September 26, 2004

Bikes and Pillars

Jeanine and I got into Athens airport mid afternoon on Thursday. An easy metro ride in and then a short 'scenic' tour of the neighbourhood (we didn't have a map, but my tour included the Canadian, American and British embassies) and we found the Sweeney's apartment. Air conditioning, television, showers greeted us. After four smokey and noisy (but fun) days in Budapest it was a luxurious change!

Jeanine and I spent the first full day doing a bathtub load of laundry and then checked out the local sites. If you look at a map, we are located near Kolonaki square, so we are within walking distance of the Acropolis and all the shops and flea markets near by.

Day two was Lisa and Shawn's road race. It was a bit of a way out of town on the tram. David (Lisa's dad) and I had an insane cab ride with an out of control greek guy. Yelling at bikers, gunning the car at random intervals. Before I got into the cab I asked him how much it was going to cost. He went on a tirade about how the Greeks are a 'beautiful people' and they don't cheat people and the meter is perfect and 'don't worry, the meter says what to pay.' "Greece is in the European Union, we don't cheat. I LOVE Canada." Of course when we arrived at our destination he was not happy with how low the meter was. He had to go 'all over' to get us where we wanted to. Ahh, the beautiful Greeks.

Lisa's road race was excellent - check the pictures. Her and Shawn missed the medal move but they had an awesome finish, dropped the main pack and came in solo for sixth. It was pretty cool to watch large packs of tandems racing. They had a nasty 180 degree corner at the bottom of a hill. The noise that 350lb of man plus 40lb of bike makes slowing from 70kph to 10 is pretty impressive!

I will let Jeanine talk about all the old stuff we saw today:

THIS MORNING WE GOT UP EARLY AND HOPPED THE METRO TO THE ACROPOLIS TO ARRIVE EXACTLY AT 8 AM WHEN IT OPENED...WE HUSTLED UP TO THE TOP AND BEAT THE CROWDS FOR SOME FANTASTIC PHOTOS OF THE PARTHENON IN THE MORNING LIGHT..IT WAS A GORGEOUS, CLEAR, SUNNY, MORNING, AND IT MADE FOR SOME AMAZING VIEWS....ONCE WE WERE DONE TAKING AS MANY PHOTOS AS WE COULD BEFORE TOUR GROUPS DESCENDED ON THE PLACE WE WANDERED THE RUINS, SUCH AS THE THEATRE OF DIONYSIS AND THE AGORA..IT WAS ALL WORTH THE VISIT, AND WE WERE PLEASED WITH OURSELVES FOR PUTTING IN THE EFFORT TO GET THERE EARLY...SO WE ENJOYED AN "ESPRESSO FREDO" AND SPENT THE REST OF THE MORNING WANDERING BACK VIA SOME INTERESTING FLEA MARKETS.

Pretty soon we are going to do a bit of island hopping and then off to TURKEY! Thanks for the waffle house tips. You both managed to make the whole hostel in Budapest hungry! Unfortunately, we had no luck. "Somewhere near the center of the city" is just not quite precise enough....

Posted by Alistair Howard at September 26, 2004 04:12 AM

Comments

Posted by: Sandra at September 26, 2004 09:53 AM