Meeting Athena

It turns out that the 1st of May is a national holiday in Greece. Also on this day all of the ferries were going on strike. I found out later that there were riots in Athens that day as well. It wasn't a particularly settled day in Greece. The first of May was also the day that we had chosen to leave the island of Corfu to go back to the Greek mainland. The first obvious problem here was the lack of ferry. We had been warned that this was going to happen, so the night before our driver had taken the bus and our bags back over on the last ferry. Enter our knight in a white boat. George was on hand to take us over.

So began probably the most unusual trip on George's boat by a Contiki group. The rain was back, so we had the group huddled together trying to keep warm in the small cabin and under a sail cloth on deck as we powered over to the closest point on the mainland. This was a massive change from the party atmosphere of the day before. However we made it safe, with the crew doing their best to keep moral up.

Onto the bus, we headed through a small town that Contiki trips have been stopping in for years. With the way the Greek economy is there are alot of people who are struggling, so Contiki likes to support the people they have been with for ages. We stopped for lunch and everyone went to the same little shop. In there they have a wall of Contiki business cards that every trip that has been through has left.  It is a large wall.

Finally we were getting close to Athens. It was also getting late. We had a night in Athens, an early start the next morning and quite a few of us not happy about how little time we had to explore a city that has its roots in one of the oldest civilisations on the planet. We got to Athens about an hour before sunset, met our guide and went up a hill so that we had a view of the Acropolis. We got there to have the last light of day on the hill. Sunset thankfully, caused the light to be from the best direction for photos. Unfortunately the guide was slow, easily distracted and liked to talk. He told us not to take photos and to listen to him only. I am very happy that I ignored him. I listened to what he said while taking photos. By the time he had finished talking and would let people take photos, half the Acropolis hill was in shadow and just the Parthenon at the top was still in weak light. That was the last time I got to see it in daylight. I wish that we had more time and could have gone up to see it closely. The guide then took us past the stadium built for the first modern Olympics, the pillars that remain from the temple of Zeus and a couple of parliament buildings.

Dinner was a walk about dinner and I was in search of moussaka. Apparently it was delicious, it was. We found a little restaurant that did very good moussaka. The downside was that it took quite a while to arrive. Therefore I didn't have much time to explore the Plaka region of Athens in the dark. Most of the group went via a pharmacy and back to the bus. I figured I had enough time to explore a bit and walked in the opposite direction. In this way I managed to see some more ruins of the old city, lit up at night. There was a cool view up the side of the Acropolis with ruins lighting the way. After finding a waffle in a market for dessert, I was running late for the bus to the hotel and had to run to get there.

With the ferry to the Greek islands so early in the morning, we only had a couple of hours in Athens. I wish that we had the time to explore it properly...

Corinth canal

Bird cage covering the sun

Acropolis hill

Parthenon

Sunset over Athens