Not a foggy clue

I was in charge of getting Dimps to the airport tonight, but also had a lot of other things that I had to get done too (trying to post just ONE travel post being one of them). So that meant that as soon as I was done cooking so that my Crazy and I would have dinner to eat when I got home, I changed and flew out the door.

Having watched the dismal weather move in all day, and then knowing that traffic was insane because of the conditions, I wasn't THAT fazed when I stepped out and found that it was incredibly foggy out. Nevertheless, I made my way as speedily and safely as I could towards Dimps' place, squinting through the fog.

Finding it was pretty bad, I turned on the ventilation to try to clear the mist. Without much result, I then hit the defog button. Still not much help. I let it be for a while, just keeping an alert eye on the road. Then at a stop light halfway to my destination, it dawned on me to try one more thing.

I cleaned my glasses.

A chorus of angels might as well have sung after I was done. Definitely solved the foggy problem. :S

Processing...

In trying to post my pre-written blogs from Europe, I've been sorting through the THOUSANDS of pictures that I took in order to hopefully accurately illustrate the story. But on my lagging laptop (still love you though, Jenny), picture editing and blogging at the same time is proving to take FOREVER.

The three posts I've put up so far have probably taken me a total of no less than 5 hours to compose, illustrate, and post. Ridiculous. So take it as a warning...these posts will probably appear slower than you (or I) would like, but let's believe that they're worth the wait.

And home again

A few Fridays ago, I received an email from SilentR:

...can I interest you in a trip? i found ticket to london 550, london to barcelona 50 bucks, barcelona to madrid 50 bucks, madrid london 50 bucks. 11 DAYS? what do you say? we leave monday?

We left that Monday.

The trip destinations were altered (as well as the flight prices!) by the time we took off. We flew through London to Athens, to Rome, to Barcelona, and then back to London before returning home just last Friday. This explains the bit of AWOL-ness and the lack of warning before leaving. But I'm back, with the stories and pictures to prove it.

And so, to catch up with the trip, I've decided to post everything with approximately correct dates. But I'm also going to include labels, so that they're a little more easily found. However, all this means that updates may not be noticed since the posts will appear in my past archives pretty quickly. Try to keep up, will you? :)

Triskaideka--what?

I don't know if the Catholics of Rome are superstitious, but I generally am not. So when SilentR and I booked our flight from Athens to Rome to be on Friday the 13th, I thought nothing of it. When we ran out of time to have one last Athenian lunch, I thought nothing of it. When we arrived at the Athens airport to find that our flight was delayed, I thought nothing of it.

But then SilentR mentioned the date.

    "Ooh, Friday the 13th!"

Then I thought a little about it.

When a heavily perspiring (and therefore, smelly) man chose the seat behind us on the plane, I thought a little about it. When we arrived in Rome to find that the Metro train line that we need to ride was down because a man had died, I thought a little about it.

When the lady on the bus kept SCREAMING AND RAGING in Italian for 25 minutes straight, I thought a little more about it. When the packed-like-sardines-bus ride took over an hour, I thought a little more about it. When the next bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, I thought a little more about it.

When we asked for directions three times without reaching our hotel, I definitely thought about it. When we finally found our place of lodging but then found the only supermarket nearby was closed at 7:30pm (5 minutes before we stepped in front of the automatic doors that didn't open), I definitely thought about it. And when we managed to select the most expensive restaurant for MILES and were seated while dressed like bums, well, by then I just gave up and gave in and went along for the ride.

Travelling on Friday the 13th, may have whooped our butts, but the food (and our perfectly shirted server) absolutely made up for it.

As it turns out, the tally wasn't THAT bad:

• Missed meal: still had time to snag a DELICIOUS piece of baklava
• Flight delay: only 30 minutes
• Perspiring man: only smellable when he moved
• Screaming lady: was finally told to shut up (I think) by a bellowing man--and everyone cheered when she finally got off the bus
• Train delay: well, that one hurt--what took us almost 3 hours by bus should have only been 20 minutes by train
• Bus ride to nowhere: actually everyone on board pitched in what English they had to get us off at the closest stop
• Bad directions: were actually accurate, we just didn't try hard enough to follow them all the way through
• Supermarket: I'd only wanted water and it turned out that the restaurant sold it really cheap
• Expensive restaurant (except for the water): worth every Euro

Sure, it'd been a HORRENDOUSLY long and tedious travel day that had us nearly throwing in the towel by the end of it, but after the water, the food, and the perfectly shirted service--no, really, the guy's shirt fit him perfectly--the walk back to camp (yes, we were staying at a campsite!) wasn't so daunting and our trailer (yes, we were staying in a trailer) actually seemed cozy.

It all comes out at night

Having no clue what Athens' layout was going to be like, we booked our accommodations based on 3 criteria:

1. price
2. proximity to major attractions
3. travelers' ratings/reviews

$41CAD/night just couldn't be beat, people had written they'd had nice stays, and it was only 2.5km to the Acropolis ("I can walk that far!"). Hotel Aristoteles it was.


It wasn't until after we'd booked the place that we bought our copy of The Lonely Planet and did any research on the different areas of Athens.

    "Where are we staying?"
    "Hotel Aristoteles."
    "What part of the city is that in?"
    "Uhhh, it says...Omonia, why?"
    "Uh-oh."

From the Lonely Planet Guide Book:

The area of Athens that makes up Omonia is known for its pickpockets, prostitutes, and drug-users. Women should avoid walking here alone at night.

Our flight arrived in Athens at 8:45pm. The bus ride into the city was an hour long. Shit. On top of that, we weren't even quite sure of the way from the bus stop to the hotel.

Off the bus, we got directions from a lovely girl at Costa Coffee ("If you take metro--10 minutes. If you use your legs--30 minutes.") and got as close as possible by subway. We were ejected into Omonia Square and from there, it was going to be pounding the pavement along the side streets.

Obviously massive travel backpacks on our back, obviously tourist maps in hand, and obviously the only East Asian females around for miles, we dove right into the thick of it.

Winding through the unfamiliar streets, the walk probably felt longer than it was. Whether it was me being the over-optimist that I am, or whether or not it was the truth, or whether or not I was too busy concentrating on getting to our destination, I didn't notice prostitutes nor drug-users on our route, and my pockets were definitely not picked. All the men on the street did seem slightly shady to me, but I wrote that off to not yet being comfortable in the foreign country. I did notice the Police station and the number of cops loitering outside on one of the street corners we passed ("See? It can't be THAT dangerous.").

20 minutes later, we'd made it safe and sound. We even ventured out again and back for that awesome first-night dinner. Sure, there was an overall feeling of shadiness to the area, but I was fairly convinced that the Lonely Planet's description was just to over-prepare newcomers and the more pooh-pooh type for the dark atmosphere. For me, after a night's worth of accidental exploration, Omonia wasn't so bad. The next morning, the streets were even bright and bustling with activity.

And then it was night again.

Night #2 in Omonia, all the shadiness came out of the woodwork. More familiar by now with our neighbourhood, we took the main streets to get around. One street north of the police station, we nudged each other, chin-pointing towards a group of women on the corner.

    "Hey, are those...?"
    "H-O-O-K-E-R-S?"
    "Yeah."
    "Yeah."

One street south of the police station, a group huddled urgently into a small doorway. I didn't see much, but that little was more than enough. I saw a little bit of arm, a little bit of syringe, and a little bit of plunge.

    "Did you see...?"
    "Yeah."
    "And did he just...?"
    "Yeah.

The next corner, a man brought something to this nose and snorted. Across the street, a man on a motorcycle slowed to admire the merchandise of women.

By the time our stay was up, we grew familiar enough with Omonia to know which nooks held the drug users, which side of the street had the African selection of H-O-O-K-E-R-S and which had Caucasian. We even grew familiar with the sight of the man in the matching tracksuit, zigzagging back and forth across the street, checking on his inventory.

Well, at least we didn't get pickpocketed. And hey, it's all part of the adventure. :)

Athens:1, Legs:0

We arrived in Athens late last night and after a deliciously simple dinner...


(authentic Grecian Tzatziki has changed my life; the Danforth will never be the same to me again) we came back to our hotel and I crashed hard...

"You fell asleep right away, huh?"
"Yeah. Did I snore?"
"Yeah..."

...but awoke the next morning ready to conquer the world. And we might as well have.

After breakfast down in the hotel
tavern (so simple and yet satisfying--and the COFFEE...!) we headed out on foot.

Jumping out of the metro (yes, it's also spelled "metPo" in Greek) at the Acropolis stop, we spent the early morning hours strolling the 5000(?) year old site. I was totally awed
by the architecture and carvings. I'd always heard of and learned of the ancient mythologies, but there I was, STANDING on the site!






I gotta say too: thank goodness for zoom lenses. Used it both to take superbly close-up pictures, and I could also inspect the otherwise detailed but too far away fresco carvings.




So we climbed up to the Acropolis and walked the entire site, circling each building at least once. Then we climbed back down (gawking at the crowds flocking up for the late morning shift). Just a short walk away, there was a random mini-mountain of rock.

"I want to climb that!"


And so we did.

We climbed the slippery rock to reach the top for an amazing view of the Acropolis and the surrounding views of Athens. Wow.



From there, we could spot several other churches, ginormous buildings, and another, real mountain.

"I want to climb that!"


And so we did.

But not until after walking to visit the site of the Olympic Temple of Zeus and walking to visit the Panathletic Stadium.


Finally, we wound our way through the streets of Athens towards our mountaintop goal. Without a map, we kept ourselves on track by making sure we were always heading uphill.

Oh man.

So it was uphill past (what we think was) the Prime Minister's house, uphill through the Yorkville-area of the city, uphill through some very narrow residential streets, and uphill some very steep stairways. Finally we reached...the bottom of the mountain.

Bottom?! All that uphill and we were only at the BOTTOM?!

Yup. And so our climb began. And it kept going and going and going. It was exhausting. But the views at the top--spectacular. When we reached the top, I forgot what all the complaining was about.



The landscape sprawling beneath us was breathtaking. Absolutely breathtaking.

After we'd rested up and had taken in enough of the Athens cityscape from above, we headed over to pay for the cable car ride down (for the record, we didn't know there had been a cable car to begin with). Turns out the car wasn't leaving for another half an hour--we we walked down.

Once we were off the mountain (Lycabettus was its name, by the way), we started to make our way back to the city--on foot, of course. Along the way somewhere, we decided to hop on the Metro to see the port area of Piraeus.

Um, besides the street sellers and behemoth ferries (because there were no beaches or views to be had), it was fairly a bust. We spent 1.5 hours walking around trying to find some cruise agency to book a day on the water. Finally, a little store owner took pity on us and called the agency from his own phone and let us speak to them.

    "Where is your office?"
    "Behind."
    "I'm sorry?"
    "Behind three blocks."
    "Behind what?"
    "Three blocks behind."
    "Three blocks behind what?!"
    "Behind."
    (oh geez)

By this time we found the right office, our feet burned...and we didn't even book the day on the water anyway. Instead, we walked back to the station and headed towards our hood on a restaurant recommendation from our Lonely Planet book.

Score.

The staion we got out at deposited us into a square and adjoining flea market. My fave.





Starving, we cut our strolling short to eat dinner at Savvas. Y.U.M. But starving as we were, we couldn't even finish our plates.


On our walk back to the station, we caught a glimpse of something fantastic.


Wow. The Acropolis by night.

The rest of the night in a sentence: walk, walk, walk, pass-out, walk, coffee, walk, creepy TV, sleep.

It was the return of my angry legs, but it was worth every step.

It should have had a button

Coming up on our 17th hour en route to our first official destination of Athens, Greece, I've hit a roadblock with time-passers. I have no urge to sleep, watch, listen, read, knit (well, they wouldn't let me on this flight, but I wouldn't have felt like it if I could have), so I've turned to writing. We're currently soaring high up in European skies aboard our bright orange easyJet plane. And easy it is.


Upon boarding the plane (from the tarmac), we found we didn't have seat numbers and were free to choose any two seats together. With frequent flight times there was no over-booking so SilentR and I got our own row. The plane itself is spacious with high ceilings/overhead clearances and wide aisles.

Simply delightful? Sure, but of course the simplicity of the plane didn't stop there. All food and beverage service was a la carte. There were no TV screens or audio systems. And the kicker? No reclining of the seats.

Overall though, I'm not complaining. I think the fact that it was so clean bowled me over enough to forget the rest.

Yes, 17.5 hours now, still en route, but yes, I would have to say that this leg of the trip was easy.