The little things - Athens:
- going on the metro from the airport into the city centre we listen to automated announcements by a beautiful female Greek voice. After she said something that didn't sound like the name of a station we looked at each other and said "Would be funny if she just said 'mind the gap'", and what do you know, and English voice (directly lifted from the Tube) followed with "Mind the gap please". Ahhh, it's nice to see that the gap is most likely govern by some EU regulation - much like the notorious EU regulation 2257/94 stating that bananas must be "free of abnormal curvature".
- all trolleybuses have motors, which would be a great implementation in Ruskiland, where passengers experience regular delays due to the trolley polls coming off the overhead wires.
- next time you're thinking of going to Greece, do it over the Easter period like we did. All of the major sites are free for visitors both on Good Friday and Easter Saturday... on Easter Sunday stuff is closed though. The downside is that all the restaurants have an 8-12% surcharge (food however is generally very affordable 20€ for 2 people with wine).
- another downside of the Easter period (and possibly any other major holiday period) are the large amounts of garbage piled around in some areas (we stayed in a dodgier section of town for cheaper accommodation). Basically the streets are filthy and they reek. The posher parts of the city are neater and clean though.
- metro in Athens is great - do use it. The construction of it took a really long time, because every time they dug a hole they came upon an archaeological treasure, and all work had to be stopped for the archaeologists to come in. So now in most stations around the centre of town there are metro museums, which display various findings collected during the making of the underground. All of them are fascinating and have good descriptions in English.
- bottled water - is CHEAP! 80 euro cents for 1,5 litres... and that's off a street kiosk!
- everyone to their own, yes. It really fascinated me how beautiful the hair is on pretty much all Greek women - it's thick, shiny, very well maintained and just looks amazing.
- people are very friendly (apart from the occasional druggie in seedier areas) to an extent where we were short-changed 1 EUR buying bananas in a tiny shop. Not having enough language skills or desire to argue we walked off talking about how everywhere our poor tourist brethren is taken advantage of. And lo and behold, the shopkeeper is running after us with a golden shiny coin, smiling and apologising. Wow - that's NEVER happened to us before!
- motorbike helmets - what are they really for? In most parts of the world which we visited they were for protecting one's head in case of a nasty crash. Well in Athens they're for protecting one's elbow... 'cos 90% of motorbike riders do have a helmet, they just choose to carry it on the arm instead of actually wearing it. It really bewildered us, since if one is going to go through the effort of bringing one, why not actually use it?
- cats and dogs... just like Thailand, these creatures are everywhere and all look very similar... due to incest we suppose. Apparently the Greeks are against all things unnatural (apart from when it comes to "primary citizens reinforcing their power by sodomising young boys", which was the done deal back in the old days), which include de sexing animals. So our four-legged friends enjoy many number of freedoms and luxuries, which their brothers and sisters in Australia couldn't even dream of.
- when one sees a bunch of grown men talking about politics or sports on the nearest corner, one seldom imagines all of them fidgeting with something in their hand, right? Wrong! Worry beads - they're the done deal in Greece... and it is really amusing to see all these serious butch-looking guys fidgeting with a string of beads... we were original tourists and didn't actually buy a set :)
- if you're checking into a hostel in Athens, ask for a room on one of the lower floors. Otherwise you will experience spurts of very hot water while you shower, and come out feeling like you've just been boiled and frozen at the same time.
The big things - Athens:
We did all of the major tourist sites while we were in Athens, the Acropolis and surrounds took up most of a day. We started fairly early walking slowly up the hill past the theatre of Dionysus with seating for about 16,000 - not bad if you've got a good set of lungs. And then the Roman built theatre of Herod Atticus.
On the way down on the other side we dropped by to the Agora and the Temple of Olympian Zeus.
Our other remaining major achievement in Athens was to walk / climb / stager in a mostly unfit manor up to the Chapel of St. George on Lykavittos Hill from which we had a lovely view of the smog and a bit of Athens itself.
The little things - Santorini:
- the Aegean Sea must be one of the most beautiful in the world. And I have travelled across the Pacific ocean. The water is the most amazing blue imaginable. The colour is incredibly deep and strangely enough it doesn't seem very transparent with the rays of the sun, as for example the water in Venice is like.
- the sky. I always feel very small every time we drive out to country Australia. Simply because the sky just seems to fall onto you, it is so big. I've never felt like that until travelling on the boat from Athens to Thira (Santorini), it really envelopes you.
- when one imagines Greek islands, one imagines whitewashed houses with beautiful blue roofs. But I, for example, am always doubtful of how they actually look like off the tourist brochures. Well they look even better. The colours are amazing. And at least on Santorini, they repaint most houses prior to the start of the tourist season almost every year.
- something we read in a TimeOut guide for Greece "Every Greek deeply appreciates any foreigner making the effort to butcher their beautiful and ancient language, so give it a go!". And we did. It's 'yassoo' for 'hello' and 'effharisto' for 'thank you' - not your usual 'merci' or 'gracie', eh?
- our landlady for the week was an architect and a very lovely person. Her English was a bit rusty but completely understandable. Thus the humble 'walkway' became a 'walking peoples road'.
- now most of the time we really miss our wonderful cats from Melbourne but on the island we didn't have an opportunity due to pretty much 24 hour cat surveillance. We even went as far as to give them names and called the gang Seven Little Cats (even though later we realised that there were in actual fact 13 of the furry creatures) - Preggers, Limpy, Big Balls or Polka Dots, White Paws, Friendly, Tiny Red One and Nasty (he ate everyone's food and scratched all the other kittns). Here's a video we prepared earlier :)
The big things - Santorini:
Well like they say a picture tells a thousand words - so without further ado we present Greece in all of its Aegean glory:
Walking from Oia to Fira with some cute puppies, one followed us the whole way.
Wonderful water, amazing food and awesome views
Magnificent sunsets
Long warm nights together
And picture postcard perfect days
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