A series of unfortunate events... (Our eventful trip to Athens)

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Six young travelers try to achieve their dream of traveling to Greece. Plane tickets Paris to Greece just fewer than 100 euros, cheap hostels booked, a DREAM beach vacation. We packed our bags with summer clothes, bathing suits, and couldn’t wait to be tan.

It started out with my goodbye dinner with Maury (wouldn’t be seeing her for 15 days). We decided to use our frequent buyer cards to T-chips, because we each had enough stamps for a free kabob (we eat there too much maybe…) but since we were going at dinner time and not 2am like normal, the owner guy was there, and DENYED me my free kabob, since one of the stamps was not in the box! THAT’S NOT MY PROBLEM! What the heck! So I was so mad, but Maury was nice enough to allow me to use her card, so we each only had to pay half for our kabobs.
• Shannon lost her 170 euro sunglasses in her room while packing for Greece
• As she was bringing the vacuum back to the foyer after giving her room a good clean, it tipped over on its side, but she was so exhausted that she just continued to drag the vacuum on its side through the foyer and left it like that when she returned it. Desole Madame…
• As I was waiting at their foyer before our 10 pm night train to Paris, I became so impatient and nervous about missing the train (even though we were only a 5 minute walk from the gare) that I left the foyer alone and told everyone I would meet them there. Domi, and then Kate followed, laughing along the way, and we were all walking to the station in a line, all alone, dragging our suitcases to the station. Shannon was running late and Calvin stayed behind to wait for her…so they ran to the station after us.
• Upon arrival to the station, we find our train is going to be 40 minutes late, normally not a big deal, but this meant we would miss our connecting train to Paris leaving for Tours. This is when panic mode begins because we had a 6am flight to Athens out of Paris and NEEDED to be at the airport by 5am at the latest. Since we had booked the last train to Paris since it was much cheaper (only about 23 euro), we now had NO options on anyway to get to Paris because there were no buses or other forms of transportation until the next morning train to Paris. Therefore, our only way to get to Paris was from a TAXI.
• As our French friend Remi was nice us enough to help us out by figuring out our problem in rapid fire French, Shannon decided to get a snack to make herself feel better about the unfortunate events (unknowing the worst was still to come…). She placed 2 euro in a machine, and VOILA…the machine ate her 2 euro, so no snack for Shannon.
• Anxiety starts to stir, as we are all getting tired and really nervous and frustrated about how we were going to make our flight. Since we bought it from Easy Jet, a discounted European airliner, there would be no refunds and there is no option to change the flight. We would just have to buy new tickets, which by now would be well over 200 euro by now, and who knew if there was even another flight to Greece that day!
• After much discussion with the SNCF men, who were being really supportive and nice about the situation, we were told that we could be completely refunded on our train tickets (a whopping 23 euro), that we could take the train for free to Tours, and take a taxi from there to Paris since it would be about 150 kilometers closer to the city, meaning a cheaper taxi ride. We were quoted about 450 euro for the taxi that they reserved for us. So divided by six people wouldn’t break the bank TOO much. Just maybe not as many feta cheese salads upon arrival…
• Once the train arrived, one of the SNCF workers, lead us on to the JAM PACKED train where there were NO empty seats, crying babies, sweaty people, and homeless looking people with dogs sitting in the luggage compartments. The man tried to find us seats, but since ANOTHER SNCF man had our tickets with our seat numbers (still can’t understand WHY we didn’t have our tickets…), we were stuck with NO SEATS. Calvin and Shannon sat with the homeless man who was most likely on cocaine and sitting with the luggage, and I went all the way to the other side of the train looking for a seat. While in between cars, my purse decided to break, I cursed out loud, and bent over to pick up all my stuff that spilled out. Then a French soldier (who everyone knows normally I just LOVE) asked me if he could use my cell phone to make a phone call…I was like PAS POSSIBLE, desole…AHH. Afterwards feeling like a complete jerk, I send Domi messages cursing my life and that I needed her, so I went back into the car where she had found a seat and we hung out there, squished in a car where people were glaring at us because we were laughing/crying about our situation and some people were trying to sleep. Domi decides to tell us that she will be wearing 3 pairs of underwear in order to protect herself from Greek boys.
• “So guys, how will we know who our taxi driver is?” “Well, he’ll be the man awaiting us jumping up and down because he’s about to make 500 euro in one night!”
• We arrived in Tours, where our taxi driver was awaiting us. There were 5 girls, and one boy, and for some reason he decided to take Calvin’s bag and help him with his. WHAT? Hahahaha.
• Nice 2 hours drive to Paris, and we watched counter depressively as it quickly counted its way past 450 euro…all the way to 550 euro. WHOOPS it was only 100 euro under quoted. Great. Ended up paying 90 euro each. And that is the last time we will ever take a taxi to PARIS. And the last time we will ever buy the LAST train to Paris just to save ourselves 20 euro each. NEXT TIME, the expensive TGV please.
• Once we unloaded our bags and the taxi driver went off with all our savings we had for the trip, we turned to face the airport, where the airport security proceeded to tell us that we are not allowed to come in just yet, and need to go back into Paris and give the Eiffel tower a few more bisous, or “kisses”. We were all a bit too tired to really understand this, and there was NO WAY we were paying to get into Paris at 2 in the morning. But the men thankfully were just being funny, and let us in the airport without a problem.
• We somehow decided to sit in the handicapped section to try to sleep. Why?
• After an hour, and consuming all the cookies and food that we had brought, we decided to move upstairs where there were lots of empty chairs we could lay out on. Well, we tried to sleep. Fellow passengers were snoring loudly, so it kind of impaired any type of sleep we were hoping on getting before our flight.
• Flight: actually went pretty well, took about 2.5 hours and we landed in Greece!
• We took an overheated bus into Athens city from the airport, and then walked to our hotel through the busy roads with all of our bags. When we get to the hotel, in desperate need of refreshing ourselves and to get settled, the man behind the desk tells us that there was an error with our reservation (which we had made a good month and a half ago) and that we would need to be staying at a different hostel, just down the road from that one. He made a phone call, and tells us “Oh, that one is full; you will stay at a different hostel now, on the other side of town. But it’s easy! You just need to take the GREEN line metro a few stops, and you will be right there!” He apologized again, and said that the hostel was under construction and that he thought our room would be done by now. (As he says this…two men walk by us going up the stares with a large piece of plywood. For our room maybe?) So before leaving, we verified that we would have a room when we returned to Athens a few days later. He assured us yes. Apparently our room would be constructed in 3 days time.
• We lug our bags in the 95 degree heat to the metro and ask to take the green line to where we were going. The girl looked at us and said: “Oh, well the green line is closed today.” Shannon turns away from the girl and looks at us “Well, OF COURSE IT IS!” We all died laughing until it hurt, and the girl must have thought we were crazy. COULD ANYTHING GO RIGHT FOR US?!
• We ended us taking a bus to the new hostel.
• New hostel, first impression: GREAT. The man at the reception couldn’t have been a better looking Greek if we wanted him to be. And his accent: to die for. At least something was going right for us
• We had a 6 person room so we were all together - perfect! It was an old place, but not bad for one night!
• The bathroom was a bit gross…and small…but at least it was only one night.
• After freshening up we decided to go explore the city (just two hours behind schedule...). We wanted to walk to the highest point in Athens to get the best view of the city. On our way up the mountain we decided to take the off-beaten path. Why on earth we would do such a thing after the bad luck we were having I will never know…
• Walk is going well, until it gets a bit crowded with plants, and all of a sudden all of us were in crazy pain! One of the plants that we had walked by has ATTACKED US! It felt like crazy pain wherever it had touched us! Our legs, feet and arms! We started getting bumps all over us and wondering if we were going to possibly die in the wilderness of Athens. And our spots that had been attacked were really hurting us!
• The view at the top was amazing, and we could see the Acropolis!! All the annoyances we had been through in the last 24 hours seemed worth it to see such a famous place in our history.
• On the steep walk back down (we decided to take the PAVED normal path this time in order to avoid any further attacks from Greek plants) I was texting my friend Lee while walking, and as I was typing “unfortunate events, I feel down on my butt, and my phone started sliding down the hill, almost off the cliff!
• The view of Athens was amazingly beautiful. I listened to 300 music from the soundtrack of course, to make the moment. I can’t believe I am here! I am so happy and so lucky. Tomorrow we leave for Mykonos at 725am. The ferry will take about 5hours and 15 minutes. I can’t wait to be on an island and a beach! Although getting here was a killer it made for a good experience for sure. On Thursday when we return to Athens we will see the Acropolis and Zeus’ palace! Omg it’s going to be amazing! For dinner tonight we had kebab type things, so delicious. And a Greek salad, of course! Then we got some Greek pastries, we are going to become fatter I believe. I want Greek pizza! And more pastries~ the kebab was only 2 euro. Its so much cheaper in Greece than France, I still can’t believe I am here. It became more real when we saw the city view, it took my breath away. I feel like I already know I will want to return again to discover other towns and islands. I get so excited thinking about Greek mythology and that I am HERE in such important history. Time for some real sleep.. It’s been a few days. A plus!

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