Athens

21st - 23rd June

We started our Athens experience with the s***tiest of s***ty breakfasts at our s***ty hotel. We have stayed in some very ordinary places, but this one almost takes the prize as being the worst. The toilet was pretty much in the base of the shower, we had an ants nest where the wall once was - which meant lots of ants in the bed - and no curtains. It was not pleasant. Anyway, we made our way up towards the main attraction in Athens, the Acropolis. We slowly found our way up and around the big hill, paid our entrance, and with the hoards of other tourists made our way in. The big ticket item is obviously the Parthenon, but there was lots of restorations happening so it was difficult to get a good photo of it. We checked out the other temples/buildings up on the top, and the view over Athens. It was tough to know what everything was/purpose without signs. We were feeling a little lost after having just spent 2.5 weeks in Egypt and Turkey with a tour guide. - we'd forgotten how to do things on our own!

Our Acropolis ticket got us into heaps more ancient sites around Athens, so we made our way down through the Ancient Roman Agora - the meeting place, senate, township etc - and out the other side. I was so sick of ancient ruins I decided that I could not look at any more that day and stormed off. There's only so much you can take, and after Egypt, Turkey and this I'd definitely reached my limit.

We found our way into a buzzing little flea market. We stopped for lunch along the way for our first real Greek Souvalaki. It was mammoth in size, and awesome in taste. And at only 3 Euros, friendly on the wallet. Bellies full we continued on through the massive Monastriki My favourite shop was the biggest beads shops you'd ever find in your life - but it wasn't the beads that got my attention. It was the Tarzan and massive T-Rex suspended from the ceiling, that every so often would come to life and roar and come down from the roof. Weird.

We slowly wandered around town a little more and came out at the massive Panathinaikon(??) Stadium. Built in ancient times it received a facelift for the first Olympic games in 1896. Although you can see the entire stadium from the road, we decided to pay the 1 Euro entrance fee to get an audio guide and have a proper look through. It was money well spent. The audio guide had lots of fascinating information about the history of the Olympics and the stadium itself - it hosted the archery and the end of the marathon when Athens had the Olympics again in 2004. Dan went for a VERY short jog around the running track and we climbed to the very top of the stands for a nice shot of the Acropolis.

From the stadium we slowly made our way through the botanic gardens and then onto the Parliamentary building at Syntagma Square, complete with guards in stupid uniforms. We headed back to the s***ty hotel to grab the laptop and walk up to a nearby square to hook into some of Athens free wifi. We were treated when we arrived to a big stage set up with some live music, it's a shame the band was useless, and people giving out free cokes. I happily surfed the net, well hydrated for half an hour before we went back to the hotel to get organised for dinner.

We headed to a nearby restaurant in Monastriki and decided on a sharing platter (I am not usually good at sharing, I blame it on being an only child. It was super delicious. There was a mixture of gyros meat, skewered shish kebabs, grilled tomatoes, chips, onions and plenty of pita bread. I love that the Greeks put oregano and mixed herbs on their chips - definitely something I'll do when I get home! After dinner we attempted some sleep on the s***ty hard bed, in the noisy room at the s***ty hotel!

The next morning we decided to use up a few more entrance tickets included with our Acropolis ticket and made our way down to the Temple of Olympian Zeus. In its hey day it would've been a massive structure, but now all that remains is a dozen columns, one of which had fallen down recently. This spot gave us a lovely view up over the Parthenon and the Acropolis, so we took a few more photos.

After visiting this spot we called into the ferry ticketing offices which were just across the road to buy our ferry tickets for the rest of our trip. There was no hassles in buying them, no mention of any upcoming problems that might possibly arise.

We continued on to the south side of the Acropolis, where there is a theatre. It wasn't very big, and was originally square in shape, but over time it has evolved into the more practical semi circle shape. We did a bit of a wander around there before heading back to the hotel early afternoon.

We had plans for the afternoon of grabbing a local bus and heading down to a beach for a swim, but as we were making our way back to the hotel to pick up our bathers and towels, the big grey clouds rumbled in, and the temperature dropped. We decided to skip the beach and catch up on some domestic tasks like backing up photos, attempting to write the blog etc. Halfway through uploading photos to the computer I must've fell asleep (With the computer still on my lap!), I manage to sleep for a couple of hours. I think I needed it, still catching up from our crazy 10 days in Turkey!

Later that afternoon we headed back up to the local square for some free internet again, before heading back down to Monastriki for some more yummy dinner. On getting back to the hotel we overhead one of the reception staff telling guests that there might be a strike on tomorrow, and that they wouldn't sell them any ferry tickets. We enquired with her, and she said that the courts had ruled against the ferry, but there was still a possibility that they'd go ahead with it anyway.We went up to bed, thinking that if only a few went on strike it probably wouldn't affect us anyway.

Up at 5.30am the next morning to jump on the first metro of the day at 6am. We were at the port by 6.30. Our ferry was due to leave at 7.20am, so we were nicely before the required 45minutes. As we were crossing the platform over the road we started to hear the chanting coming from the direction of the boats. As we looked down to the direction of all the noise we realised it was coming from a group of people standing on the back of the boat we were meant to be getting on. There was already quite a large group of passengers assembled waiting to board the boat, but the picket line of people wasn't going to let that happen. Other boats in the port which were due to leave shortly after ours had passengers turn up so the protesters sent some men down there to guard those boats too. The press were everywhere, and more and more people arrived. I spoke to one of the journalists to see if I could find out what was going on, and whether or not our boat was going to leave. He told me that it was a 50/50 chance of our boat going, and that we would know within half an hour. That time quickly passed and the passengers were getting more and more angry about the situation. It resulted in quite a few heated scuffles between some more vocal protestors and some passengers. There was also one occasion when a protestor took to a journalist with punches. The mood was incredibly tense for the best part of an hour and a half. It was about 8am (Half hour after scheduled departure time) when a reported from Reuters came and interviewed a Canadian who was standing next to us, when I asked her what the situation was. She told us that as the strike was ruled illegal by the courts, they were expecting a judge or a JP to come down and tell them to piss off, and if they still ignored that they had the army and riot police waiting to step in. After her words we felt confident that the boat might actually make it out of the port at some stage throughout the day. By around 11am there was still no show of anyone official, and the protestors were still going strong, but more of the passengers had left. Only the tourists who didn't speak the language (to know what was going on) had hung around.As the temperature had started to climb (Thanks to the big led sign I knew it was 35 degrees) we headed into one of the small shelter sheds with proper seating. It wasn't much cooler in there, but at least we escaped the horrible wench of a woman chanting in Greek on her megaphone.

Around 12pm it was clear that our boat was not going to leave, so I headed over to the ticket office and they changed us onto the 5.30pm boat - due to get into Paros around 10pm. The girl in the booth didn't speak much English but managed to get across, if that boat doesn't sail there will definitely be one leaving at midnight. Midnight!!! With nothing much else to do we hung around the port. Luckily we could get into a little bit of free wireless internet which relieved some of the boredom, but it was still a very long day. We made friends with some of the other stuck passengers in our shed; a larger than life guy from Perth, who owns a restaurant on Ios and splits his year between the two to have summer all year long, and a Greek Mother and daughter team from Melbourne, who were just returning for a holiday to see some relatives (I did not guess that they were mum and daughter until the kid started yelling Muummmmmm - they looked like two twenty-something friends on a trip together!!!)

By around mid afternoon most of the protestors had left - there was maybe only 10 or so students left on each boat. All the die-hard wharfies had left, or were seeking shade up near our little sheds. Dan set off for the toilet, which was about a 10minute walk away. While he was gone I set up a little bed for myself on the wire seats and took a little lay down. When Dan returned from the toilet he came in and stood in front of me and the door behind him quickly opened and one of the main protestors started yelling something at him in Greek. I dopily put my head up and said "What?? What's going on??". The protestor realised we only spoke English and started yelling at Dan again in a half English about "watching where he walks". The Greek mother quickly got up and started yelling back at the now growing group of protestors, in Greek, and the rest of us Aussies all continued to have a yell in English. The protestors tried to muscle their way into our room but decided that there was a lot more tourists in there than the 6 of them. It was only when they'd sort of disappeared that Dan told me that he walked through their group on his way back from the toilet - just to stir them up.

There were a few more flare-ups throughout the afternoon (even though by about 4.30 there was times as many tourists as there was protestors). One of the more amusing ones was when one of the tourists told a big fat Greek mama protestor (Who was sitting in the shade drinking her frappacino and smoking) to 'get her fat arse back on the boat and support the kids that you've brainwashed'. (Most of the people still protesting looked like Uni students - just there for a fun day out) As soon as something was said to fat mama, the big a******* who yelled at Dan, and his cronies returned to start up again. They were only there looking to pick a fight.

There was a glimmer of hope when a boat returned into the port which had come from the islands. It was the boat that we had tickets on for when it turned around to head back out again. As soon as it arrived people flocked onboard, before even waiting for the other passengers to get off, but were quickly taken back off board again. The protestors set up another small picket line on this boat after everyone had disembarked.

It looked even more hopeful when at about 5pm they 10 or so protestors left decided to go marching to met up with the rest of the protestors. That meant we would've had half an hour to get on the boat and off it sailed. But that wasn't to be. For some reason they decided that it wasn't going to go, and again we waited more.

It was really quite disappointing for us because of 9 weeks travelling to most of the same places Matt and Jodie were going to, this day was the only single day of overlap our itineraries had. And it also happened to be Matt's birthday. Instead of arriving in at 11:30 and spending the whole day with them, we were now not going to arrive into Paros until about 5am the following day. They were planning to take an early ferry that morning off to Mykonos so we'd get a quick 'hi' and that's it'. On top of that we had to contact the woman who ran the guesthouse we were staying at and tell her of our new arrival time. She was going to have to get out of bed to come pick us up.

We were finally allowed on the boat around 9:30pm, just in time to get a nice spot out on the deck in front of the TV, which was showing the Socceroos V Serbia in the last match of the group stage. It was a nice win, but sadly the result of the other match didn't help us.

The boat finally set sail on the dot of midnight (So we'd watched the whole match while sitting in the port) and by that stage the boat had filled up so we were stuck on stupid outdoor style cane chairs, which we would somehow have to sleep on. We lined a few up and with some towels as cushioning we managed to fashion somewhere to lay down. I think the most sleep I got was about half an hour. It didn't help that I was getting wet from the spray from the ocean occasionally.

We finally arrived into Paros port at 4.30am where we were met by our host and taken to our accommodation. Eventually.