Very hard to wake up this morning. We had one goal - book the boats to the islands. If we managed to see anything of Athens at the same time that was a bonus. We checked out of the hotel and, with our luggage, headed straight for the nearest Starbucks and attemopted to lucate the Busabout travel agency on the map. We decided that bussing or metroing it, with all our bags, was too difficult, as Sirena with her cold was quite miserable also. So we decided to hail a cab to get to the travel agency that Busabout say you have to go to, in order to exhange your vouchers for boat tickets to the island (I had bought all my vouchers in London already). Now, it sounds the most straightforward thing, right? There are millions of cabs in Athens, all brightly coloured yellow. Unfortuantely, they do not stop for anyone. They slow down, wait for you to tell them your destination, shrug their shoulders (if youre lucky), then drive off. It was more difficult than finding an empty cab in London on a rainy Monday night during a tube strike. And Ive done that too!!
So, there we were, standing on the side of the road, taxi after taxi ignoring us, for about 40 minutes. Some taxis would slow down and we would shout into the window where we wanted to go and the driver would give us this "stupid tourist" glare, and drive off as quickly as possible. Wed noticed various other people had managed to get cabs, but they had people in them and we were very confused as to what the system was. Eventually, we approached a girl at a bus stop and asked her to give us a quick Greek language lesson .. we figured that we were pronouncing it wrongly. This appeared to work!! I affected a very stupid accent and after several more cabs stopping, one finally took us in. (Actually, I think we just barged our way in before he could drive off). And it had only taken an entire hour out of our morning.
Eventually we arrived at the travel agency were we spent some time booking sailings to Santorini, Ios and Paros. Not wishing to spend any more time in Athens, we booked the 10pm ferry to Santoini for that evening.
Took Sirena to the pharmacy to get her drugged up so she could at least breathe at night, poor thing. Decongestants, lozenges and aspirin. Next we took another taxi (we were experts by this stage) to the Plaka district again, where the previous night we had spotted a great looking hotel for the same price as the rip-off hotel we stayed in, and booked a room for the night we returned from the islands. We left our luggage there, and, as the hotel was only five minutes from the Acropolis, we spend a pleasant afternoon up at the Parthenon and Acropolis, and in the museum where a lot of the original statues (or at least what is left of them) are housed. I dont remember the museum from last time I was in Athens, but it was great to get some good shots of the famous landmark. Its dated from 420-450BC. Many stautues are missing or destroyed. I think there are some big ones in the British Museum also; I dont know why they wont return them.
Back at Plaka, a giant home-made ice-cream thick shake later, we did a spot of souvineer browsing then got the metro to the port. Where it was discovered that there were no sailings that evening due to bad whether out at sea. Oh shit. Nowhere to stay!! We queued for tickets the next morning at 8am, all the backpackers in the same boat (no pun intended)... needing a cheap place to stay that night. We wandered around the port looking for hotels.. of course - they were all fully booked out, the annoucement about all the boats being cancelled apparantly having gone out around 3pm, about the same time we left the travel agency. Sods law! We were wondering where the hell we were going to spend the night when out of nowhere a cab pulls up and the driver asks if we need a hotel and how much we were willing to pay. Going against all precautions, we jump in and he turns out to be pretty friendly... he stopped at various hotels in the area and jumped out with me and we tried to get a room for the night but they were all full. Eventually he drove us to a place he knew about 10 minutes away and bargained the price down on our behalf from 80 Euro to 60 Euro. I am pretty sure I can claim this on insurance though. I shook his hand and the two of us spent a fun evening at a pretty posh hotel dying our hair and doing our nails and being generally quite girly. :-)
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