We indulged.
We packed up and moved our bags over to the original hotel that we had gone to the day before, the Achilleas. Our bags went into storage and we ventured back out into Athens.
We started off at the flea markets, with many a store full of similar souvenirs, cheap Greek momentos and bottles of Ouzo. I bought my Athens shot glass at a store there, turning out to be an Ouzo glass rather than the conventional designs or shape. It´s cool. I like the idea of having varied types of shot glasses, and also of having shotties that reflect the places in more ways than just having a landmark painted on the side.
At the same store I found a bag which I thought was worthy of getting, to give me another satchel-like bag to use, and to give my other well-used and well-loved bag a rest. From there we carried on our way down the markets. It was a bit like David Street in Jerusalem. No, not with lots of tacky Jew paraphernalia, but that it is bustling by day and all empty and really dead by night. We also found a few jewels there between the many carbon copy stores; some higher-end shops with random design stuff and wacky household furnishings. I love that stuff and would have loved to get some things for my new room I´ll have in October but we weren´t really in a position to buy anything.
We stopped into a place called Ice Grill for some lunch. Well, lunch turned out to be a plate of Greek doughnuts with honey, pistachios and vanilla ice cream. Yum! We had a bit of difficulty getting the order through, but it all worked out thanks to the wonders of menus with pictures.
We walked around a bit, and finally stopped back at Syntagma Square to use the free wifi there and get up a few days of photos and blogs. We finished up with about 40 minutes till we had our Top Deck meeting, so we walked back to hotel to freshen up.
At the meeting we met our guide Niki, and the other members of the group. Niki seemed like an okay guide, but to be honest she didn't across as being to quite the level of Rafik. It´s a real pity that we had him first, because I think we keep comparing our new guides to him. The whole group is Australian, some coming from the ol´ island and others from the UK (doing the whole Australian living in London thing). Heh. They all seemed okay and down to earth.
Niki gave us the talk about the trip and all the other info we might need. Like we expected, this trip is going to be quite different than the Egypt one. There´s a lot of free time to be had, and a bit of emphasis placed on social things and going out, rather than seeing many archaeological sites, temples and tombs. That´s okay, and fine by us. I think we could use a bit of a relaxed trip for the next 10 days or so.
After the meeting Niki took us for a walk to show us where to find food and bars. The group moved into the Plaka area and we had couldn't quite decide where to go. Eventually, Emma convinced everyone to go to the place we went on our first night, with cheap, good food. The group moved over there and we grabbed a whole bunch of tables together to fit us all. The food was great but far too much for either of us to finish.
After dinner part of the group split up; I think, to go out drinking. The rest of us headed back to the hotel. We didn´t end up going out so we just went for sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment