June 19 - Music through the walls

Still holding my opinion on Athens. Hotel Lazanni is fine, we have A/C and the room is a good size (even though we seem to be placed in the prostitute neighborhood, an experience all on it's own). Since the three of us has to do the whole sleep in the airport thing in Chania, we got into Athens bone tired. On the bus ride back all three of us fell asleep and had to be woken up by the guy who check people's tickets. Eventually though we got to the hotel and collectively decided that it was time for a LONG nap - about 5 hours long. We all woke up at 3pm kind of ready to begin the day.

We started out by trying to find the Central Market - and we found it, it just wasn't impressive. Maybe earlier in the day there were actually people there and booths that weren't fish and vegetables, but not at 4pm. At 4pm the only people there are the ones buying groceries to take home and cook dinner with. Very quickly we decided to leave to head out to Lykavittos Hill, a place famous for the view of Athens and the sunset. What Lian neglected to inform me of was that there were like 15 million REALLY steep steps that one had to traverse before getting to the funicular that would take us to the top. And even when we got to the top we had to go up more steps to pass the cafe to really see the city. And while I enjoyed the view when I got to the top, I was not happy with Lian's repeated comments on how cool and wonderful the view was. At this point I was like three sets of stairs behind the other two and sweating quite unattractively.

It was weird to watch the sun begin to set at about 8pm, but it did get really nice. From the top of the hill you could see a huge panoramic view of Athens, the Acropolis, and just a lot of the houses built around small mountain/hills that seemed to just burst out from in between them. Being officially beyond exhausted at this point we all headed back, stopped at the minimart for snacks and are right now sitting in the room listening to the screams and cheers of drunk people at the bar a couple doors down, singing along to "American Pie". What a way to finish our first day in Athens.