To Athens
Trip Start
May 18, 2007
1
7
12
Trip End
May 31, 2007
Athens,
Greece
Thursday, May 24, 2007
The guys gave the car back and we got taxis to drop us and all our loads of baggage to the airport. We went there early because we thought we had way too much baggage. Clearly, not early enough. There were long lines at the airport, snaking their way till the entrance doors. It took ages to check in and then we were through to the really small waiting lounge. All the chairs were taken up and there must have been a hundred people in the tiny space. We had to settle for a space on the staircase leading up to the cafe. Luckily, little A made friends with a couple of old ladies who enjoyed playing with him and a paper airplane he had been carrying around. The flight was late and the wait was endless. The cafe floor had a balcony overlooking the landing strip, and there was a wonderful view of the sea beyond as well.
The flight to Athens is only 45 minutes, and we got some wonderful pictures of the islands while flying over the Aegean Sea. Weirdly, it looked like there was a magnetic attraction between clouds and the islands - each island was covered with clouds from top to tip but the sky over the sea was totally clear!
It took eons to find a cab at Athens airport, until an airport attendant took pity on us and ushered us into 2 large cabs. The ride into the city was endless - over an hour and a half - and the city looked as land as vanilla. It turned out there was some demonstration going on downtown so we had to take a roundabout route.
We had booked rooms at a Best Western Hotel in the heart of the tourist district. We pulled up at the hotel and got out to find a grim-looking building in a seedy neighbourhood. there was graffiti all over the walls, several men were hanging around in groups and drinking by the curbside, there was no sign of greenery and the shops had tatty merchandise. Everything looked terribly run down. This was not what we had pictured from a Best Western.
The surly receptionist checked us in, and M and I decided to head upstairs with the kids, leaving the guys to come up with the luggage. We offered to take a couple of bags with us but had to abandon the idea when the elevator arrived - it barely fitted the two of us and little A in! The guys had to come up one suitcase at a time!! The rooms followed suit - there was no space for the luggage. We had to pile the suitcases single-fashion and wondered how on earth we would get at a change of clothes. It was past four pm and we were all really hungry. A and C went out to get some food (no room service here) and I joined M and R in their room. The view from our room had sucked big time - it looked directly into the bathroom of a building next door.
The view from M and C's room was marginally better - it allowed a little sunlight in, though it was uncomfortably close to the living rooms and bedrooms of another building nearby. It took the guys over an hour to get back with lunch - pasta, tsatsiki, bread and some veggies - because it had taken ages to find a clean restaurant. Our hotel was a neighbourhood that looked like one shouldn't be out after 8 pm. We decided to explore other options for accomodation - this was clearly not a place that would help us enjoy Athens.
A and I got on the phone, checking out various hotels, from 7 stars to 5 stars to 3 stars, but they all seemed full. It was after our 25th rejection that we got lucky. A family hotel, Nefeli, in Plaka had rooms. We didn't want to make another bad choice so A and C eventually went to check out the place, accompanied by little A. Littler A in the meanwhile, had gone from a mild fever in the afternoon to a red rash which I panickily thought was measles before remembering that she had had all her inoculations.
The guys came back with good news - the rooms at Nefeli weren't much larger but the neighbourhood was much better. We could move there by 10:30 the next morning. We ate some more of the now cold pasta from lunch and went to bed early. The first day of our vacation in Athens was a bust, just like in Santorini, and we only hoped the rest of our vacation would be as good as our stay there had eventually turned out!
