Next Stop - Athens, Greece

After much anxiety and stress, I finally received my new passport (long story, but Australia Post is not on my list of favourite agencies!) on the morning of Tuesday, 10 April, so that we could actually leave Australia for Greece that evening.  We were travelling for the first time with Etihad.  Our flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi was 14 hours and we were three hours into our flight before we received our first meal and drink - not great service, staff not terribly friendly, a little disappointing, as we had heard good reports about Etihad.  


We had a couple of hours at Abu Dhabi, then a 3-hour flight to Athens, where we caught a taxi to our hotel, the Polis Grand Hotel in the Omonia district.   Our taxi driver barely grunted at us, certainly couldn't manage a smile, but got us to where we wanted to go in total silence.  A good start to Greek hospitality, I thought.  However, the manager at Polis Grand was very friendly and helpful, and we squeezed into the lift to take us to our room on the 6th floor.  The lift was cosy, to say the least - it took a maximum of 5 persons, but with two of us plus luggage, we were breathing in!  The room was small but adequate, with a great view of a new construction over the road, with scaffolding and green cloth enclosing it - lovely!  Good job we weren't planning to spend much time in it.


We walked around the area, trying to get our bearings, so we could plan our next couple of days.  We had a cheap dinner at one of the little tavernas around the corner (not terribly exciting, but we weren't too fussy about food at that stage, just wanted to get back to the hotel and have a sleep.  But not before we finished our evening at the rooftop bar at our hotel, with a lovely view of the illuminated Acropolis in the background.  Very civilised - I had a couple of 'home-made' strawberry and lemon cocktails which were very sweet but had a bit of a kick.  Trev also tried the local brew, Mythos.


While taking photos of the Acropolis I had a conversation with a young man from Libya who we'd spoken to earlier in the lift.  He told me he had been in Athens for 5 months, in the hospital - I assumed he meant he was working in the hospital, but no, he had been in hospital getting treatment for burns and bullet wounds - he said 'You have heard of Gaddafi, well, I was injured, I had burns on my legs and body and I had to come here for treatment'.  He showed me a scar on his arm that was caused by a sniper's bullet.  I was shocked - I asked if he was OK now, and he said, 'Yes, I am good now, thank you for asking about it."  We are so lucky in Australia - things like this are so foreign to us.

Next morning we purchased a two-day 'hop-on-hop-off' ticket on the red bus that would take us around most of the tourist spots in Athens as well as down to Piraeus, the port where we would be catching our ferry over to Crete.  This was definitely a worthwhile purchase, and a good way of getting an overview of Athens.  We visited Monastiraki, the Agora, the Acropolis, the Parthenon, Temple of Zeus, the Acropolis Museum, the Temple of Hephaistos and numerous other ancient buildings.  Despite the fact that we had bus tickets, we still walked several kilometres over the 2 days in Athens, so we should be getting fit. Except, of course, for the fact that everything we eat here is so full of carbs - breads, olive oil, cheese, and such huge serves!  And not only that, every time we eat, they give us either free appetizers, or free desserts and raki!  We're going to return to Australia as big, fat, drunken blobs! 


On Friday (which is Good Friday in Greece) we packed our bags and caught the metro, which is very clean, efficient, cheap and easy to use, to take us to Piraeus to catch our overnight ferry to Crete.  We spent the day in Piraeus, ate lots more food and drank lots more Greek coffee and raki (it's almost obligatory) then boarded our ferry, the FB Lato at 6.00pm.  It was a very nice ship, with a good dining room, reasonable prices and again, huge serves of food.  Our room was certainly very compact, with ensuite and flatscreen TV, and we both slept very well.  Must be all that walking!  We arrived in Crete at about 5.30am, and actually left the ship around 6.30am to be greeted by our driver to take us to Stalos for the next part of our holiday.