From the Pyramids to the Acropolis in 24 hours.

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The next leg of our trip involved us taking a flight from Cairo to Athens. When we arrived at Athens airport we had to figure out how to get to the city centre. When we were in South America we would have caught a taxi because it is cheap and it was not the best idea to ride public transport with everything that you own. However as the airport is a 50 euro cab ride away from the centre of Athens, this was not an option. Whilst we looked it up on the internet we were shocked to discover information booths and signs in all sorts of languages telling you how to get to the city centre, so we hopped on a bus and within half an hour we were smack in the middle of Athens.

We had heard many stories about Athens, especially that it was dirty, crowded, disorganised etc etc. What a misconception. Perhaps we have a different interpretation of what a dirty city looks like, but this was anything but. We found Athens to be a very livable city with great transport, lots of public spaces and a vibe that a lot of other places lack. I have been told that Athens has improved since the Olympics in 2004 so maybe that is where this misconceptions are from, however while we ate dinner looking over the ancient Roman Agora, from a tree covered court yard it was hard not to love the place.

We spent three days in Athens exploring many of the old ruins including the Acropolis, theatre of Olympian Zeus, the Roman Agora, the ancient agora and the theatre of Dionysis. The thing that was amazing about these places was the sheer age of everything. I suppose as an Austalian we are always going to be amazed when we find out things were built thousands of years ago.

Unfortunately for us the Acropolis was undergoing important restoration work meaning that the whole thing was covered in scaffolding. Although a bit dissapointing for us we perserveered on. Whilst a the Pantheneon we realised that in less than 24 hours we had been able to see the Pyramids of Egypt and the Acropolis... not a bad life!!!

We also spent a day exploring the harbour area of Athens. We then took a train up north to Thessaloniki, unfortunately we did not pre-book tickets and we just showed up at the train station. This meant that we were given standing tickets for a 6 hour train trip. Thessaloinki was an awesome city, unfortunately we did not spend much time there as it was only a stopover on our way to Bulgaria. We decided that since it was only a quick stopover we would find the cheapest accommodation in town. This we did with some help from our lonely planet guide book. It was clean but very very very very weird. It felt like one of those places that you see in a movie as the scene of the murder. It was also infested wih mosquitoes, we only got to sleep after Peter asked the guy at reception for a fan to keep the mosquitos at bay, the train ride the next day was quite good as we both did quite a bit of sleeping.

Unfortunately we had not planned to spend much time in Greece. So there will be no stories about how wonderful island hopping was (I am sure that it is awesome), however in the short amount of time we were in Greece we were able to conclude that Greece is awesome and we will definately be returning some time in the future with our yacht.

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Photos

The Patheneon at the Acrolpolis
The most amazing building site i have ever been to.

Acropolis
Triona was ready to give the scaffolders a hand.

The Ancient Agora
This is the ancient agora from the path to the Acropolis.

The Temple of Olympian Zeus
This is the area where the ancient sporting events

Our yachts
We just couldnt decide which one to take on our Greek Island trip so we thought it best to come back later.

The Patheneon
This angle has the least construction machinery and scaffolding.