Day 4 - London to Athens

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Woke this morning at about 5:30am as the sun was just starting to hit the window. Took some photos of the very beautiful sunrise then went back to sleep until about 7:45am when i got up and decided to shower and pack up the rest of my stuff. I got to take my time this way and now be rushed come check-out time at 11:00am. I made sure i had all my batteries for my cameras charged then made my way down to the lobby to use the net.. but it wasn't working so sat in the hotel lobby 'people watching' until Mary showed up. The Royal National Hotel where we are staying is extremely busy. People coming and going all the time. It is commonly the 'Contiki Hotel' as this is where they all leave from but there was people of every age coming and going. The hotel is huge, there is a north and south wing which then has rooms on 7 floors also passing over the courtyard that connect the two. They are very organised though, and you never have to wait long to either check-in or get assistance from the concierge.
We had our breakfast then made our way back to our room. Had a bit of a snnoze then I made my way down to the shops to try and find something to put on my ankle. The only thing was that it was only 10:30am and the shops on a Sunday don't open until 11:00am so I sat in the courtyard of the shopsin the sun for 30minutes. The shops finally opened, I got my deep heat and made my way back to the hotel where we finished getting ready, checked-out then jumped on the tube to head to Heathrow Airport for our flight to Athens, Greece.
Because of our check-out time we got to the airport with about 3.5hrs to spare, had to wait about 30minutes before we checked-in, made our way through the gates and to have some lunch at one of the retaurants. We wasted a bit of time there before finding out that our flight was delayed about 45minutes, which was a poo as we we're already getting into Athens late, this was just going to make it even later.
We got in to Athens and yes the taxis were still on strike so we jumped on the bus to the last station stop where the guy at the airport said that we should be able to get a metro from... got out there... no metro at this time of night. We asked some one else for directions bacause we didnt evne have a map and he offered to drive us there which we very politely declined. We then made our way over to a group of police who were lovely and started to give us derections but as it was already after 1:00am thye suggested it would be a very long, and kind of dodgy walk so instead we walked about 100m to the first hotel we saw and just checked-in there. We had spent so long doing nothing today that we were exhausted and had enough.
The problem with all this was that Sharnez, one of the girls from the Contiki that we start tomorrow was waiting at the other hotel for us and I'd not been successful getting on to her. Argh.. stupid taxi drivers making things difficult!
At least we ended up in a 4 star hotel. Very nice, for a good nights sleep before we now work out tomorrow how to get to the next hotel!

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