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The 8.55am flight from Mykonos is scheduled for a 1 hour flight and after 30 mins we had landed at Athens so we are in Athens and off the plane with bags at 10.00 looking for the metro station, finding this was a piece of cake and then it went downhill after that. Went to the counter and asked for 2 tickets to the central station and I was told 14e from the first surly, pooh faced Greek woman I have met yet, typical government worker piss poor attitude, it made matters worse when I complained at the cost and then she handed me one ticket only and I reminded her I wanted two, rudely she snapped it is for two expecting me to be able to read Greek. Now by and large I am polite and tolerant but I was getting peeved, with the ticket in hand we went to work out which train and where to catch, arrows pointing all over the place and no recognisable place names for a hint I went back to the rude bitch and asked for a metro map, a reasonable request you would think from a couple of clearly confused tourists. Well no
this seemed to be the last straw as she gesticulated wildly and yelled “no maps get from information”, so I quietly went to the information desk and asked for a metro map, not to be outdone this other woman told me, very politely that they have no metro maps at the metro station and you can only get them from the airport where we had just come from, very strange methinks,, no train maps at the train station, well we are in a foreign country. Not really wanting to walk all the way back to the airport and risk being told again “no maps, no maps: we asked the information lady, who seemed to be the lesser of two evils how we might find the right train. She finally pointed us in the right direction. Arriving at the platform we had two choices pf trains and with no bloody map it was hard work, we selected 1 train that seemed to be right and hoped for the best. After 4 stops we decided we were on the right train, you see there was a branch at stop 3 where the other train swings away to point’s way farther afield, so
comfortable we were on the right train we sat back and relaxed as the train got fuller and fuller at each stop. Our stop was Syngtagma station, town centre and the next issue was our cases were back in the train some 10m and this train was full, and I mean full, if lots of folk did not get off we had no way of getting to our cases. The stopped arrived and the doors opened and it seemed like no one was getting until finally some movement, pushing through and against the crowd we made the luggage rack, grabbing the cases, Pam got off first and as I was getting my case down the train doors started to close, doing the only thing I could think of I chucked my case in between the doors and hoped for the best. It did the trick and I managed to slip out between the doors, a very close thing. From the station it was only a short walk to our hotel and after getting settled it was off to “familiarise” with Athens. Wandering the streets close to our hotel we stumbled onto Hadrians Library circa 200ad a fine set of ruins
and the first we have seen in Athens. There are more eating places in Athens per head of capita that we have ever seen, there are literally hundreds, mostly outdoor gardens with trees or umbrellas for shade and a vast array of food, you name it, it can be got. Our hotel is in Plaka which is the old town and has been the centre of Athens for close to 3000 years, also it is the main tourist area and close to all of the main sites in Athens. After a wander around we had dinner and back to the hotel for some rest.
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