Time out - Athens

Upon arriving in Athens Kostas came and picked me up from the city, he lives in a suburb called Kareas on the edge of the city beside a forest on the mountain side. Athens city is in a huge valley between two mountain ranges, we headed up the mountain to a perfect view over the whole city to watch the sunrise over Acropolis, it was quite spectacular and something I will not forget anytime soon. Because of the winds the previous night the sky was perfectly clear and I would find out later that I missed a rare photo op since I didn’t have my camera with me. Most days you can barely see acropolis and cant see the mountain range opposite because of all the smog :(

That afternoon I headed into the city to meet up with Jim who had flown in for the weekend to meet me. We had a fantastic lunch catching up and a few beers wandering around the city checking out the markets and buying cheese pies. I was supposed to go out to a party with Kostaz late so headed back to his place for a quick nap. The bus system was not very user friendly and it took me ages to find out where i could catch a bus back to Kareas, I must have been tired because Kostaz couldn't wake me easily so I ended up having an excellent long sleep.

I was up early on Saturday and thought it would be a good opportunity to call a few people back home, though most people were out! I headed into town to the Acropolis to meet Jim, got lost and was late so we both walked around in circles looking for each other. The Acropolis is quite amazing, such a huge rock sticking up right in the middle of the city giving excellent views in all directions. And as a popular tourist spot it was PACKED with people, and as with most ancient ruins it is permanently under construction or restoration which takes a bit of shine off the experience. I was also a little dissappointed to find that a lot of the original stone work is actually sitting in various museums and been replaced with molded pieces. It made me wonder how much of the original structure was actually still up there? It was also interesting to note the whole things has been dismantled, documented and 'restored' 3 or 4 times already! Its a never ending process.

We headed back into town for lunch at the world-not-so-famous Antonias Souvlaki, which is basically an unmarked hole in a wall where we guzzled double chicken gyros and beers each which were so good we decided to make it a double double and had a repeat offence second round. Feeling pretty full we waddled to the Temple of Zuess only stopping to grab huge 4x4 double cone ice creams (it was a sign!) that we really didn't need and struggled to eat. After all that food and the afternoon heat we went into a park and had a sit down with the dogs to have a few beers. There are quite a few wild dogs in the city, apparently there used to be a lot more before they culled them for the Olympics, they are all very tame which surprised me, and have an interesting relationship with the locals where they are fed and well tolerated.

We went our seperate ways to have showers and met up again later in Psiri, the party part of town where there were hundreds of people all out on a Saturday night. We wandered around the bars and squares and concluded that there are a lot of hot Greek girls in the city!

Sunday morning I spent with Kostas friend Apollo drinking turkish coffee and talking, i also quickly discovered that nothing is open on a sunday afternoon. Kostas came home from work and we rode the duck to a friend of his, Dimitris where we met Apollo, Manos and Eleni, we chilled out and watched 60s psy-rock of all things. I got an exciting ride home with Manos on his Enduro 450 2-stroke, perfect bike for Athens bumpy roads and great in the mountains he tells me. It was a good night with the locals and reminded me a lot of my university days since they were all studying.

The next two days while Kostas went to work I spent sleeping in, catching up on emails, blog, and planning my next stint of travel so i could book cheap flights. It was a time out I really needed. I cooked dinner and we hung out in the evenings, and one morning went up to the mountain for a very relaxed coffee in a forest cafe. Many thanks to Kostas for putting up with me for 6 days, it was good times! It was on my last day as i was updating my diary i realised i had been in Greece for almost a full month! I had to move on but was stopping at one last island on the way to Italy and it all started with a nightmare 8hr night bus from Athens to the Pink Palace on Corfu...

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