Athens, Greece. June 2008.

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Hey Everyone,

Well after 35hours on three planes, via Hong Kong and Frankfurt, we finally arrived in Athens at 4am in the morning.

We found out when checking our emails in Hong Kong airport (we had a 5 hour stopover there) that the place we had booked to stay in Athens, we couldn’t check in at that time in the morning (how helpful!)
So we arrived, and were hoping that there might be a free room in the hotel just outside the Athens airport, but they were full, so we went back into the airport and there was a travel agent there who after trying a few places which were all full, managed to get us a room at a place in town.

So off we went to the bus station, where one of our first impressions of Greece people was the rude man at the ticket station who just gave us this disgusted look when we handed him a $50EU bill which was the smallest change we could get at the ATM after just getting off the plane, anyway, he reluctantly gave us change for the tickets which were a few euros each I think, so we jumped on the bus with our four backpacks and arrived into the centre of Athens where the place we were staying was only a small walk away.

As we were walking to our hotel we heard dogs barking, and as we approached one of the street corners, there were about 10 dogs, just wandering around, some half on the road, some just lying around sleeping outside this café, they all had collars and tags on, so they can’t have been strays, it was quite weird, their owners didn’t really seem to be around at all, they just seemed to be hanging around there.

We arrived at our hotel at about 4:30am and the first thing we did was have what felt like the best shower I’ve ever had after travelling for 35 hours! Then jumped into bed for a few hours sleep before getting up again to make the most of the free breakfast.

Then we had to checkout and say goodbye to luxury for who knows how long J and it was off to find our hostel/backpackers where we would be staying for the next few nights.

So we found our way to the metro, and jumped on, except I think the first time we got on the wrong one, so we jumped on the next one, which was packed to overflowing, and between that stop and the next one, probably only 30seconds after getting on, Ben realised his wallet was missing, we had like four backpacks on us, one on each of our backs, and one on our fronts, which were all padlocked closed, and Ben also had a small camera bag over his shoulder which was by his side, that had his wallet and camera in, we noticed that it had happened straight away, which was so frustrating, it must have been one of the guys around us, Ben was trying to talk to one of the guys, who couldn’t really speak English, (or he was pretending he couldn’t) because he thought it was him, but he emptied out all his pockets, and he didn’t have it, so we thought it must have been the guy that was behind us, who I think got off at the next stop, it all happed so quick, we kinda can’t remember. It was pretty frustraighting, since we were trying to be really careful about that kind of thing. So we just jumped off at the next stop and called the banks back home to cancel all Bens cards, so they didn’t really get away with much, it had some cash in, but not much, and the cards would have been useless. So after having only a few hours sleep in the past few days, the grumpy man at the bus station, then Bens wallet being stolen we were about ready to come home!

Anyway, we decided to walk to where we were going after that experience on the Metro, so we found the hostel where we were staying, and then when we came to check in they had messed up our booking abit, so after trying to talk to the first guy on reception, who didn’t seem to know what was going on, then another guy turned up, then he phoned someone else, and we spoke to whoever he was on the phone, anyway eventually got it sorted out, I was almost in tears! So we ended up being in a 4 room dorm for that first night, and then yesterday moved to our own room, which is nice.

Yesterday after a longer sleep we went to explore abit, and went up the acropolis, and saw all the ruins and stuff up there. There were heaps of random dogs and cats all up their too! Its strange! There are pictures on Bebo of them just sleeping by statues and wandering around, and we also saw a Turtle up there too! STRANGE! Wasn’t expecting that!

So that was yesterday, Oh and, I GOT BURNT! Not sure what the tempturature was yesterday, but it was nice and hot, and today its 30 Degrees Celcius! Mmmmm so nice!!! If Greek people weren’t so rude maybe I would stay. Haha, just kidding.

Today we went shopping at this big mall, which has heaps of levels and each level has a different category, shoes, handbags, mens clothes, accessories, ect, and then right at the top there is a food court which has big glass windows, and it looks right over the city, and you can see the hill with the acropolis at the top, it was really cool.

We are just back at our hostel now, trying to stay awake until tonight, yesterday we came back from the acropolis and were so tired after walking around for like 3 hours in the sun, we lay down to have abit of an afternoon rest, well that was at like 3pm, we woke up at 2am the next morning! Got up for a little bit, then went back to bed to try sleep until it was actually time to get up.

Anyway, that’s the news so far I guess, we are getting used to the time difference slowly, and starting to enjoy it here more, the weather is definitely a bonus!

Better go now.

Much Love to you all back home. There are some beautiful places here, but Nz is still always home! 😊

Rachael & Ben

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