It's All Greek to Me
Trip Start
May 17, 2009
1
19
26
Trip End
Jul 02, 2009
Glyfada,
Attica,
Greece
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
So Bekah and I have already managed to have a Greek adventure! We arrived around 6:15pm in Athens airport and from the looks of things from the air, it has a strange resemblance to Arizona! We were excited to hear it was a warm 27 degrees Celsius when we landed, a nice change after our freezing day in Rothenburg yesterday! Anyways, we picked up our bags after waiting to be one of the last bags that popped out onto the carousel and we knew we had to take a specific bus to a stop where our hotel was. So we figured out how to get a ticket, where the bus was, and hopped on. We knew which stop we wanted but the bus doesn't exactly announce its stops. So we had to search out the window at each stop to see where we were. Problem: all the bus stop signs were in Greek and didn't help since we only had the English version. After we felt like we had been on for long enough (nearly 50 minutes), we got off at a place we guessed on. Turns out, we should have stayed on for 5 more stops. "Oh well, " we though, "another one will come in 10 minutes." 10 minutes passes and we see the bus approaching. We stick out our hand to have it stop and the driver just motions forward and doesn't stop. We didn't have a clue what that meant so we walked to the next bus stop thinking he meant to have us go there. We waited another 10 minutes. Another bus approached and didn't stop. By that time we assumed that that particular airport express must not pick up people. We saw a nearby train station and thought we'd just take that the rest of the way. We took a guess on the ticket and the stop and took that to go two stops farther. We knew we had to be close to the hotel by the time we got off the train, but we didn't know where it was from the train station. By this time, we were pretty tired of carrying all we own on our backs. We wandered around, trying to find street signs and Bekah pulled up a little map on her phone but the English words don't help with Greek street signs. Eventually, we saw a park next to us that looked like the one on the map, walked down the street, and finally got to our hotel around 8:30. What an expedition to get here! We were so glad to drop our stuff after walking in circles. After our nutella and bread dinner, we walked out to the gorgeous Greek beach which is about a 2 minute walk away. We're staying in Glyfada, right outside of Athens and we let the waves crash on our feet as the sun finished setting. So relieved to finally be in beautiful Greece!
