At last!

Two reasons why I haven't written yet. 1) The only time we walked by an internet cafe we were doing something else and the internet at our hotel in Athens wasn't working. 2) I'm with three of my most important people, so the urge to write isn't quite as strong as it was during other trips.

What to say, what to say?

Our flight to London went fine. We read vol. 8 of Marmalade Boy (well, us girls did) and now it's over, *sobsob* so sad. We were a bit worried about our luggage, because at Dorval the lady at the counter, eager to take her break, hijacked our bags and checked them all the way to Athens, contrary to what we had been told would happen. Would our bags sit around Heathrow, waiting all day for our evening flight? No need to worry, everything went fine.

In London, we visited the Tower. We followed a guided tour with a Beefeater, who was very funny and seemed to derive great pleasure from telling us about the grisly history of the place. The admission was expensive, but worth it. We got to explore the whole complex (though we were too tired to do it all), which has an interesting exhibition of armour in the White Tower. We saw the Crown Jewels as well, and it made me laugh to see that in the room where the fanciest crowns are, there's a conveyor (like in airports) that slides you by them. Perhaps people used to stand there gawking for too long?

On the streets of London, by the sidewalks, are painted helpful "Look Left" and "Look Right" notices, presumably because too many ignorant tourists were flattened by double-decker buses.

The Tube ticket we got was a pretty good deal, allowing us unlimited travel on the system. After the Tower, we went to Trafalgar Square (it's huge!) and stood blinking in the sun. Seriously, I'd always heard that England was wet and cool, but the heat that day was awful! Humid too, especially in the Underground. So we admired the statues and the fountains before going to get some food. G of course had to sample their fish and chips, which we are happy to report as quite satisfactory.

During the meal we had debated whether or not to try and reserve a hotel in Greece and we finally decided that yes, we would. M-P bought a phone card, which we regretted later because we were too incompetent to figure out how to phone Greece, so we phoned our families and left annoying messages on their answering machines instead. ^_^

M-P kept on talking about the Horse Guard, but when we finally got there, we found that the Horse Guard was temporarily horseless (the weather?) and she lost interest. We did have a short nap on the grass, though, which was nice. Westminster Abbey was closed, so we headed on to Buckingham Palace, where A-L pretended she saw Hugh Grant and some Royals. There wasn't anything to see, really, just a guard in a bearskin hat.

Getting back to the airport, we realised that we had left some bags at the Left Luggage in Terminal 3 but our flight was leaving at Terminal 4. We managed, though, and the Star Wars pillowcase was none the worse for wear.

The London-Athens leg of our journey saw G, M-P and I in the very last row, SLEEPING THROUGH THE MEAL! A-L, sitting beside a nice Greek girl, ate.

Our plane landed ahead of schedule, so it was before 5 when we wandered into the airport lobby. What to do? It was Sunday, very very early Sunday, we had no hotel reservation. -- The internet cafe we're in is playing Irish music! *laughs* -- We asked a nice guy at a tourist info/hotel reservation and he advised us to wait until 9 and take the bus into town and walk around until we found a hotel. Sounded like a plan.

At last! 2: The Revenge

We took the 7:35 bus into Athens proper (the airport is a little ways out) and I slept the whole way. When the bus dropped us off at Syntagma, I had to give myself a crash course in navigating the city, which led us to backtrack a few times, but no major trouble. A stray dog adopted us and followed us around for a while, giving up only when we'd checked into a hotel. There are many strays in Athens, dogs and cats alike.

When our rooms were finally free, we took a nap, then headed out, intending to visit the reputedly superb National Archaeological Museum. Well wouldn't you know, it's closed until 2004! Bloh. No matter, we could go see the Ancient Agora, right? "Due to a strike on 01/06/2003, the site will be closed." Silly Greeks, striking on Sunday! So all the historical sites were closed, but we did admire them from afar and wandered the streets of Syntagma/Plaka, the touristy part of the city. It does have interesting shops, however (A-L quickly became obsessed with buying Olympic-themed stuff) and nice restaurants.

Day 2 in Athens was time to visit the Acropolis. We bought ferry tickets on the way, booking a 4-berth cabin on the Knossos Palace, bound for Crete. We didn't really follow the map to get to the Acropolis, just the general direction, and ended up in a maze of steep alleys between white-washed houses. There were flowers everywhere, cats as well, it was beautiful.

We arrived at the entrance to the site and found out that the 12 euro admission gave us entry to 5 other sites, which was a nice bonus. This made M-I wanna see temples!-P very happy, as you can imagine.

The Acropolis itself? Overrun with tourists. You can't actually walk into the temples or touch them; there are legions of guards sitting around with whistles to toot at you if you even try it. I didn't know this, and stroked a column on the way up, somehow managing in my ignorance to escape the notice of the nearest whistle-man.

Really, it was mind-boggling to be standing there. Yes, the temples are half-covered with scaffolding (Olympic-inspired efforts, no doubt), everything is rock and dust and the cloud of pollution hanging over Athens is not too pretty to see, but this is a place, like Paris, like London, that I've read about and seen so many times in pictures that I feel I know. I had fun giving A-L an impromptu history lesson, telling her about the buildings and the things in the museum from what I remembered from my Ancient Greek History class and Bullfinch's Mythology.

We spent over two hours there, taking many, many pictures, trying to avoid including the sun in them (harder than you might think!). After that, we headed down to find lunch. G and I split a litre of retsina because our travelling companions didn't want any, and the meal was good. Mmm, I'm developing a real fondness for Greek salad and bread dipped in olive oil. Our table was right over the metro tracks, on the other side of which was the temple of Haphaestos, wonderfully preserved on the side of a hill. Can you beat that for a table with a view?

Next we visited the Agora, which includes the afore-mentioned temple, lots of broken columns, stoa (stoae?) and the House of Simon. Unfortunately, there was no sign to tell us who Simon was. Along one side, there is a reconstructed stoa and I now understand. A long marble hallway, open on one side, catches the wind and is wonderfully cool in the heat. Pretty smart! I can just imagine what the place must have looked like a bit over two thousand years ago, with stoa along the south and west sides too.

We also visited the Roman Agora, which was smaller but had more columns. We also tried for the temple of Olympian Zeus but by the time we go there it was 5:30 and the site closes at 3. 3?! Since our boat only left at 10, we had a few hours to kill, during which we ate and A-L bought more stuff.

The port of Athens is actually Piraeus, about 1/2 hour away. We took the metro, which took us right to the port. Night was falling, it was a little before 9, and we had no idea at which end of the harbour our boat was waiting. We tried one end, but apparently didn't go far enough, because once we were halfway around the harbour, we saw our boat back where we had come from. Doh!

Our cabin was snug and comfy, but we didn't get that much sleep because we arrived in Iraklion before 6 a.m. We sat around at a harbour-side cafe, eating and goofing around, and finally walked into town and checked into the Youth Hostel. There, we slept. Now it's early afternoon and we plan on seeing the Archaeological Museum, to try and counter the bitterness of not being able to see the big one in Athens. Tomorrow, Knossos!