We left a cold, wet and dark Edinburgh on the 2nd and flew via Heathrow into Athens with British Airways. On our stop over at Heathrow the sky was blue, we all wished we could have ducked into London to see it in sunshine! We landed in Athens at 6.30pm local time and although it was already dark, it was noticeably warmer. Greg went to change our pounds into euros and discovered - that his wallet had gone missing somewhere between Heathrow and Athens. So our first hour in the hotel was spent calling banks and putting a hold on his cards. Interestingly, the NAB card already had a stop on it - which we could have guessed, as it hasn't worked for a month (luckily mine still does) - it turns out that it was swiped in France and they tried to use it in the US. Greg had sent the NAB an email to ask what was going on, but no reply -would have been nice of them to let us know.
We are staying in a pretty basic hotel just off the Plaka - Adams Hotel - on the top floor and our verandah has a great view of the Acropolis, which is lit up at night for our enjoyment! Feeling hungry for some Greek food, we turned the corner from our hotel into a veritable maze of restaurants, all with their own little spruikers trying to talk you into their particular establishment! We tried to find one with a few locals in it, and settled on one with live music. It was like have Nana Mouskouri on the next table! We made a note to avoid restaurants with live music in the future, in the interests of our continued hearing :-) The food was OK though.
The next morning we made a late start. The rooms were really cold (doh, we hadn't worked out that the aircon could also be used for heating!) and it was hard to get up and going! Bella and Greg had yiros for breakfast, but I settled for a cheese pastry. Liam got a meat one, but it was not the meat pie he was expecting. Greg had to eat that one too, and Liam got maccas... It was so lovely to see blue skies and sunshine. The scheduled high was 14 degrees, and as we toiled up the hill to the Acropolis (Liam remarked: "Why is everything ancient at the top of a hill?') and we started to strip off our layers. Bella complained of being hot!! And sweaty!! Some people are never happy! We enjoyed exploring all around the Acropolis and the various temples, and then made our way down to the new Acropolis Museum. It's a great museum and beautifully set out. And it has a good coffee shop! Worth calling into for some delicious and well priced snacks. When we left it was getting cooler again - we certainly can't pack away our parkas yet! However sunset is 5.30pm so we are enjoying having more daylight - although winter closing times are much earlier in the day.
I'd googled "Best budget places to eat in Athens" and found this guy Matt Barrett who obviously lives here and was full of recommendations. We followed his suggestion to a family owned place called Oinomagerio Paradosiako, and were rewarded with some delicious home style Greek food. Bella was repulsed by my fried sardines complete with heads and tails. I did try eating them whole but ended up chopping off the head!
Today we were expecting 17 degrees so I left my coat at the hotel and ventured out with only a jumper on. Bad mistake, I was cold. Maybe I'm just a wuss, but I'm not making that mistake again! We stopped for breakfast at a little 24 coffee bar which has a variety of flaky pastries, all delicious, coffee and freshly squeezed OJ, then onto the post office for the LAST TIME to post yet more stuff back to Australia. This time, mainly our hiking boots and some unwanted articles of clothing with the odd souvenir thrown in! So we all have a little space to buy a few things in Turkey. Not too much!! Which is just as well as our budget is getting tighter as our trip gets closer to the end! We walked to the National Archaeological Museum and saw some lovely treasures. Real Greek sculptures, as opposed to the Roman copies we've seen so many of! Then we walked back. We had hoped to go to the Agora but it closes at 3pm in the winter so we'll have to squeeze that in tomorrow morning (presuming everyone can get up and going on time!!).
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