Our first day in Greece wasn't a spectacular day. There wasn't anything bad about it and it had plenty of humorous moments, but it wasn't a jaw dropping spectacular kind of day.
We arrived in Athens around 1:30 in the afternoon after our first flying experience on Easy Jet. Compared to Ryan Air, Easy Jet is quite a step up. Your carry on can be as heavy as you want it to be as long as it fits into the tiny little bin they provide. That is a major improvement over the weight limit on Ryan Air. Easy Jet also has assigned seating. That means NO CATTLE CALL. They also limited the amount of sales on the flight. I swear Ryan Air tries to sell something to you from the moment you take off until the moment you land. Not so with Easy Jet, so overall, the flying experience was good.
We got through baggage claim and to the car rental, where there was a tiny bit of resistance on my husbands part. We usually travel with our own GPS, but our GPS did not have Greece on it, so when we got to the rental counter and are offered a GPS at the bargain rate of 11 euros a day, my hubby said NO. He figured we would be fine after all, they gave us a free map! We tend to find our way most times so we left the counter with minimal muttering under my breath and made our way to the car.....
We get the bags into the car, get settled, open the map, and realize IT IS IN GREEK. I don't know Greek and neither does Josh which I pointed out could prove problematic. We made our way back to the rental counter and got that GPS! I am really glad we did, because our hotel was about 45 minutes away from the air port, on the coast. We wouldn't have found it.
Athens, in general, is not a pretty city. To say they have a graffiti problem is a major understatement. 90% of the city has graffiti. Some is impressive, some is stupid, and I am really trying to figure out what the whole "Wake Up" thing is about. Suffice it to say, the city was not impressive at first glance. An interesting thing we noticed right off is the driving. Drivers in Athens are an aggressive group of people. There are people driving all different directions, road signs being ignored, traffic lights disregarded, and motorcycles/scooters/dirt bikes weaving in and out between the cars. Dangerous? YES! Concerning to the Greek people? NO! Please know, there are police everywhere, they just don't do much about the driving violations. That turned out to be a good thing for us as we did do our usual "wrong way down a one way street" thing.
We do make it to the hotel, located in Glyfada. This is one of the upscale areas and it boasted some really large yachts in the harbor and some HUGE amazing houses. Houses that were surrounded by high brick fences topped with razor wire. The houses were impressive, but the razor wire, coupled with the graffiti were a little concerning. The hotel was actually a beautiful little place with about 70 rooms. We had and "apartment" since we prefer the kids to be with us. We got up to the fifth floor in a snug elevator, got to our room and went in to check it out. Jaws dropped when we realized there were 4 twin beds! Josh and I haven't slept apart, with the exception of work related separations, in the 20 years we have been married. We did ask if they had a room with a double bed, which they did, but then the kids would be in a separate room and it would defeat the purpose because it would end up being Skye and Me/Jax and Josh. We decided to make due, and jokingly called each other Rob and Laura. (obscure reference to The Dick Van Dyke Show)
We got everything settled in the room and decided to drive around looking for a place to grab a bite to eat.
The first place we stumbled upon was TGI Friday's. I felt it was a little sad that we were in Greece and eating at an American chain restaurant, but we knew we would get something we liked so I didn't fuss to much. It was a nice lunch but we didn't want to waste any more sunlight, so we headed back to the hotel and changed in to swim suits. In reality, it was only about 70 degrees, but after being in Germany and England, it was like a heat wave. We hit the beach for a little while, then moved indoor to the pool at the hotel. Just laying in the sun was heaven! This laziness lasted about 2 1/2 hours. We decided to get cleaned up, grab a quick bite and get in bed.
Bed time rolled around and that is when we discovered the second set back with our hotel. Apparently I had chosen the one hotel most popular with traveling teams. That particular evening we had 2 U-20 teams of Greek National football/soccer players AND a French school group. Need I say that we complained about noise? More than once? MORE THAN TWICE?! They did quiet down around 1 AM and we were well rested for our first full day abroad in Athens........
Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter of our trip!
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