we got underway and there was some spare room, we could sprawl out a bit. I passed out for nearly the entire ride, rocked by turbulent dreams that i've yet to fully analyze.

After the ferry, we were picked up by busses that didn't have room for all of us, so a small group of us waited at the port for the next round of buses to take us to our hotel. We got there and got our room - Sach and I had our own - and got briefly settled before taking a shower and a rest. I woke up and Sach had already wandered, so I met up with some others and headed down to the beach. Met up with the group, bought a liter of wine for 2.50 euros and laid out on lounge chairs chatting with everyone. Got a good buzz and retired back to our rooms for an hour and a half to prepare for our 8p dinner.

And that's where we are now… I'm a bit beach grubby, but fairly well rested and feeling good, getting ready for dinner and who knows what next. There's an excursion to Santorini tomorrow for 76 euros, but I don't know if it's worth the money to try to cram another island in instead or relaxing and enjoying the one I'm on. Sounds like it'll be pretty fast paced from here on out, so some down time is probably best.

Hopefully this will get posted soon, and my next update will be from Athens or Albania - my official country #40 in my travels! More soon! :)