Day 35: Ferry to Athens
Upon arriving at Patras on the ferry there was a little
confusion over buses to Athens, but together with a couple from Vancouver and
help from a friendly cab driver we soon had it sorted. The bus trip to Athens
was amazing. For half the journey we has the Adriatic sea on the left and bare
mountains on the right, then everything swapped sides and we had the Aegean on
the right and mountains on the left. For a country with 25+ centuries to get
things done, there’s lots left unfinished. As we got closer to Athens the
countryside became a little neater, but nothing like the neat rows of vines and
well tendered veggie gardens of Italy.
From the bus station to the hotel was mostly spent in
gridlock. The trip in the taxi was probably only a few kilometers, but took
about an hour. The taxi driver spoke no English, but had a great sense of
humour, taking us down narrow one way streets trying to avoid the traffic. The
fare after an hour was only €10. Not often I’d give a cabbie a 50%
tip, but he deserved it!
After checking in we went for a wander and ate some great
genuine Greek food, had a short walk and got an early night ready for the start
of our tour tomorrow. An interesting aside… Our hotel is right beside Syntagma
Square, the site of the recent riots. We don’t know if there has been more trouble
here in the time we’ve been away (we’ve seen almost no TV and what we have seen
hasn’t been in English – but I did spot an Italian newspaper on the train as we
left Naples and as far as I could tell it was reporting on riots in Naples the
day we were there), but there is a police riot van stationed right under our
window. No need to worry – we’re up on the 6th floor and everything
is looking very normal out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment