Athenia

So I brought a hair band, how do the dames put up with long hair? I mean really, its always getting in my eyes, or itching my ears... Very annoying. I caved in and brought myself a Berbatov style band, not a gay as all fuck Bracken band- but still, I'm not really certain if this is cool or not- on top of my cocco butter sun screen I am worried about where this is going.

So the whole trip is supposed to be about 'finding myself' and despite the opening of this piece I can garruntee I'm not the homosexuals. I have spent far too much time sitting on rocky beaches on the Med looking at very young hard bodies in extremly scanty bikini's, so we've solved that problem. Another thing I am not is a traveller, this punting about from place to place is really not all its cracked up to be. I mean, how many boxes can anyone person tick in a 30 day period??? I'm not as interested in Greek culture as I look...I'm thinking a beach up in Turkey for a couple of days later this week.

Anyways, I stayed in a small port town called Rafina while in Athens, it was a nice 30 km's out of town, but their was no train, so I had to spend an hour on the bus just to get into town- but that wasn't that big of a problem, I was SOOOOOO excited about my big day in Athens.

I finally arrived in the latest edition on the olympic city roster and my first impression was that it was hot, real hot, back home type hot- I was very impressed. The bus into town does not drop you in a particullarly nice section of the city however, so I spent my first 45 odd minutes just wondering around trying to work out where I was, the normal play is too find a tube stop near where you need to be to get your bus/overland train home and use that as a base- it worked in Rome, Naples, Paris, Monaco and others, but in Athens it was turning out to be quite a hassle.

Anyways, I finally took the right turn and ended up on one of the major streets of down town Athens- its a little bit 70's slum, but overall its just a town. I had heard good things about the Athens Metro system, but finding a train station turned out to be the hardest part- when that job was finally done things got a lot easier. I caught the tube a stop down to the main touristing section and then did the touristing- not really many better ways to describe it then that.

The Acropolis/Pathenon/Agora is a very impressive part of town, really they appear to have just left a large section in the very middle of town empty for the ancient ruins. Of course

(Is it sad that I live a life with two different digital camera's? My view out my window is currently of some lights over on the main land across an Ageian Bay (I'm on the Island of Evoia, just out side of Eritrea) anyways, its quite a view, not every day you get to camp seriously 4 metres from the edge of the water, I tried to take a photo with the Kloss Kamera but it wouldn't come out, then I tried the Happy Snapper but it didn't work either. Oh well, you'll just have to believe me. Back to the 90210 - seriously, best move of the entire journey was coming with my multiple BH 90210 and Entourage DVD's- keeping me very occupied at night, that and the Mythos Hellenic Larger Beer and the $4 bottle of Ouzo- very occupied).

Where are we? right, touristing in Athens. I walked around, and around- and I mean around, its a fairly massive hill, and finding the way up can be quite challanging. Until eventually I got all the way to the top, and the Acropolis- very outstanding. 3000 years old. I liked it. BUT it was very quickly over with- its just an old shell of a building really, I had driven thousands of kilometres and was done with the big ticket items of the town within about 100 minutes. This touristing just isn't what its cracked up to be.

Anyways, my two day Athens experience was nearing completion after only one long morning, so I needed to come up with something exciting to make Athena catch fire in the old imagination. Thankfully the Athens Happy Train was there to save the day (I'll add a photo later). Dav Rossi and Kloss Dogg had poo poohed the last tourist train we saw (in Monaco) but this time I demanded satisfaction. It was a lot of fun, really it just went over the same route I had done in the morning, but I was riding in a cool minature train this time so was definatly the toast of all the people who waved as we drove past. It also took in a couple of cool new areas of town- such as the shopping district and the parliament area- where we saw some people in extremly foolish costumes- but they looked fairly serious with their bayonets, so I didn't throw too much sass.

Once the train ride was done I did the Macca's test, then caught the train back to the bus stop and bailed on the whole Athens trip, back to Rafina and my favorite bottle of Pastisis- it made everything seem good.

Overall I would give Athens a B-, parts of it stella, boxes that have to be ticked no matter what your stance on ticking boxes is, whilst other parts where a bit yawney, and others we're extremly divey- I wouldn't award it the Olympics over Bris Vegas, but I would still recomend it as part of the itenerary- not a destination, but a good point on the route no matter what.