We arrived in Athens early in the morning and made it to our hotel. As Travis will tell you (because I did not shut up about it) I was not impressed by our accommodations. While we had initially read that the hotel (a Best Western) was in a sketchy area, we booked it online as it was rated #33 in Athens (out of 300 hotels). This was the rating on TripAdvisor and we book all our hotels by looking there and they’ve been awesome so far… but not this one. Actually, sketchy was an understatement. I’m not sure if anyone remembers but in 2009 a 15 year old Greek boy was shot and killed by two policeman. This resulted in weeks of rioting. This occurred in an area populated largely by anarchists. This also happened to be the area where our hotel was located.
Our first clue about the suspect nature of our hotel was on our first day out. We took a map and were headed to the acropolis (where the Parthenon is). We walked out of our hotel and across the street into a park of people doing drugs. Now I’m not talking about people sitting around smoking weed, I’m talking about people shooting cocaine into their toes and legs. And not one or two either… like 50 or 60. So we started walking more quickly….but this park wasn’t short so we our brisk walk became brisker and by the end of the park we were almost running. Now you might say ‘ Carlie, stop being a baby ‘ But I have never done drugs. Not even smoked a joint (yes you can start making fun of me now) and I get nauseous watching ‘Intervention’. Good thing I had Travis with me, working on the west side of Saskatoon and going to school in Shaughnessy made him tougher than I was.
When we got out of the park we continued to walk towards the Parthenon. But first we had to get across a square called Omonia. We headed towards McDonalds to get a milkshake (because they are $1 here and it was 9:30 am and yet again over 35C). Unfortunately we never made it there because ahead of us heading into Micky D’s was someone who obviously used his legs as injections sites and they had swollen into the size of tree trunks and had open wounds (I swear I saw maggots in one but Travis told me to smarten up…. only after I stopped gagging) so we veered the other way and decided to avoid old McDicks at all costs.
So although it was not a great start to Athens, we’ve decided that when we have kids we will be bringing them here to give them a lesson on why not to do drugs. The Parthenon was worth the scary walk though. We bought our tickets and headed up to the top. We then saw ancient Agora (the ancient city of Athens), Zeus’ temple and a few more sites. We spent the afternoon wandering around and then headed back to our hotel (before it got dark because there was no way in hell I was walking there at night).
The next morning we got up and decided since we had seen the sights to go shopping. We ended up picking up a few things, going for a good lunch and then buying a carpet large enough to fit our new living room. I know. Don’t ask. (We went in to the store to buy pillow cushions for $4 and damn that salesman was good).
Anyways, our last night in Athens was again spent in our hotel room (again too scared) so we decided to order Pizza Hut and watch a movie. We were supposed to fly home on a flight Monday afternoon but our flight got cancelled (something wrong with the tire – to which caused a major uproar but we didn’t care… I’d rather they fix it before I get on the plane) so Air Canada has put us up in a swanky hotel in downtown Athens (where Travis says he’s going to drink the minibar dry if its courtesy of Air Canada) and then we are headed home. We are then headed to Penticton Wednesday (tight schedule I know… but that just means everyone has to come visit us – JEANINE!)
See everyone when we get home!!
