Day 5 - Athens

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Today started early as I got a text at 6:40am from Sharnez to see if we were okay because we hadn't got to the hotel and she'd got our message on facebook.
We dragged ourselves out of bed, showered, and had our included breakfast; it was amazing. There was cereals, bread, tea, coffee, croissants, fruit and yoghurt and sqeezed-in-front-of-you orange juice. Delish. Mary went up to finish packing up her things and getting ready and i ventured up to Syntagma Station to meet up with Sharnez.
While I was waiting I was sitting on the side of a fountain outside parliament house in Syntagma Square. It was already quite hot, up in the 30's. I was entertaining myself watching the stray dog walking around; all of a sudden it jumped up on the side of the fountain (which would have been about waist height) and it started walked through it while having a few licks at the same time. So cute, poor thing was just hot. People walking past had a bit of a giggle at it then moved in their busy lives.
Sharnez arrived and we made our way back to the hotel to collect my bag and Mary. We chatted briedfly in the lobby before making our way (with a map finally) onto the streets and down the road to the Contiki Hotel, Plaka Hotel.
It was in the very hip and happening Plaka area. We walked past shops like Sephora, H&M, Mango, and various other shops before getting to the church, turning left and there was the hotel.
we couldn't check-in yet so we dumped our bags, grabbed another map and made our way toward the Flea markets. The markets weren't particularly cheap, but they had some nice things. I got a lovely pair of sandals, Mary got the same, Sharnez got a pair of thngs then we made our way in and out the little streets to see what else we could find. We stopped briefly for a drink then around another corner to stumble upon archeologists combing a cordined off area looking for objects or whatever they could find.
We then made our way back to the hotel to drop off the things we had bought. It was still too early to check-in so we made our way round to the shops we had earlier walked past. We had decided that we would have a relaxing day today and that with our two days at the end of our tour we'd do all our sightseeing in Athens.
We spent ages going in and out of the little shops as they all had sales on. After a bit we realised we could check-in so we made our way back to the hotel, dropped off even more purchases and then made our way back out to find somewhere to have lunch. We found a very cute cafe style place where we could sit outside but still get the air-conditioning from inside.
We ordered 3 meals to share instead of getting one each. We got:
- Grilled Vegetables served with feta cheese and fresh basil
- Fettucchine with smoked salmon
- Kebab with pita and yoghurt sauce

Personally my favourite was the Fettucchine with smoked salmon, it was so tasty. We also shared a strawberry tart which was amazing also. We sat there for a while, secretly, or not so secretly perving on the very handsome waiter before making our way further up the road to some of the other shops. Before we knew it the time was 6:00pm and we were on the way back to the hotel as we had to shower etc before our Contiki briefing meeting at 7:00pm.
Our tour manager is female, she is italian and her name is Ali. She seems lovely, so far.
The group is good, better than we thought it would be as we pictured a lot of 18 year olds but the average is probably mid twenties. A good mix of guys and girls, majority of them from Australia.. no surprise there.
We had our meeting and had about 45minutes to get thingns sorted before heading our for our optional dinner. We walked for about 10minutes to a lovely little restaurant set on the shady slopes beneath the Acropolis. We had a lovely 3 course meal including wine. it gave us a chance to get to know the other members of the group, all while being entertained by Greek dancers, singing and Bouzouki music. It definately made for a good icebreaker.
We made our way back to the Plaka Hotel at about 11:00pm where we hit the rooftop bar. we'd been up here briefly earlier in the day but at night it was even more magnificant.
The UNESCO Worl Heritage listed Acropolis was even more stunning at night. It is completely lit at night and it honestly looks like a canvas painting when you look our from the bar. Definately a sight to be seen. We staayed up here until about 2:00am talking to people from not just our tour, but others, in particular 3 boys from Melbourne who had just about finished up their trip. They were giving us tips from places along the way and we all just talked about crap for hours.
We got kicked at 2:00am where we (Mary, myself and 2 of the guys) made our way back to our room where it was freezing because we'd left the air conditioning on 16degrees. They couldn't get theirs working so they just stayed int here while we cleaned the room a abit and i downloaded my photos off my camera while we all continued converstations. We repacked our bags, kicked the boys out and finally got to sleep by about 3:30am.. for a 5:00am wakeup call from Ali.

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Comments

[Carl]

Wow, 3:30am to sleep, 5am awake! That's crazy! Hope you got some sleep on the coach!