Europe Day 20: Athens Part Deux

Heat Stroke
So it seems both of us had a worse case of heat stroke than we originally thought. While I was nowhere near the state H-Rabbit was in, I think I was pretty done in as well.

We slept long and late into the morning and missed our free breakfast from the hotel. We also realized we missed the chance to miss the heat. But after slowly making our way up and at-em - we figured we’d already missed out on a night on the town last night and didn’t want to pass up today – so we had to get moving.

Walk About
While there was lots left to see and do in Athens tourist-y wise – we really weren’t too interested in seeing much more than the Plaka at night – so we figured we’d take a chance walking around the upper part of town for a little while until we couldn’t stand the heat. After, we’d then head back to the hotel to get ready for leaving tomorrow, before heading back downtown in the evening.

Athens… the beautiful?
In walking around – we realized we were much further up from the downtown core than we had originally thought. The heat made walking quite a task. We also realized that Athens wasn’t exactly the awesomest city we’d been to so far – and most definitely not the safest.

In passing by the Polytechnic Institute that we were close to – we had to pass by a fleet of winos with their stereotypical alcoholic bottles in brown bags... only to run into two men throwing open needles at each other across the sidewalk. We quickly made our way to the other side of the street and vowed to remember not to walk back that way again.

As we wandered, we noticed that the city was also extremely dusty and dried out – and well – dirty. I was actually quite disappointed and depressed at it all. It wasn’t exactly the European city experience I wanted to remember as my last. There was so much trash lying in the streets, and the buildings were falling down all around us. Grime lay everywhere and everything felt like it was asleep.

Escape the heat with a Gyro
After an hour or so - the heat was just getting too much. We decided to just quickly find the two things we still needed – lunch and another luggage bag for souvenirs – and then it was time to get back to the hotel.

Finding a place that sold bags that were useable as luggage proved a bit difficult – but we finally came across a small store owned by an old gentleman and his wife that sold sports bags. They were very nice and helped us get what we needed. They even helped us with our broken “pleases” and “thank-yous” in Greek (Parakalo and Efarysto)

After that we jumped into the first decent looking place advertising gyros. We grabbed some cold pops, our gyros and sat to relieve our returning heat stroke.

Packing, packing, packing
We’re now back at the hotel. You would think after weeks of packing and unpacking this last pack would be an easy task, but to get everything in where we needed it to be, it required a full overhaul of everything that we had brought and bought.

We ended up leaving a lot of crap we no longer needed behind – hopefully it went to some good use – but I’m sure it just went into the trash.

Now that we were packed and ready – we were finally cooled down enough and relaxed enough and prepared for a nice night on the town.

Plaka! Athens… this time actually beautiful
We managed to figure out how to make our way into the downtown core by bus and arrived early so that we could look around the Plaka area both in the light and in the evening. We weren’t sure how long things were open for – throughout our time here everyone had been giving us different times when things would close down so we wanted to make sure we didn’t miss anything.

We spent most of the night picking up all of our leftover souvenir needs. The Plaka area is absolutely wonderful and beautiful and exciting and energetic and more than made up for my disappointment in the city earlier in the day. It is too bad that the city most clearly only keeps this area in its good standards due to its touristy nature, and doesn’t give the same attention to the rest of the city.

I didn’t notice it yesterday when we were walking around – but the Plaka is directly beside the walkways and entrance to the Acropolis, and while walking we encountered many a remnant of ruins and old historical sites in and amongst the many shops and restaurants. It only enhanced the beauty of the area exponentially.

After walking in circles and circles throughout the area (without actually walking along the same paths more than once because there’s actually that many places to get lost in) – we figured it was time to settle on one of the awesome restaurants for our last monster European meal. The restaurant we picked was small and we actually had our table set up for us in the middle of the road! A cop car even made it’s way through all the tables and past us to get by (thankfully no other types of cars make their way through the area).

Delicious Greek Food – Good for the tummy
The meal we had for dinner was nothing short of spectacular. I absolutely love Greek food and we finally got to enjoy a meal without the hassle of the tour, or the time constraints of needing to be anywhere at any particular time. We got to try a lot of dishes and just relax and spend a nice evening in the atmosphere of a lively Mediterranean evening.



Wish it didn’t have to end
We took our time about getting back to the hotel – and remembered to make our way out back to the main roads to not get ripped off by the Plaka taxi drivers. They charge tourists twice as much as it should really cost to get back to their hotels. The drivers inside the Plaka were quoting us 50 to 80 euros to get back to where we needed to be – but our hotel concierge had told us it shouldn’t be more than 25 euros. So we walked up and right out of the Plaka – took about 15 minutes – and when we hit one of the central squares – without a doubt – the first taxi we hailed quoted us 25 euros. Apparently the druggies and the drunks aren’t the only crooks in the city.

Despite the few bumps though - this was an absolutely wonderful way to end our trip, and made us feel better about having to finish up in Athens. All that’s left is the plane trip back home tomorrow – and then real life will hit us with a bang.