After our all nighter in Eilat, and a bumpy late night bus to the airport (where we met a Belgian who claimed to know Australia like her bucket. She must throw up a lot or something to know a bucket well..) we were all extremely sleep deprived. I rolled out my sleeping bag in the middle of Ben Gurion airport and caught a good 45 minutes of shuteye before the flight to Athens.
Many months ago, when booking the flight, we each selected a weird meal option - Muslim meal, kosher meal, low carb, low salt etc. I was so tired though that I fell asleep before takeoff, missed my Muslim meal and woke up after landing. That night we watched Harry Potter and caught 13 hours of sleep.
Woke up at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and caught the first train to Sytagma to see the changing of the guards at parliament house. They wore shoes with giant pom-poms and danced like John Cleese from faulty towers. During shift they are forbidden to move, and they sweat a lot in their funny outfits, so an army guy is on-hand to wipe their brows intermittently.
We then climbed the Acropolis and looked at Ancient temples and stuff. Having assumed noone speaks English I payed out a girl's shorts. She was from Perth and understood perfectly, and we ended up going out for lunch.
Three things I'm starting to notice about foreign countries:
1) There are subtle differences to the Macdonalds menu. In Israel there is a MacShwarma. In Greece you get a tiny fork to eat fries with.
2) Different countries have different random pest animals. Israel is overrun with cats, while Greece is full of sleepy Labradors who rest in the shade with food scraps like little fluffy hobos.
3) Everywhere you go there are Americans, and when the find out we're from Australia they ask if we know the one person they once met from there, with a ridiculous question like, "Do you know James?", as if there is one James in Australia and he's really popular.
We were warned Athens was boring, and it kind of is - two days was plenty - but the rioters about the economy made it very fun with hilarious graffiti like "Eat the Rich" and "U.S = bag of d*** " and little anarchist shanty towns (see cover photo for hobo dog and anarchy graffiti).
Today I leave for Mykanos with a deck of ancient greek karma-sutra-style playing cards. Thus I deem my stay in Athens successful.