Skip to main content

Euro Adventures Pt 20 - Away to Athens

An early start and off to Athens today, the capital of Greece, where all the magic happens, where the gods were worshipped and things just worked - well back then it did. We had a nice 7am start to finish cleaning our boats before Dimitri came around to inspect them - while we waited for him we popped over to the little bakery to have a cheese roll - an amazingly delicious Greek pastry with feta cheese. I've said this before - Greek food is my absolute favourite!! 

We passed our inspection with flying colours, as did the other boats, so we all piled back onto our trusty bus and started the long journey to Athens. It was about a 5-6 hour drive with a toilet stop and a stop at the Corinth Canal - a canal that many tried to create for hundreds and thousands of years but the rock was too solid to get through until the 1800's. It was pretty spectacular, especially with the blue Mediterranean waters flowing through the middle - a girl in our group decided to bungee jump off the bridge that crossed the canal... It would have been epic! 


A short drive later and we had arrived into the city of Athens, named after the Greek God Athena. It was a massive city but also very dirty and in disrepair - Noddy explained that the massive amount of pollution in the city makes it much dirtier. Plus with all of the financial trouble that Greece has been having lately the City isn't kept in the best state. At least it seemed like we were done with the threat of riots for now. We pulled up outside a hotel, a generally nice hotel, best western, stoked. We were staying in a nice hotel with decent beds, decent food, a decent shower and somewhat decent wifi. To top it off the hotel had a rooftop bar and pool that had a view straight onto the Acropolis. Well done Athens.


We all had to repack or day bags that we used for sailing for Mykonos - the campsite was apparently very dusty and sandy and our suitcases would just not be good to have. So we threw together some more clean clothes and some more toiletries ready to head to the party island of Mykonos - STOKED. We also had four new girls join the tour which we met at dinner. They all seemed super lovely and fun - it made me disappointed that we weren't going to be continuing on the rest of the tour. 

After dinner we headed up to the roof to watch the sunset over the town and the Acropolis light up. It was such a beautiful sight - I can't wait to come back here and enjoy this city after Mykonos. We didn't have a late night as we had a 430 wake up time so we could make our way down to the ferries. Everyone was keen to have a great couple of days on the party island and have a lot of bevies - I'm keen for some sun, sand, sleep, swimming and more great Greek food.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Euro Adventures Pt 22 - Eat, Sleep, Beach, Repeat

Another day in paradise, Mykonos you beautiful place. I woke early with a coughing fit to find everyone was home and in bed - absolutely dead to the world. Once a couple of the girls woke up we headed down for some brekkie - the included brekkie was absolute shithouse so we ordered from the breakfast menu at the restaurant. Such a good life choice. Plus the view!  Noddy joined us for a chat and a coffee - Greek coffee is pretty different, very very strong - I was kind of in love with it. Delish. We headed back to the room and the girls had naps while I caught up some overdue blogging - even though without wifi I couldn't post anything. The camping ground did have wifi but it was so bad that you could only connect of you were standing right next to the bar and even then it dropped in and out. LAME!  When everyone was awake we changed into our swimmers and headed down to the beach at our back door. The beach was absolutely spectacular. For once it wasn't all pointy sharp rocks th

Euro Adventures Pt 18 - A Very Long Day

Oh dear... 5 hours on the bus... 15 hours on a ferry... Then we will be in Greece. This will definitely be a very very long day - and that's only if the ferry isn't delayed. We had a very early start this morning with bags on the bus  at 6am  and brekkie at 630. With a long drive ahead of us we began our journey to the ports. I've never been on a proper cruise ship before so I was pretty excited.  We had a toilet stop and were informed that the ferry was running about 4 hours late, oh dear. But Noddy said we could find a great beach and just chill for a couple of hours - rather than waiting at the ports. I am feeling really really unwell today, light headed, dizzy, headaches, fever... Not a good sign. It also made the bus ride pretty unbearable.  But we made it to a beach resort type of place and it was WAY to hot to be by the water. There was a bunch of shops with tables and chairs so we just sat and talked and had gelato. Alysha and I bought Turkish towels for the sailing

Euro Adventures Pt 13 - Gondolas, SpeedBoats & Souvenirs? Oh My!

A day in Venice - that's the dream. We arose nice and early in the morning to bus it into the outskirts of the old city of Venice. Made up of over 150 islands joined by bridges and canals, we had to get the people mover (kind of like a monorail) into the main part of the city. You can't drive cars in or around the more historic part of Venice so we began our journey into St Marc's square on foot. It was a very long walk and our guide, Noddy, does walk very very fast. We stopped at a few key places along the way to take photos, the Da Vinci museum, the Academia gallery, the Academia bridge and finally into St Marc's Square.  It has been 7 long years since I have been to Venice but it was just as I remember... Except there were hardly any people. We were there quite early in the morning so there were very few tourists at this stage and the souvenir stall owners were just starting to set up. After a walk around last the Basilica, the Doges Palace and the Bridge of Sighs we