Venturing into the City

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After breakfast this morning we made our way to the nearby metro station to go downtown. Once again, we weren't quite sure how things worked, though I seemed to remember you needed to keep the ticket to get off again - or was that Rome ? In any case, we bought tickets that turned out to be good for an hour and a half. I think this is a sensible system in that you could potentially do a small trip and back on one ticket.

Our first aim was to find a tourism office to get some info on a few things. In our guide book, there seemed to be one near Syntagma metro station, which turned out to be only a few stops away. The metro in Athens is remarkably modern and clean, having been built less than 10 years ago. It all seemed very efficient and easy to use.

When we got our of the metro station, it was relatively easy to find the tourism office, though they weren't entirely as informative as they are in some place like New Zealand, instead referring us to travel agents for some things. We were able to find out though, a bit about how to get to Kastoria, in the North of Greece as well as some details on city tours and taking a ferry to the island of Hydra.

Our next task was to find a guide book for Greece as our Europe book was a bit brief. I figured if we went to Omonia Square, the sort of Dundas and Yonge of Athens, we would find some book stores. We used the remaining time on our metro tickets to get to this metro stop.

Omonia Square is a bit of a seedy area, but it is where a lot of the backpacker hostels are. Unfortunately, we weren't very successful, only finding a handful of English books in the book part of a department store. We had a quick lunch from a sandwich store (I got to get a Greek feta cheese pie !) and headed off to the tourist area called the Plaka, which is below the Acropolis.

Walking from Omonia to the Plaka is quite pleasant as there is a “pedestrians only” street lined with shops. In a few locations, there are plexiglass covers over sections of old ruins that have been uncovered below street level. We popped into an interesting old church on the way, before finding ourselves below the Acropolis in the touristy Plaka area. Looking up, you can see the Parthenon on the hilltop above you. Here we found lots of stores with books on Greek Myths or the Acropolis, but no standard Greek travel book. As we were right at a subway station, we took the metro back to our apartment at Daphne.

Back in our own neighbourhood, I went out with Benjamin and bought him a pair of pants (he is quickly outgrowing everything that we brought with us) and then we settled into an afternoon of school work. In the evening, we rented “Get Smart” from the local video store( a whole operation in itself) and watched it on the DVD player.

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