Vacation 2013 - Egypt & Greece, Day 6 "It's All Greek To Me!"

Monday, April 29, 2013 – Day 6

We were up bright and early for our ride to the airport, breakfast boxes in hand as we said goodbye to the pyramids. 

We had tried to track down a sewing kit or some heavy-duty tape to use to repair our luggage so it didn't end up completely ripping in transit. The best the hotel had was Scotch tape, so we had improvised using a bunch of safety pins to attempt to hold it together.  Luckily, they had a baggage wrapping station at the airport, so we paid like one US Dollar to have it plastic-wrapped.  (Later, we unwrapped it slowly and carefully in Greece, so we could re-wrap it for the final flight home.)

Toilet paper was something of a luxury in Egypt. In fact, we were expected to pay pretty much every time we used a public restroom. Generally, a "bathroom attendant" would greet you as you walked in and hand you a small handful of toilet paper. If they didn't ask for money then, they waited till you washed your hands and asked for money as they handed you more toilet paper to use to dry off.  As you can see here, at least they were generous at the airport and hung some paper for travelers. :-P 

As we had learned during our stay, prayer and smoking are two of the most important things to Egyptians. :-P The Cairo Airport made sure to include opportunities for both.

Our departure to Athens was at 10:25 AM, and we were scheduled to arrive at 1:25 PM.  It is only a two-hour flight, but there is a one-hour time difference.

After we'd crossed the Mediterranean Sea, it was time for possibly the most challenging part of our entire journey. We had decided to take the Athens Metro to travel from the airport to our first hotel, the Athens Lotus.  We managed to find the train platform fairly easily, but then we weren't sure which train to get on.  We had noted that we would need to take the "blue line", but the train that came had a red line, not blue. After a couple trains came and went, we realized they weren't actually color-coded.  At Syntagma Square, we were supposed to transfer to the red line. We had a while to wait and I counted the stops as we went since everything was listed in Greek - a language I don't happen to be fluent in!  A couple of kids walked by playing an accordion and I tried to sneak in a quick video. 

At Syntagma Square, we stared at a map for a while, willing it to make sense and be in English. Someone must have seen our bewildered expressions because they asked where we were trying to go then told us we needed to get on the train that had just pulled up. Thank goodness!  We ended our journey at the Metaxourghio Metro station, and then it was a short walk to the Athens Lotus Hotel. 

Our room was cute but oh-so-tiny. I kept tripping over things and nearly injuring myself or going flying out the window. 

The view was not fantastic, but our room was quiet. 

We walked around outside for a while, scoping out potential places to eat but didn't really see anything too promising.  

Exploring Greek ruins :-P

After our walk, we ended up going back to the restaurant at our hotel. The food was really good - and super cheesy! I can't remember exactly what we had, but it had a lot of feta cheese - my favorite!