Thursday, June 5 - Athens

I know Darryn's writing one of these too, and let's face it, his is undoubtedly better. So I'm not going to try and write beautiful sentences or anything. I'm just going to tell it how it was, kind of the no frills version of events I suppose.

So we arrived in Athens and we were pretty buggered. But there was hope - waiting for us was a hotel, a bed (or possibly two), hot water and the promise of something infinitely better than a 30cm by 30cm airplane seat. We waited at the luggage collection, wondering to ourselves if we'd ever be the lucky ones that got our luggage first. Hey, I said, we could be. We weren't. In fact, we didn't get our luggage at all. Yes, we waited and watched the other lucky passengers pull their luggage from that rotating assembly line, keeping our eyes peeled. We waited and watched the number of passengers around us diminish until the band stopped. But no luggage. This seriously could not be happening to us. Why not? Because we'd spent like forty hours on a plane and in airports in three continents. Because we hadn't slept. Because there was a unsatisfied kid on our last flight, who kept yelling shit in another language. Because we'd eaten pork in black bean sauce for breakfast, thanks to Air China's definition of 'breakfast'. So you see this simply couldn't be happening to us. But you know, it was, and we had to accept it. So we dragged our tired arses to the lost baggage counter and filled out some forms and were assured that it would all be delivered to us at our hotel within the next three days.

After shedding a few tears (actually I surprised myself because I was ready to kill people, but, like I said, I only shed a few tears - no understatement) we decided to skip the 35 euro cab fare to our hotel and opt for the Athens Metro. Which turned out to be a good experience because we familiarised ourselves with the public transport in the city and got a little confidence back. The hotel - Hotel Apollo (no props for originality there) - was located pretty damn close to the Metro stop so we wheeled ourselves in and 12 hours later we were showered, rested and as satisfied as one could be with no underwear. Actually wait - before all that we went out and did a grueling two hours' worth of shopping, stocking up on panties, shirts and shoes for the next few days.