Chaos in Athens

After Oktoberfest, Ann and I let Brian go back to work in Amsterdam while we traveled on to Athens, Greece. We had made the decision to go there about three weeks before the wedding, and I found out later it was all based on Ann's recent viewing of the movie Mama Mia. Well we got there, and... well, we definitely had an adventure, that's for sure.

We had decided before the trip that we would go back to our college days and stay in youth hostels to be cheap and to meet other travelers. We booked the hostels online and relied on the reviews of previous travelers to decide where to stay. This was mistake number one. When we arrived at the hostel, it was unclean, had no outlets in the room, and was far away from all the cool and interesting neighborhoods. Luckily we coughed up the extra 10 euros each to stay in a private room (for those of you who have never stayed in one, most hostel rooms consist of around 6 to 40 people staying in bunk beds), but it still wasn't great.

Well both of us were fine than the less-than-luxurious lodging, although I think that we are convinced that neither of us will ever stay in a youth hostel ever again (as Brian kept reminding us, we're not in college anymore). So we tried to make the most of our stay, and do the touristy thing, although the only real sightseeing thing we did was go see the Acropolis, which was interesting and very pretty, pictures of which are below. Other than that we basically just walked miles and miles each day to try and people watch and get a sense of the city.

We had an okay time - although we discovered that hummus is not in fact Greek food (don't ever ask for hummus in Greece - it's a sore subject for them), and we had a hard time getting away from the ultra-touristy restaurants because we didn't quite understand the neighborhoods or how to find anything.

Our opinion of the city really started to go downhill though when on the second day I put my Amsterdam debit card into an ATM machine and it decided to eat my card and none of the bank employees would help me. Luckily I had a few other cards with me, but it was a pain and I am now incredibly paranoid about putting my card into an ATM machine in Greece ever again - apparently this is not a rare occurrence there.

Then, on the day we were supposed to leave for the Greek Island of Santorini, we had an absolutely terrible time getting to the airport, an experience which has forever tainted my view of Greek public transportation.

Our flight was at 10:30, and the airport isn't close - it took us about an hour from the metro on the way to the city. Well, we had read that the metro system starts at 5:30 a.m., so we were planning to get up a bit early so we wouldn't cut it close.

The trouble started when I set the alarm an hour late (it was still set on Amsterdam time). Then, we ran with our suitcases to the metro station only to discover that the metro wasn't opening until 9:00 that day (what?!? with no notice or anything? I still don't understand how a major metropolitan city can do this). After that, we were a little frazzled but remembered reading that we could also take a bus to the airport. So we asked some people which bus went all the way out there, and the response was that "there was no bus going to the airport that day."

Okay... by this time, we were getting pretty nervous, because it would be a pain to miss our flight and frankly both of us wanted to get out of that hectic city. Since we had no other option, we decided to catch a taxi. But... there were no taxis. Or they were all full. We stood by the curb by a sign marked "taxi" with about 10 other people and watched taxis zoom past without stopping. We waved and waved but no taxi came for us. A few stopped, but when we said "airport" they had no idea what we were referring to so they left abruptly. Finally, about 45 minutes later, an empty taxi actually stopped and we ran up to it, flapping our arms like wings and pointing to our bags, saying "airport, airport!" The guy didn't speak English, but he got the point.

We made our flight - despite the fact that we were stuck in traffic the whole time and we arrived at the airport barely 45 minutes before it was scheduled to leave.

The moral of the story it that if you ever have a desire to go to Athens, make sure and stay in a decent hotel in a nice neighborhood, hold on to your credit cards, and triple check the transportation situation so you'll be able to make it to the airport!

The Parthenon (See all that construction? In 1975 the Greek government decided it was time to restore the monument, and more than 30 years later, it's still not finished...)

Beautiful views from the top of the Acropolis

And another view

Ann and I standing in front of one of the Acropolis monuments (I have no idea which one)

- Krista