All aboard for Greece

First off; 'Don’t miss your FIRST flight' would be a golden nugget of information to keep close to your chest, if you ever decide to travel the world. The first thing we did was miss our flight out of the UK due to... um... a mis-calculation on my part. I tried to blame the travel agent but I think I was the only person that bought that one! British Airways didn’t seem helpful at all. Luckily Trailfinders was in operation and they promptly re-arranged a flight for us to Greece for Monday morning at 6:15am. Not so lucky, British Airways demanded $250!! Being green travellers and not having learned good negotiation skills (even after a 12 week course in the MBA) I failed miserably to skirt around this and had to dig deep.

SO...we got to spend a surprise night in the UK in the Quality Hotel in Slough. Hotel was ok and close to the airport. I had spend a few weeks in slough a few years back with O2 in their test labs and really I don't think you'll find it on Lonely Planets top places to visit in the UK! We were up at 4:30am the next morning and got the bus back to the airport for 6am. This time; no errors. We caught the flight and managed to get emergency exit seats and all!

Greece was hot (about 37-38’) and unfortunately the bus managed to break down halfway into Athens! The driver didn't appear too bothered and this seemed like a regular occurrence to him.

Stayed in the Classical Acropol, which was very central & right beside a metro stop. Went off sightseeing, namely to the Acropolis. There are two important reasons to visit Athens. The first is the Acropolis. What would a visit to Athens be without going to the Acropolis?. The second is because you have to come here to get to the Greek Islands.

The route to the Acropolis was an easy walk. You climb up the hill (not a very big hill), and you walk around the buildings up there! The view of Athens from the top is pretty impressive.

Once that bit of the adventure was out of the way, we did what mostly everyone else does in Athens... sit around in coffee shops, which seem endless and join from one to the next like a social event.

There seems to be an ever growing group of the ‘idle class’ hanging around in coffee shops and I was becoming one of them. Life seems to exist on the streets as much as it does in the coffee shops. Business appears to be done on the street with vendors everywhere selling their wares.

Overall the city, I thought, was is a bit of a kip, what with Graffiti everywhere and lots of broken stuff... and when you remove the historical monuments there isn't that much left!

We decided the Greek Islands were all the rave and or so we heard! We moved down to the shipping port to try and organise a trip out. Checked into the Hotel Argo and managed to get some tickets booked for the following morning. Trying to figure out with the Greek tour guide which island was the best to go to was a challenge. He wasn't bothered one way or the other, and to be honest neither were we! Mykonos is the one which is most popular, so we booked a trip out there as our first stop... 5hr ferry ride to look forward to.......

Some trivia

• The first modern Olympic Games, held in Athens in 1896, saw 14 nations competing. All 245 athletes were male.
  
• Greece is one of only two countries to have competed in every modern Olympic Games. The other is Australia.
  

---

---