McLays in Europe

We needed to travel back into mainland Greece a day earlier than planned to enable us to catch our plane to Paris. We departed from Syros via the 4pm ferry and arrived in Athens around 9pm. Although we planned to catch the metro into the city and find a room it was getting late so we decided to find one near the ferry terminal which was some 30 km out of Athens. We walked over the bridge and were not really that comfortable in this district. It was a bit sleazy but the first reasonable looking accommodation house we came across offered us a room for 50 euros so we decided to take it. The man was as suspicious of Ian as he was of him (asking Ian if I was his wife) but eventually we took the room. It was pretty basic and smelt very strongly of stale cigarette smoke but we survived the night. Everyone seems to smoke in Europe. Even chefs are holding a fag while preparing the meal - will have to get the EHO onto that one.

Next morning we set off on the rail to the city mindful that we had to catch the plane to Paris at 5pm so had limited time to discover Athens. Initial feelings of the place were that we weren't really enthusiastic about discovering it anyway. We got off at a station where we had to change trains for the airport and thought 'oh well it looks ok and there might be something to see, so lets lock our bags at the station and have a wander. We didn't even get out of the station before we found a major display where they had found old Roman sewerage channels under the station when renovating it for the Olympics in 2004 and then some more interesting displays up the road. Alison asks the ticket box lady 'how much to go in?' and she replies '4 euros or 12 if you want to see the Parthenon'. 'The Parthenon' we both said with surprise, 'is that nearby?' 'Oh yes, look up there'. There on top of the nearby Acropolis (sacred hill) sat the magnificent Parthenon, so off we went. On reaching the Acropolis we were suddenly confronted with hundreds of tourists queuing to go up to see the Parthenon (this was our first experience of huge crowds of tourists.) One could only imagine what it was like in high season!!! There is a huge project under way here to relocate the museum to a new site at the base of the Acropolis by lifting marble sculptures, some weighing 2.5 tons. The view from the Parthenon, perched up above Athens, is beautiful giving views over the huge city.
We found an Irish Pub on the way back to the station and immediately enjoyed having a discussion with an English speaking person so much we gave her a nice tip and enjoyed a great Irish lunch. The lady was very chatty and told us that every time they go digging in this area to build something new, they dig up some old relic from the Roman era, and the general view was just don't tell anyone and cover it up otherwise there is enormous discussion over desecration of old Roman sites - reminded us of sacred sites back home.

Anyway, we had a good time in the end and felt like we had seen something extra we hadn't planned for.