CONTIKI - ATHENS
Trip Start
Apr 05, 2009
1
23
48
Trip End
Aug 12, 2009
Athens,
Attica,
Greece
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Today I woke up feeling the worst I have felt for the whole trip, although partly self inflicted. 1hr sleep, hung over and with a even more severe cold; maybe a bad idea to drink until 5am:) We caught a short ferry ride to the mainland. I feel asleep on the ferry, to be woken by Phil and I looked around to an empty ferry; whoops. We then travelled by bus for many hours, with a stop for the pharmacy and some more Giros. Once we settled into the hotel, a group of us walked around to find some dinner. We ate at a Greek place called Non Stop, which was great and I would definitely recommend it. Paula got pulled into one restaurant where the guy took her out the back and showed her a half a pig and a pile of potatoes and he said we could have as much as we wanted. It was quite funny. On our walk home at around 10pm, there were kids and families everywhere playing outside. It was great to see people, especially children, outside, instead of at home in front of the tv! After this we headed off to bed for an early night.
DAY 20 - ATHENS / ATHENS TO CAIRO
Today we got a bus tour of Athens seeing the different sites. The main attraction we stopped at was the Acropolis, where we had a tour guide. This was interesting to see. We also saw the Olympic stadium. I am not sure if I have mentioned it yet, but we are still doing the Michael McIntire skip at every place. It is going to be the best YouTube clip when it is done:) We then flew from Athens to Cairo in Egypt. 25 of our group are doing Egypt and the other 17 are doing the Greek Islands for the six nights. In Egypt we have a local guide the whole time. It should be wicked! When we arrived, we were taken to our hotel in Cairo. We then went on a dinner cruise on the Nile River. The buffet dinner and belly dancing were cool. But I was feeling far to sick with this never ending cold to appreciate it that much. After this we went off to bed, to be woken at 4am to the local Mosque prayer for 10 or so minutes. It was so loud, it sounded like speakers in the room. Egypt is a major culture change to anywhere else we have been. Cairo has a 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 because they are not covered up. The girls can rarely walk around without one of us guys with them. There is just so many differences and things that stand out that are different over here, it's awesome. Finally for this entry, there are guys with machine guns everywhere, security at all the hotels and security checks everywhere. Almost anywhere we go our bags are scanned and we are padded down. Defiantly a different environment.
