Sunday 22/6 Top Deck day 8- Santorini to Athens

We aimed to miss breakfast, and only got up by 10 or so. We walked into town to kill some time and get some food. We browsed some shops there and I bought a new wallet for some 18 euros. Very happy with it.

We got lunch at a souvlaki place along the main street. The food was a bit tragic, really at the bottom of the barrel as far as chicken gyros in pita goes. The meat was teetering on the side of yuck.

Back at the hotel we waited around for an hour or so, then finally got loaded onto buses to head back to the port. The drive down that steep winding hill was pretty cool but not as cool as when we´d gone up in the first place.

We waited for a bit in an airconditioned terminal building (more like a room) for a short while as we waited for the boat to arrive. By the time it did, it was pretty packed in there and so we got all our stuff to near where the door was, ready to spring out and find seats on the boat (we had no allocated seats).

The boat was like the first one that took us to Paros; much larger and slower than the sea jet ferries. On board we dropped our bags off and then found chairs and tables inside, near a kiosk/cafe place.

That´s where we would spend the next eight hours.

Three hours into the trip we stopped at Paros to pick up more passengers heading back to Athens. The boat got a lot more cramped after that. There were people left and right, and some grabbing chairs and moving in on our territory. Some of the people were a bit rude and obtrusive and sat right on top of some of our group. Apparently, the shipping company had overbooked. From experience it generally is not a good thing for a transport company to do that. It always leads to bad things, and all so that they might make a little extra money. Do they think about what happens when all the people turn up for the ride? Obviously not.

We got into Pirreus just after 12. I´d slept for an hour or so but I was so completely wiped out and out of it. Through the immense chaos of hundreds of people getting off the boat at the same time we managed to all get our bags, off the boat and find each other on the docks. From there we got into a bus, taking us to a hotel. When we got there, there were some goodbyes between peoples and tour leaders. We wanted to confirm that the hotel we were in for our post accommodation was the Achilleas, the one on our sheet, since our pre-accommodation was moved to another hotel. Niki called us up at our room to confirm that it was still that hotel for the next (our last) night in Athens.

The rooms were pretty swish inside. Nice décor and modern sort of bathroom design.