It was time again to leave a country behind and move to the next one. So as always, the alarm went off earlier than we all would have liked, and we made our way to the airport.
The cab ride was 40 Euros this time. Which means that the cab driver who took us from the airport to our apartment DID rip us off. But whatever, time to leave - see you later Italy!
Nothing special happened at the Rome airport. Sandra got bitten by a mosquito (what are the odds). That's about it.
We arrived in the Athens airport and one of the first things I noticed was that a lot of the landscape looked very similar to Tasmania (in summer). There were obvious differences (the Greek style buildings for a start), but a lot was the same.
We set out to make our way to the hotel. Yes, that's right. This time we're staying in a hotel rather than a self serviced apartment! We tried to get an apartment, but this hotel was just so damn cheap. It ended up being 45 Euros per night for a room and included breakfast. Win! We thought it might have been dodge, but so far it's been great! Instantly, I had a good feeling about Greece.
The train to the city centre from the airport was down so we caught the bus. When we arrived in the city centre a rush of happiness came over me when I realised that they had free (working) public wifi! I can't tell you much it sucked in Rome that I wasn't allowed to use the public wifi. It was as if Rome went to every effort it could to ban me from wifi (including McDonalds!). But whatever, we're in Greece now, where the wifi is as free as the sun!
A short subway ride took us to our hotel.The Athens subways were fantastic - cheap, clean, neat and wheelchair and luggage friendly! Now, we figured that there must be a reason why our hotel was so cheap. Apparently it's because it's in the dodge area of town. But we're next to a police station and nothing bad has happened to us so far, so win! Plus it's so damn central! Still liking Greece.
After we got our crap into our rooms on the 8th floor of the hotel, we decided to have a look around. We saw a department store that had toys in the front window so decided to continue the hunt for Megatron. The toy section was in the basement so we took the spiral staircase down. They went on forever. It was so long it felt like they went all the way to Australia (oh yeah, 'other-side-of-the-world' gag).
But the stairs were worth it. As soon as we found the Transformer section, we saw that not only did they have Megatron, but a whole bunch of them. This might explain why the rest of the world doesn't have any. To add a cherry on top, the store was having a 10% off day. Yes, win! Really liking Greece!
Next, dinner time. The temperature was pretty hot, so we found a small restaurant opposite the hotel and ate outside. While eating, we found that we would get harassed from time to time by people trying to sell crap to us. We even had these kids come up and play the accordian (really really badly) in the vain hope we would give them money. We've had a strict no beggars policy on this trip and we're not backing down now!
We came back to the air conditioned comfort of our hotel before venturing out again after dark to find a laundromat. Turns out that self-service laundromats are as rare as hens teeth in Athens but we did come across a dude that charged 10 Euro to wash and dry a load so we left it with him and then went adventuring in the dodgy streets of Athens. We found a nice little cafe to sit down and have a drink at and then realised we were way off from where we thought we were so had to back track further to the hotel. Go iPhone GPS!
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