Athens, part 4: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Zoo

I'll just limit myself to the highlights of the last three days, becausy frankly I'm getting tired of writing this stuff :P

Back to the same hotel again, another half a day gone. This time not so much sunbathing on the ferry anymore, I had soaked up enough sun for the entire trip already. With all the important stuff already done and three days left to go, it was a lot of improvising. One day would be reserved for the zoo, but the rest we just made up as we went along.

The first day back we went to Olympic Stadium which were held there in 2004. After the Olympics were over, there wasn't much use for them anymore. And with not much I mean none at all. The grounds were open for public, but aside from someone on a bike and the employee at the entrance, it was pretty much deserted. Probably because it was a weekday (the start of it even), it's far from central Athens (it was about a 20 minute metro ride) and it was during the late holidays (when tourists are back home already and Greek people start to go on holidays). The buildings were closed unfortunately (with chain locks on every doors... What do you people need to protect in there if it's not being used?), so after walking around a bit we were done.

After that we went back, visited the Temple of Olympian Zeus (which we skipped when doing the Akropolis thing) and came across some fellow Dutch speaking people. We tagged along when they were going to the original (as in first ever, ancient) Olympic stadium, a bit south of the temple. And ancient it was, it consisted of just one track.. There was a gate in front of it, so no one dared to go on it. Well, almost no one...

In the evening we finally found the best thing to eat in Greece: Souvlaki!! It's basically just a sort of Greek fast food dish, an extra thick pita bread wrapped around gyros meat and added ingredients like onion, lettuce, tomato and even some wedged potatoes. Makes me drool again just thinking about it ^^

At night once again we ventured out into the city nightlife, but like the first time there wasn't much to do except walking around a bit. The next day we went to the zoo. Getting there was an adventure in itself, much to Chan's aggrevation. The zoo was near the outer edge of Athens, and anyone that's ever been in a capitol city knows how far that can be. The map said a certain bus went to the zoo, but it was already hard to find that bus. After asking around a bit, we took a bus that went to the area where the zoo was located, but not quite there. For a moment it seemed as if the bus was going to the middle of nowhere. Needless to say, we didn't get there at once. It took three buses, a gaziljion times asking for directions and finally a cab to get there. But even the taxi driver didn't know where to go. Finally he managed to find it (asking directions in Greek is a lot more effective when in Greece). Mr athensguide wasn't joking when he said the zoo was pretty unknown, almost nobody even knew it existed.

The zoo itself was pretty cool, although the hot wheather made the larger animals a bit slow and dull. I made some 'looking good' shots, and also a 'looking silly' shot. When we were done, we found out that since it was a national holiday, there were also fewer buses. And how. Where there is usually a bus every two hours (are you kidding me?), today only has one every five hours (Joy... >_<) So, back to the nearest metro station with a cab again. This trip turned out to cost more than expected, but it was a fun day out. Day three. Lykavittos Hill, the highest place in Athens. You could view every part of the city there, all the way to the hills and sea surrounding it. We could even see the throng of people milling around at the Akropolis from here. From there we went south through the eastern side of central Athens (or rather, the less touristy side). Today would be a cultural day, we visited a couple of museums (The Byzantine museum, which also had an exposition about the Tang Dynasty in China) and went for some last-minute souvernir shopping at the Plaka again, although we didn't get much (guys and shopping don't mix).

Back at the hotel things have begun to get busy. This second part of Athens had backpackers pouring in, some of them fun: one of them had a bottle opener on the bottom of his sandal. My first thought was "Cool!"... My second thought was "Uhmm, that's pretty gross actually". Some of them less fun, there were two guys hogging 2 of the 3 PC's there for a loooong time. Very unhelpful if you just need to check the train times for tomorrow... After a while I decided to see what they were doing. One of thos mofo's was actually playing poker online! The other one was basically doing nothing besides chatting on MSN. Yeah, great way to spend a vacation, losers. The poker player noticed me, at which he opened his email to appear genuinely busy. Sure buddy, sure. It helps when you actually do something on that page instead of clicking back and forth on it every two minutes. Eventually I just told him to shove off (in a nice way of course. I'm a nice guy, after all), and after a couple more minutes he and his friend did. We spent the rest of the night playing some cards and were joined by a couple of Asian American girls from Detroit (well there's a place I didn't expect to find Chinese people... Well no, Detroit is still possible. Something like Alabama or Texas, now those are places you don't expect to find Asians, although the Chinese really are everywhere these days. Divde and conquer :P)

Anyhoo, lots of packing to do as well, since we had to check out the next morning already. We left our luggage there so we could go into town for one last time. We visited yet another museum, which we missed yesterday (it's only open till midday). It was the war museum, a great collection of ancient weaponry used all over the world, displaying the development of weapons over time up to the World Wars.

Lots of time to spare (our plane was scheduled for around 5-6 o clock), some idle browsing around at the airport, playing cards and a bit of sleep to kill time. No trouble this time about our luggage, and we soon lifted off. We luckily arrived on time, although we still had to move quickly to catch our train home, so we ran for it as soon as we could finally get off the stuffy plane (sitting somewhere in the back does not help). As we arrived at the station, we heard the whistle go and jumped on it just in time. Although... We made good time and the train wasn't supposed to leave for another 10 minutes. As the train moved, we passed by the destination sign: Lelystad.

Great.

Being all tired from the journey, we just sat down and took a rest. Just get off at Amsterdam and get another train. Eventually, we reached our final destination: home.


Total trip's worth:
+2000 experience
+6 knowledge
+1 charisma
+600 pics
-800 gold (€)

All in all, very much worth it ^^