Don MillerAside from the scammy underbelly of Istanbul, I liked it. It is a great walking city, good food and plenty to keep me busy. The fact that I got out of it with out buying a carpet is a bonus. But they tried.
There aren’t many ways to get to my next stop, Athens. There is no train for some reason. A ferry would require a long bus ride into Turkey before I even get on the boat. I wasn’t able to get much info on its off-season sailing schedule so seemed like a hit or miss hassle. The bus is cheap but over 16 hours long. I can’t sit that long even with rest stops. Renting a one-way car and taking it across the border then trying to drive out of Istanbul and into Athens seemed really expensive and pushing my already stretched luck. So I bought a ticket for a 4 hour flight and a shuttle van to the airport.
It was a pretty easy flight. The metro train station is connected to the Airport. It takes you to a metro stop that connects you to the rest of Athens. I rode the train into the Athens Sunset which sounds romantic and it did put me in a relaxed mood for the 30 minute ride to the metro stop. The Metro was pretty easy too except for the fact that I wasn’t a frat boy in college. I did not have the benefit of the Greek alphabet spanked into me during pledge week. The words sound the same as listed in the 
English guides but don’t look the same when you are trying to read which stop to get off the train at. I bounced around under Greece for a while while I tried to figure out which stop was the closest to the Hotel where I had a hotel reserved at. To my benefit the stop name was pretty close to the English name.
By the time I zeroed in on the closest stop and climbed the steps to the Omonia Square, the dark of the night had settled in. It was just a couple of days after Orthodox Christmas so there was still a bit of holiday hustle and bustle. I used my Maps.Me app to find my way but for whatever reason I couldn’t find the hotel that should have been a block off the square. Whatever innate sense of direction I have had quit working. It didn’t help that the Square was the only part of the area that was lit. The side streets were dark and had people lurking in the shadows. Coming across a squad of geared up police prepping for the night didn’t alleviate my concerns. I finally came across the hotel down a quiet side street sandwich between two sketchy looking adult entertainment business. Not sure the level of entertainment but the typical denizens loitered out front.
It was a nice hotel from the inside. But, I didn’t come to Athens to watch Greek TV. I dropped my bag and headed back out for some dinner. When I am really hungry and have to eat out, It usually becomes a fruitless search. I see a place then wonder if there is a better place a few steps up the road. I end up walking miles looking for dinner. This was another night for that stupidity. After walking past perfectly delicious looking Gyro and kabob shops, I ended up with a doughnut and a Coke. One of the best Donuts ever but still.
I woke up to a beautiful but chilly morning. Perfect for a brisk walk. I am a pretty crappy tourist. I am happy to just walk around a have a look. Athens is a good place for me. 
It is much bigger than I expected so walking to the sites of interest was good exercise. I was up early enough to beat the tour bus crowds. But if I wanted to stay ahead of them, I would have to get a move on. My Maps.Me was working pretty well and found my way to the Acropolis pretty easily. Since, it is high on a hill, visible from pretty much anywhere. it would have been pretty easy to find without a map though. But You know, technology. I did enjoy walking around the Acropolis complex. It is all built on a hill so I was second guessing this morning’s decision to forgo public transportation to the entrance. It is a pretty impressive sight walking around the top. The ancient and now the modern Greeks do a pretty nice job with a bunch of rocks.
From the top of the hill, there is another hill visible. According to the map, it is the Lycabettus Hill. I don’t know what relevance it has but I am a fan of leaving no hill unclimbed. After some more Acropolis wandering I set my sites on that. Google says it is a 3.1Km (~2 miles). My phone mapper said it was more like 5k (~3 miles) which is less an indicator of google accuracy and more an indictment of my pinball machine walking style. I am easily distracted and it is a good thing that I took the route through the relatively boring apartment blocks that I did. Otherwise I might not have made it up from all the other stuff to see in Athens. The climb up the hill was no Himalaya Trek but a good effort anyway and worth it. From the top, you really get a feel for how big Athens is. It stretches for miles in all directions. It is amazing and does deserve more time than I had to give it.
I took a different path down the hill. A young man came up beside me on the way down and said hi. It wasn’t like I was deep in the bush since the trees were winter bare. He spoke English and was carrying on the usual what’s your name, where you from patter that comes before a request for financial help. This however, was a young gay man looking for a date. I assume with financial benefit. I just chuckled at my luck in a country full of passionate pretty Greek women, I get hit on by a guy. I j
ust chuckled, declined his nice offer and marched on down the hill.
The walk back brought me through the shopping district. Not tourist shopping but more of the luxury shopping and dining where the more affluent Athenians spend their mad money. After the news I had been reading over the past few years, I didn’t think there was any mad money. Just the spare change they could find in the sofa or at the bottom of the washing machine. An austere economy was nowhere in sight in any of the Athens city center area I walked.
I, however, was on a sofa cushion budget, so I stayed on the chilly side of the windows. I did keep walking and ended up at the real tourist shopping section. Its is just below the Acropolis and is a tightly packed neighborhood of bars restaurants and souvenir shops. It is pretty fun to poke around.
I like it so much that I came back for dinner after a rest back at the hotel. As earlier mentioned, it was still Christmas holidays so it was a festive atmosphere once the holiday lights came on. I just had a food truck Gyro and a beer for dinner then a couple more beers as the spirit moved me. It was an early night after the day’s 8.7 mile hilly trek and decided sleep was a better idea.
My last day in Athens was spent figuring out how to get out. My goal was to check off the remaining Balkan countries that I still had on my list. There are a bunch of Bus companies that server Athens. Even more Agents that will get you on one of them. The trick is to find an agent for a bus going where you want it to go. Then find the bus stop where the bus leaves from. The trick is finding each. I spent the whole afternoon walking around one the the bus departure neighborhoods. Standing in line for a ticket agent only to find out that agency doesn’t ticket for the bus I wanted. I needed to go around the corner to the other agency. Let me tell you there are a lot of corners in Athens. The destination posters and schedules were all in Greek so I had to stand in lines hoping that when I got to the agent, they understood the English words for the city I wanted to get to. Finally, I got an early morning ticket for a bus to Sofia. I looked for the bus departure location and finally figured out it was in an unmarked parking are of a car rental place. I would have been pretty stressed looking for it in the pre dawn light the next day.
With that sorted, I strolled the shops in the tourist area again, had dinner and a beer and head back to the hotel one last time.
I was pleasantly surprised by Athens, I had expected a pretty dour situation. In actuality it is a pretty vibrant place. I would love to go back and settle in a bit. Maybe check out the islands next time.
