Greece - Walking in a Winter Wonderland

This is long post - You have been warned!

So on Friday I flew out to Athens for a long weekend of looking at old things, beer and general relaxation. I have been getting into solo travelling lately and this one was an experience that I thought it'd be worth sharing so here it goes!

Friday

Landed in Athens, located the tube at the airport. Got on it and sat there agast that actually it is possible to run a clean and efficient metro where the most expensive ticket us a tiny 6 euros which will take you directly into the city centre. A legacy of the Olympics I believe... I then located my hotel and went foraging. Had some food, it was shite but it was also 23:00 and I just needed sustanance and sleep. Both of which were achieved.

Saturday

I woke up about half an hour after breakfast, and went to find coffee. A Starbucks round the corner provided an acceptable solution and there in I met Natascha, my first chatty Greek! After breakfast there was only one option, this:

I could rattle on for hours about the Parthanon etc... But fuck that quite frankly, it's a story you know and if you don't go and see for yourself. It's not hard!

All in all I spent about 5 hours walking around the historical sites. They are pretty much all located within easy reach of one another and they're all pretty cool in one way or another. There's a 12 euro ticket you can get that will allow to go into all of the ones that charge and it's valid for 4 days after purchase. Well worth it.

That evening I intended to go out and get very seriously drunk. My legs however disagreed with me so I went back to the hotel with some booze and watched Family Guy on my laptop. A MASSIVE thank you to one Jo Mills here, without her my laptop would have not contained any of the excellent telly that saw me through this evening. It was a gift from the Gods... That night I was woken up by some drunk in the early hours. I thought to myself "Is that snow I can see outside my window?" Of course not Simpson, you're in Greece FFS.

Sunday

It did snow Saturday night, the view from my hotel balcony was this:

Now I was quite chuffed at this point, a nice smattering of snow to make the whole journey a little different. It was kinda idillic watching the children have snow ball fights seeing such sights as this:

I went to chill in my now preferred coffee consuming venue of Starbucks on that very square and plotted my mission to Delphi to go and visit the Oracle 300 style. :) The snow was now falling but all told I arrived in the bus station and got me a ticket. Upon getting on the bus I met this fella:

He went by the name Apostolos and slap me silly if his excellent command of the English language and calm nature were not an absolute god send because as we were leaving Athens the 3rd wave of snow hit... And that did this:

Well fuck me it was snow, the roads ceased to become roads and more ice rinks our snow chains had the fun side effect of turning the bus into a vibrator before breaking slightly and thrashing the fuck out a wheel arch instead. It took us 5.5 hours to get half an hour out of Athens, with new slide-o-bus fully engaged. Apparently our bus was on Greek national news with a tag line that probably read "Criminally insane suicidal loons attempting to get to Delphi in that very bus". It took hours and hours but eventually we got through the snow and into the mountains where the roads had been mercifully sorted out some time before. I made it to Delphi at about 00:30 it was -10 I believe and the hotel I had a reservation for refused to let me in.

Cunts.

I mean really, -10 halfway up a mountain at 00:30 having just travelled through snow like that... I was not chuffed, enter Janny:

Hey man, you were a life saver. He sorted me out with a room in his hotel at a knock down rate and gave me enough whiskey to calm my addled brain. An absolute legend! In the morning he woke me up in time for breakfast and the room I was in gave me a morning view to die for:

I was so happy I nearly cried! It was awesome in the truest sense of the word. :) It lead to this facial expression:

At that point I had just been sat at the Temple of Apollo looking out over the wonderous setting. Zesus got the biggest house but Apollo wins on location all ends up. Everyone from Alexander the Great to Lord Byron has consulted the Oracle there. Fantastic.

I got a bus back to Athens that day and got a good look at what we'd driven through the night before:

The rest of the holiday was pretty chilled. On my last day I went wondering round the edge of the really cool market district. Very much like Camden but in more Greek. I did stumble on a really cool shop though, many famous people of Hollywood shop there. I met the owner/designer and he picked out a couple of really cool t-shirts for me. So I now own designer clothes! Then I had to trundle off the airport.

Athens aiport security win the award for Best Security Guards Anywhere! Black Sabboth fans all! They were all dead chatty during my flight delay telling me all about when they had Iron Maiden in there the other week. Cool guys, cheers for making the wait not at all dull.

UK Passport control at Luton win the award for least efficient mofos on this earth. Message to Olympic organisers... Either we employ many more guys to do passport control or we are gonna need to hold some events in our airports that way there is a small chance some spectators will get to see them. We clear? K? k.

In conclusion I had an amazing time in an amazing country. If you get the chance to go out there do it, especially in off season where you pretty much get the touristy bits to yourself. Full photo set can be found here:

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lord.nibbler/Greece

Watch it as a slideshow and you'll see all my sarky comments... It's a bit long...

And finally, when travelling alone I recomend not planning to hard and if there is the oppotunity to do something that seems like folly? Just fucking do it, you'll come out the other side a happier bunny.