athens

MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED
DATE: MARCH 23, 2005
PLACE: MIKE’S IRISH PUB, ATHENS, GREECE

Continuing my trend of getting lost just about anywhere, it took Kristen and me quite a few tries to successfully make it from Athens airport to our hotel. After winding up on the side of random roads a couple times, we finally made it to the President Hotel and met up with Kristen’s friend Heather.

In the back of my mind, I was secretly hoping that my wet clothes would dry in my suitcase and I’d be just fine by the time I arrived in Athens. I was very, very wrong. You know that moldy smell clothes get when you leave them in the washer for a couple days? Multiply that by three, and add that they were still pretty darn wet, and you get my suitcase.

The front desk at the hotel informed us that they had no laundry facilities, but I could get my clothes dry cleaned for the low price of 10 euros apiece. Right. Like that was going to happen. So Kristen and I walked for miles trying to find a laundromat, to no avail, but we did find a grocery store, so I bought what appeared to be laundry detergent and washed my clothes in the bathtub, draping them to dry all over our hotel room.

Only… what I thought was laundry detergent was actually starch. So I now had damp, incredibly stiff, still-unpleasant-smelling clothes. Oh, the fail. I gave up and spent the entire week in the same pair of yoga pants and sandals. Sigh.

Our first order of non-laundry business was to visit the Acropolis, which we assumed would be simple enough given that Athens has a subway system and they had just hosted the Olympics, so it was probably easy to get around the city. Except, when we got to the subway station, an ostensibly-nice man informed us in broken English that, contrary to how it might look, the Acropolis was *not* at the Akropoli stop, but instead off a stop on a different line (requiring a transfer). We thanked him and followed his directions.

Yes, dear readers, that man was lying. We ended up in the Grecian equivalent of Timbuktu a good 40 minutes later, then spent 40 minutes on a return trip, only to go to the Akropli stop and find — lo and behold — the Acropolis.

Ascending to the Acropolis requires serious leg power. There are a *lot* of steps. Luckily, I was addicted to the Stairmaster at the time, so the climb was fairly easy — but it wasn’t for most everyone else. If you’re planning a trip here, run a lot of stairs beforehand.

Don’t ask us how we know this, but there are guards hidden behind trees and in bushes to jump out and yell at dumb Americans who try to cross the “Do Not Cross” lines for photo opps.

The Acropolis itself was eh. As I’ve mentioned, I’m not big on history. That said, the idea that they could build structures like that prior to the invention of the crane is pretty impressive… and the view was pretty sweet, too.

We made our way back to the hotel to find something for dinner. Heather wanted lamb, and we were in Greece — a restaurant serving lamb would be no sweat, right?

Hah. Much to our surprise, there are almost no restaurants in the entire city. Every place that sells food is more like a snack stand… baklava, spanikopita, drinks, etc. but no waiters and no full-on meals. We searched for lamb (okay, for ANY restaurant) for days, to no avail. (Remember, this was pre-Google Local.) Finally, we asked the front desk at the hotel, who continued his strong of unhelpfulness (recall the 10 euro dry cleaning) by recommending a “fabulous” restaurant across town where he knew the owner personally and would call ahead for us.

I’m not quite sure how we found the restaurant given that we had no maps, but after navigating a considerable number of dark sketchy alleyways, we arrived. It was, in fact, a restaurant, but it had zero guests and zero lamb. The owner — a gruff old man — came down, looked at us, and said he’d bring us three of the special. Which was … macaroni and cheese. He then proceeded to sit at our table with us and watch us eat it, asking angrily if we didn’t like it since none of us finished our bowls. (As mac and cheese goes, it was pretty good, but I can’t eat a huge bowl of it!)

As you may be able to tell, I was not warming to Athens… rather disappointing since I am half-Greek and expected to feel at least a smidgen of solidarity with the culture and the people. Not the case. I was far more at home in Budapest.

At this point, I was going to kill someone if I didn’t get to change out of that one freaking pair of yoga pants, so we went clothes shopping. I found a cute pair of capri jeans that worked just fine, and we also stumbled into Petinarelli, where the incredibly kind store owner commented repeatedly on how skinny I was. This immediately caused me to spend a significant chunk of money on clothes from her store, including one pair of sweet black pants that we continue to refer to as the “skinny pants.” If you are in Athens, you should go to this store.

Thanks to some tourist stand, we found a map of local attractions that listed both a restaurant that served lamb and an Irish Pub so I could find a Guinness. We trekked out for lamb and happened to walk past the American Embassy, where we got yelled at for taking a photograph. (Other people had their cameras confiscated, so we got off easy, it seems.) Because, you know, the terrorists are going to use a photo of the front door of the Embassy to do bad things.

This is where things got more interesting. We found lamb in a restaurant with real waiters and a real menu where we were not the only guests. (It was even good lamb!) Then we wandered to Mike’s Irish Pub for a “quick” Guinness.

There was some European university rugby match that night, which the British team had won, and the losing team consequently had to buy them drinks. They also chose Mike’s Irish Pub for their victory celebration, and the rugby guys just happened to have three empty seats at their table for three pretty American girls. *smirk*

I cannot share the story of what happened that night here, but let’s just say that everyone had fun.

It was time to fly back to Luton so we could switch over to Heathrow and fly back to New York City. We accidentally underpaid for our tickets on the train to the airport and two very serious-looking police officers took down all our information and wrote us tickets. There may be an outstanding warrant for me in Greece. (Luckily, I’m not really planning on returning to Athens.)

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