After Contiki - Athens 2

 

Saturday September 16th, 2011. - Alone in Athens.


So, most of my group were gone by now, and I was all alone in that sketchy little Hotel-Motel. Still with the coffee table in front of the door, I slept well, considering I did not feel safe at all. It was so nice not to have to be up at 7am, and not have someone else in the room with me. I slept a little bit in, then had a long shower, ate some of the groceries I had bought the night before, and then decided to get started on my day.

I spoke to the clerk downstairs, seeing what kind of activities they could book on my behalf, and I decided for a half-day trip the next day to Cape Sounion, so I could visit Poseidon's temple. It was about 50 Euros, but included round trip transport, so I figured why not.

For today, I decided to use my tickets for the Hop-On Hop-Off bus to get around town and try to see/visit as much as I possibly could. This system is pretty amazing. I did a full round, listening to the commentary, watching people and studying the map, before even coming up with a plan on where to stop and what to do. It was a really great day. I saw and did pretty much everything I wanted to, and took tons of pictures. I spent about 3 hours at the Athens Archaeological Museum. It was a dream come true. So many statues and so many of them in such good state. It was unbelievable. It seemed to be in a pretty sketchy area though, so the 20 minutes waiting for the bus to come around made me pretty anxious. (This was 2 years ago, when things started to escalate in Greece, so there was a lot of homeless people, beggars and armed people around. Not the most reassuring feeling in the world when you're a solo female traveller...)

I also spent some time by the remains of Zeus and Hera's Temple, which was awesome too. Athens is amazingly easier to navigate than I thought. The Hop-on Hop-Off bus was a blessing and allowed me to have a great day! The only time I regretted not being with a group and just by myself, when when trying to take pictures, I suck at selfies haha! Oh well, the importance thing is the souvenirs, not necessarily my stupid faces in front of stuff ;)

I had made plans for dinner with another girl from Contiki who was still around for one day, but I completely misunderstood, and we ended up not seeing each other. I sorta stood her up at the restaurant. But in my defense, it wasn't on purpose, I really misunderstood the plans and I felt horrible and apologize via Facebook so many times.

I found myself a Gyros place, grabbed a few ones to go, locked myself back into my room, watched TV on my DVD player and had a few drinks and had an early quiet night. A long day out in the sun at 40 something degrees, not something I was used to before this trip, so I was spent.