But Now, Athens Wasn't Ready for the "Girls"

My trip to Greece - Athens Part Two - The Departure

Sad to leave the amazing island of Santorini, Dana and I boarded our final ferry in Greece, with the destination back to Athens. We opted to head back to Athens on Saturday as opposed to Sunday for 2 reasons: 1) Ferry schedules are unpredictable (that whole Greek time table thing is a little loose with keeping to schedules) and we wanted to be sure we got to Athens in time to see the Acropolis and make our flight first thing Tuesday morning, and 2) We had heard there was incredible shopping in Athens, so we definitely wanted to partake in a little of that! So, five hours later on the fast boat from Santorini, we arrive back in the port of Piraeus. Again, lugging our suitcases down the ferry stairs and then down several blocks to the metro station, we begin our journey to the hotel that we booked while in Mykonos (if you're remember I asked that you keep this in mind as it's the only part of the trip we actually made any sort of plan for). After a short metro ride up to the middle of the city, we get off at our stop, Omonia Station - only a few stops away from the Acropolis. Dragging our suitcases several blocks from the station to find our hotel, I again determine that I.hate. Athens. I hate it. It's a terribly dirty, disgusting, rude, ugly city. And it's even harder to like it after spending time in the islands. I hate it even more when we roll up on our hotel that we had booked, the Hotel Amaryllis.

The Hotel Amaryllis was in a shady part of town. It seems as if in Athens, you can go from decent to sketchy in only a block or two. This hotel was definitely on the dividing line of decent to sketchy. There were random men loitering outside, and we just didn't get a good feeling about the place. The lobby was deceiving, because once inside, it was fairly nice. So, we shrugged off any perceived misconceptions about the place before entering, and checked in. However, the lobby was the only nice thing about the place, and it got worse from there. Once up to our room, it was horrible. The room was straight out of the 70s, in need of a major overhaul, the AC was leaking, the shower was covered in mildew, and the balcony was across from some sort of apartment complex or condo where random people were sitting out and staring in at us. It was a nightmare for an accommodation. The only place we actually planned in this trip was a disaster after all of the good luck we had had to this point! We parked our suitcases and made a bee-line out the door, attempting to spend as little time as possible in this place. We walked up the street a block to grab some dinner at an outside cafe and strategize about what we're going to do about our accommodations.

At dinner (Greek food of course, and at this point, I couldn't be more over Greek food), we glance around and discover that we're eating at a restaurant right across from a place called "Girls, Girls, Girls" with posters of large, bare-breasted women and bright flashing lights. Nice. Very classy. However, it did provide a little entertainment and comic relief during dinner about our situation as we tried to guess what guys would stop in as they approached the place, and timed how long the ones that entered stayed in there. During dinner, we decided to walk around the city, now dark, to check availability and pricing at other hotels. There was just no way that we'd be able to spend more than one night in Hotel Amaryllis, let alone the 3 that we had already booked there!! We wandered around the city, walking in and checking several hotels that looked much, much nicer, and found that either all were booked up (there were 3 conventions in town), or all were WAY out of our price range. As luck would have it, we did find one a few blocks away called Illion Hotel that was in our price range and had availability. We went to look at a room and it was very nice and very clean. We told them we'd be checking in in the morning, as soon as we got out of our current accommodations!!

We spent that Saturday night at the dreadful hotel we had already paid for for the night, but neither of us got much sleep at all. First thing the next morning, we called the travel agency in Mykonos where we had booked and paid for this hotel and told them we needed to cancel our accommodations at Hotel Amaryllis and that we would be checking in elsewhere. As soon as the guy called us back saying our credit cards would be refunded and we were released, I immediately called Illion Hotel to make reservations. The girl asked when we'd be checking in and I told her 15 minutes! Dana and I did not pass go, we didn't collect $200, we packed our bags, threw on some jeans (no showers, are you kidding? We were cleaner without one than if we had gotten in that gross one!), and headed straight over! When we got there, the girl at the counter laughed when we told her what a rat hole we had come from.

After our check in, we start out towards the Acropolis (click here if you're into the history of the Acropolis) several blocks away. For whatever reason, we came on a day when it was free to enter, normally a 12 euro ($15) entrance fee! We didn't complain, that was the kind of good luck we had all trip! So we start the walk up the Acropolis (the "Sacred Rock" that holds several ruins dedicated to Grecian gods including the most famous, Parthenon), and on the way up we see several ruins along with the Thission temple scattered through the city at the base of the Acropolis. A little further up towards the Parthenon, we passed the Theatre of Dionysus and Herod Atticus Odeum. At the top, we pass through the Propylaea which is the entrance of the Acropolis, with large columns and huge marble steps. It's amazing to think that we walked in and among ruins that had been there since at least 423 BC or earlier! On the other side of the Propylaea stands the most famous of them all, the Parthenon. I'm not a big history buff, but the magnitude of this building, the age in which is was built, and the detail in the frieze was amazing. We walked around the backside of the Parthenon and found the Erecthion . We also went into the museum there and saw many different carvings and murals in stone (pictures on flickr.com if you're interested). By far, seeing the Parthenon up close was the best part of Athens, and really in my opinion, the only reason one would need to visit this unimpressive city. After our walk through time, we shopped in the various shops and flea markets in the Plaka. There I bought a beautiful throw and some jewelry as keep sakes from my trip. Much to our disappointment, the regular stores were closed on Sundays, so we'd have to finish our shopping venture on Monday after we did a little window shopping that afternoon. We made our way back to the hotel to freshen up for our first night out in Athens (which by the way, on the way back I was flashed by some old and creepy Greek guy - ewww!).

After showers and primping for the night, Dana and I had on the last of our cute clothes and were ready to see what Athens had to offer by way of night life. Dana wore a short, sexy black dress, and I had on a sexy, low-cut black top and black pants. Here inlies our mistake. I guess Dana's legs and my cleavage were a shocker to the men of Athens (all I can think of is that most European women are typically small-chested and maybe the men of Athens weren't ready to see "the girls" in the shirt that I wore). As we walked down towards Monistiraki Station where all of the cute cafes were, we had several honks from cars passing by, cat calls, and had one man distinctly say, "Je-sus Christ", as we walked past. I started feeling a bit self-conscious in our choice of clothing with all of the attention we were drawing. These weren't clothes out of the ordinary, these are things that girls our ages would typically wear on a night out, but for whatever reason, we were causing quite a stir. At one point I even asked Dana, "do you think they think we're prostitutes?" We were almost to Monistiraki Station, and didn't have any other clean clothes to change into anyway, so we kept on.

Once at Monistiraki Station, we decided to eat at an outside cafe there in the midst of all of the action where we had an Egyptian guy wait on us. He was so sweet and so nice. Everytime he'd come to check on us, he'd stand and talk to us for several minutes, telling us how to be safe in the city. He was surprised to learn that neither of us had boyfriends back home and told us if he weren't engaged already that he'd snatch us up! At one point, he stroked my hair and said I was "200% beautiful." Can't beat that! It was cute (this trip was doing wonders for my ego). Then he began to give us dating advice, which was pretty funny in his broken English! It was fun flirting with him, and in the end, extremely financially beneficial, as our meal, consisting of an appetizer, 2 entrees, a dessert, and 2 carafes of red wine only cost us a total of 19 euro ($23), which by my estimations from the menu pricing, should have been at least double that! That night while on the way home, the city went nuts with people crowding the streets, traffic-jams, honking, singing, and Greek flag salesmen on the street corners and everyone waving Greek flags. When we got back to the hotel, we asked the concierge what was going on and apparently Greece had won the semi-final European basketball game, sending them into the finals against France the next night. It was fun to watch how excited the city was about their team, but they kept us up the rest of the night with the honking in the streets!

Monday, thankfully our final day in Athens, we went to the major stores that were closed the previous day and looked around. But we found the shopping in Athens to be a big disappointment. Coming from a major city with all of the major stores, there wasn't much that Athens could offer us that Atlanta couldn't. And, with the euro exchange rate, it didn't make sense to buy clothes in Athens. So we decided after a few boring hours of shopping, buying very little, to get out of this city we hated and head back for the water. We figured out the tram system and headed south for the Sarconic Gulf. We spent the rest of the afternoon at Vola Beach as our last chance to enjoy the amazing blue water that we'd miss so much. That night, we took a few clothes to a laundry mat so we'd have something clean to wear on our long trip home (our clothes were smelling really rough at this point), and when we returned to our hotel, we watched the last few minutes of the basketball game to see Greece win the European "Super Bowl" of basketball if you will, and again, the city erupted with excitement. We weren't able to join in the celebrations because we had to be up and out of the hotel by 5am the next morning to catch the metro into the airport for our flight home.

Amazingly, we made it up and out of the hotel on time (neither of us are known for our punctuality), and to the airport for our flight into Frankfort, Germany. Our flight into Frankfort was late (that Greek time table again), so we had to run a marathon through Frankfort's airport in order to catch our flight back to Atlanta. We were among the last to board our flight, thankful to have made it at all (otherwise, we would have had to spend the night in Frankfort to catch another flight the next day). On the flight, we sat behind some men that had been in Germany for 2 weeks, so we exchanged stories and pictures with them. Also, due to a weather system in the Atlantic, we had to fly further North then usual, and flew over Greenland! I have pictures that I took from the plane because I figured I'd probably never make it back to Greenland again. It was a vast country of mountain peaks, snow, and ice, but it was pretty cool. 13 hours later, we landed in Atlanta, ready to be back where everyone spoke English, and there were more food options other than Greek. We had a fabulous trip with memories to last a lifetime, hopefully well documented here for me to look back and reminisce.