The Quinn Family Excellent Adventure: Hello Athens Greece 1 - Eantos 5 Paleo Faliro

I was excited to get started on Greece and started moving around 8 AM or so. Typical priorities were Sims, groceries, water. We looked around at our AirBnB in the light and it was huge. I'm pretty sure it's our hosts Mom's place. It had that lived in feeling. Personal items like clothing were tucked away and secured with zip ties. We noticed the large fridge had quite a bit of random leftover food. We liberated a few items to increase our strength and hit the road. I understood Vodafone was pretty big in Europe offering an International Sim that can be used all over Europe. Activation, Sims, 5GB of Data plus some data bonuses was like 60 Euro's for 3 devices. The sales dude indicated top ups were online or from the phone and all that. We will see how fun that is later. With 3 activated phones we felt a little more educated as we made our way to the well reviewed local grocery store. As we would be in this AirBnB for 2 weeks, it was time to stock up. Milk, Yogurt, bread were all interestingly different. As we walked the streets of this part of town, we noticed an extraordinary amount of graffiti, like everywhere. The streets, sidewalks, homes all seemed a little tired and worn out. Abandoned homes and businesses were popular. It was clear this was a country recovering from hard economic times. Never once however did I feel unsafe. The people were incredibly kind. I recalled last nights taxi driver had told us that Greece is unique in no terror related incident has occurred. That is something to be said.

After chucking groceries in the fridge, we just had to see the beach. We popped into Niki our host having Coffee at the local Cafe. Total sweetheart. Crossing the street to the beach is a bit fun. The lake shore road had people rushing pretty quick. Speed limits seemed optional. I noticed no motorcycle helmets were donned. After crossing a kind scary road, you have to cross 2 Tram tracks which are not obviously marked. Eventually you do make it the the waterfront trails and the beach. The sand is rough, but the beautiful clear water makes up for it. It was nice to see the ocean after our long travel day. We saw a beach side restaurant we would later visit for a late afternoon dinner. Walking down the beach we saw a mixture of locals and a few rare tourists. It's just the beginning of the season and with the cooler air and water, it's not yet crazy busy. I got an email notification from the Eurail shipping company that the passes were soon to be signed. Within minutes someone was at the door. The signer was originally Niki and fortunately the delivery person did not care who signed it. We had our passes and super duper fast. I was glad to see them as it's a bunch of money.

Niki had told us that a previous AirBnB guest had broken the kitchen sink drain and not to use it. She was hoping we would be ok with a plumber visit the next day and asked us the time that best suited us. We hung around for them. 2 pretty funny guys showed up with Niki and for about 2 hours they worked on the pipe. Niki suspected it was from oil down the drain but these guys fought some pretty heavy scaling. It seems the drain was clogged from simply use. As they were finalizing the repair, one of the plumbers noticed Niki's piano and played a song for his plumber friend. They broke out in song while fixing a broken pipe. Wish I got a movie of that. It was under this sink that I first noticed Niki has 3 containers of Olive oil. The counter top has a cooking sized container. Under the sink is a huge glass bottle. Beside it is a massive gas tank sized plastic bottle. Crazy amount of olive oil.

With the plumbing issue mostly out of the way, we could relax and walk the boundaries of our Greece home some more. Michelle really wanted an evening by the beach sunset dinner. We found a nice enough place and I discovered what Moussaka should really taste like. There was a local kid celebrating a birthday party which brought plenty of little kids to the place. Crews are bringing out and building the summer time umbrellas and tables in this cooler spring weather. You can really see the community awakening. It was time to see the famous Acropolis. Getting there involved figuring out the local Trams, Busses and Metro. It's necessary to purchase a pass or tickets before boarding. A few stations had busted machines which made it a bit challenging. Armed with tickets we jumped onto our first Tram. The Tram is a fun bumpy ride through the main streets here. A few stops before our desired one, a person got off motioning to me we had to get off. Weird. We waited for the Tram to continue and it reversed direction. WTF. We jumped off even further away from our destination and chose to walk to the Acropolis. We later learned what happened. On a subsequent trip a very friendly Greek person helped us with what now should happens. Apparently the Tram no longer goes to the station it should. It stops about stations short. The tracks are even blocked. Google Maps does not know this and gladly tells you to get on the Tram through this blockage both north and south. The trick is to get off a few stations early (like the person who indicated this earlier), walk to the Metro (Subway) and blast through a few stations. Kinda weird but also kind of fun. People casually walk/drive on the Tram tracks on both sides with no fear here. So much different than Japan. We were fortunate to have been introduced to the Metro this way as we would be using it much more with future trips.

Walking through the early morning Athens neighborhoods toward the Acropolis was kinda interesting. The city looks tired and stressed out. Soon though we were slowly climbing up a long road with our first glimpse of the Acropolis area. We were wise to start this visit early as the crowds and lineups were already beginning to build. As Canadians we are not used to something that is so old. Ruins built on top of ruins built with impressive workmanship. It's astonishing. The ruins are in a constant state of renovation. Wars, neglect, aggressive renovations of the past have made keeping this place beautiful a difficult time consuming process. An astonishing amount of modern technology is being applied to the ruins so they are available for the future. The modern recovery/renovation work being done is as masterful as the original work itself. It's a gotta see place.

Michelle wanted to see a typical Greek island. We had hoped to find reasonable accommodation in Mykonos the famous gay island https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-ultimate-gay-destinat_b_3895296 There was nothing reasonable to be had. Santorini was next on the list. Booking a ferry was a priority of course. The Eurail pass App provides good clues having huge amounts of helpful liks to travel information. The ferry is kinda long being 8 hours. Fortunately on the way there, the departure is an early morning one. For the return trip, it was a 1 AM departure so we needed to ensure we had a place to sleep. We tried to organize a ferry but something messed up with the online process. We had to call them manually and sort it out. Our departure date was way off so that got fixed, whew. It was mandatory to have physical tickets so we had to get to the ferry station. It was not too far away so we tried the bus. The bus we intended to get did not stop despite being waved at. Dick. The next bus looked like it went to the ferry terminal. It was a longer funner route but kinda turned away from our destination. We panicked and jumped off the bus not wanting to be much further away. As we struggled with figuring out the way to the terminal, a friendly Greek taxi drivers popped by. It was only 2 KM's but time was short and we hopped in. Nice guy and only a few bucks. Plus we avoided lots of the crazy traffic now started. I wanted to ask him to wait for the return trip but did not want to impose as we did not have any idea of the lineup length. After a few minutes wait we were discussing our ferry tickets. I saw the girl looking at the screen strangely. I knew that look. Rather than 1 cabin for 3, we had purchased 3 cabins for 1. It was too late to change and we did not care. We had our tickets and now knew where to score the ferry. Done. As we were looking for a bus stop and route we saw the traffic was nuts. Fortunately I recognized out taxi dude and he gladly drove us back. I love talking with the taxi people. They have a real pulse on the community. We share stories about family, economy, sometimes government. It's fun.

It was time to get ready for Santorini. We were skipping out a few days at Niki's AirBnB for it. This way we could leave much of our stuff and pack light. We added a single day so our return trip would be followed by a day of rest. We also arranged another week in Athens, this time closer to the core of the city. We will talk about that later. As our Athens to Santorini ferry trip is a daytime one, getting there earlyish meant finding a table or chairs to sit at. We need to leave kinda early for that. Lets head to bed early for an early departure.