We are having a great time so far in Athens! Olympic Air is … “interesting”. I’ll leave it at that, except to add that I would avoid it in the future. Now that we have that out of the way, we are in the morning of our third day here and the weather is just ABSOLUTELY PERFECT. 20°C (68°F). I guess it might be a little chilly for the beach. Frankly, the winter in Paris has fattened me up rather nicely and before yesterday, I was alarmingly white. So, you can see where I’m going with this and the beach and the weather, being fat, etc ;-) About 4 hours of walking around in the sun yesterday, looking at ruins and saying as I like to say to my wife: “Man, this stuff is like… OLDER THAN JESUS”, did a good job of rendering my face and my forearms pink. So, you could say I’m working on both of the “being too white” and “being too fat” problems!
We arrived Saturday evening. It was supposed to be considerably earlier but the flight was late getting to Paris and took forever to turn around and get us in. It happens to me nearly every time: “Oh! we are leaving the house at 10:30am and the flight is under 3 hours, so we’ll have plenty of time when we get there; practically a full day! I think by the time we got to the hotel and were able to connect to the internet it was 8 or 9pm. But we did get some decent walking around with our luggage before we actually found the hotel. Comparing different character sets from different maps on different street signs during sunset and traffic and motorcycles and scooters everywhere (anywhere) was actually pretty cute. We were pretty close to heading in the right direction by me using the almost setting sun as a compass… only off by 90°.
I read a few things about Athens before we came and was a bit concerned. Since our trip to Marseille was a little bit of a letdown, I was prepared for a dumpy experience. Although we haven’t gone too far from our hotel (we are centrally located and there is a lot to see so far without traveling too far) I must say that it’s been a pleasant surprise. I think they must have done an incredible amount work for the Olympic Games and Aimee tells me that many of the pedestrian zones are new, but it seems that the term “Pedestrian Zone” here is mostly just a recommendation. Actual streets are commonly jammed with cars and buses, and like in Paris, tons of scooters and motorcycles stinking up the air with noise and exhaust, parking everywhere and anywhere, even riding over the train tracks via pedestrian walkway.
Another surprise is we find the food here to be absolutely excellent. I hadn’t really thought about it before our arrival but I don’t know why because HUGE PLATES OF MEAT and many styles of fried or broiled or baked cheese are pretty damn tasty! I’m still a little, perhaps even more concerned about what we’ll be eating in Istanbul. I’m sure it’ll be fine.
Well, I guess I better get off my butt and out of the room! It’s nearly 11:00am!
Cheers,
-Dennis
Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonezes/ and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/herfjonez/.
We arrived Saturday evening. It was supposed to be considerably earlier but the flight was late getting to Paris and took forever to turn around and get us in. It happens to me nearly every time: “Oh! we are leaving the house at 10:30am and the flight is under 3 hours, so we’ll have plenty of time when we get there; practically a full day! I think by the time we got to the hotel and were able to connect to the internet it was 8 or 9pm. But we did get some decent walking around with our luggage before we actually found the hotel. Comparing different character sets from different maps on different street signs during sunset and traffic and motorcycles and scooters everywhere (anywhere) was actually pretty cute. We were pretty close to heading in the right direction by me using the almost setting sun as a compass… only off by 90°.
I read a few things about Athens before we came and was a bit concerned. Since our trip to Marseille was a little bit of a letdown, I was prepared for a dumpy experience. Although we haven’t gone too far from our hotel (we are centrally located and there is a lot to see so far without traveling too far) I must say that it’s been a pleasant surprise. I think they must have done an incredible amount work for the Olympic Games and Aimee tells me that many of the pedestrian zones are new, but it seems that the term “Pedestrian Zone” here is mostly just a recommendation. Actual streets are commonly jammed with cars and buses, and like in Paris, tons of scooters and motorcycles stinking up the air with noise and exhaust, parking everywhere and anywhere, even riding over the train tracks via pedestrian walkway.
Another surprise is we find the food here to be absolutely excellent. I hadn’t really thought about it before our arrival but I don’t know why because HUGE PLATES OF MEAT and many styles of fried or broiled or baked cheese are pretty damn tasty! I’m still a little, perhaps even more concerned about what we’ll be eating in Istanbul. I’m sure it’ll be fine.
Well, I guess I better get off my butt and out of the room! It’s nearly 11:00am!
Cheers,
-Dennis
Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonezes/ and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/herfjonez/.
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- I'm off2paris
- From Paris, France
- off2paris at wonky point org
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