Hotel Marie Athens

... Athens for liek a good half an hour! It was INSANE he has one of those zippy "****** rockets" I was NOT digging it at first but then it was cool but still a little nerve racking and I was waiting for some asshoel to cut us off or some dog to run out in front of uss and was thinking man my bair arms would rip APART on the cement that we are SPEEDING by- eh's telling em don't worry well go slow yeah ok I liek that.... 125 is NOT SLOW!!!! So got there and ...

... in other ways. But, if I recallcorrectly (and I might be wrong on the first one), I ran acrosss the Presidentof Costa Rica at the checkpoint out of Bethlehem, the Pope in Jerusalem (thoughhe wasn't actually there yet, that was just the preparations), the President ofPortugal in Nevsehir, Turkey, and now the President of Romania here in Athens.

I guess I don't understand why I haven't been invited tojoin any of them for a drink ...

... population of 15-20 million in just one city, almost that of the whole of Australia! So as you can imagine, there is lot of poverty, people forcefully hawking stuff everywhere and people willing to do anything for a buck. When you go to the toilet, you must pay. There is someone who gives you toilet paper, turns the tap on to wash your hands and gives you hand towel. The girls get A LOT of sleazy attention from the guys ...

... showering I felt sooo much better. I did my hair. And got dressed in some fresh clothes, and got Takis to drive me to town. He showed me different places along the way, telling me what islands in the distance were. He dropped me off and I started walking. I am so in love with Mykonos. I will definately be returning to that island. I instantly fell in love with the little streets, the water.. The smells and the sounds. The cool breeze. I went in to little shops, took a ...

... I think that will give you some idea of the magnitude of the place. The civil war that succeeded WWII resulted in a huge population migration of people to various parts of the world, most notable the USA, Canada and Australia. In recent time Athens has seen a colossal increase in population not only from people migrating from other parts of Greece but from Albania, Bulgaria and parts of the Middle East. This urban development has seen Europe's oldest city undergoing something of a ...

... The area is huge though as well. One thing that was funny was up at the Acropolis, when people touched something or sat somewhere restricted, plain clothed keepers? would blow whistles at them. So when I was walking through the Agora, there was nothing ever saying do not walk here or do not sit on this old statue, but you could here the whistles every few minutes, and I kept worrying that I was doing something I wasn't supposed to. Then I could never actually tell where the whistle ...

... to a local restaurant (at the receptionist's recommendation). The food was fabulous and we all swapped our Euro-travel stories... they were in Barcelona for the tomato fight thing... it sounded like tons of fun!! Tomorrow we are planning on sightseeing a bit here in Athens and then seeing if it would be possible to catch a ferry to Naxos in the afternoon/evening. We were thinking of going to a travel agency ...

... escape route. Turns out though that the campsite does not open until 25th June but they are friends of the French owner and he and his wife had driven from Germany to come here. They are letting us stay for 5 euro per night..... its fantastic, so quiet.... All we hear is the sound of the rolling waves and the birds cheeping in the trees.... Bliss... it makes the aching muscles worth every second. Sunday 10th June, 2007 Well here we are ...

... to worry on noisy tenants stomping on our ceiling. The bedroom is not very spacious, but the whole apartment was cozy and well equipped.








Look at the living room! A lot of the furniture seems like those from Ikea ;) There is also a TV for us to watch Rambo speak greek, haha.

... Strike! Out of non-dairy coffee whitener - Strike! So thanks to our friend Dia, our time in Athens was great - though not without a bit of diffictulty. On our last morning in the city I decided that I would go alone to the post-office to send a "Thank-You" package to my wonderful cousins who so graciously stored Tania's and my junk for a few months (thank you Stacy and Risha! Cool stuff coming your way soon!). I decided to go alone so that Tania could ...