Freshly Minted: Greece Trip, Day 3

May 9:
We had the time to sleep in again and sleep with the windows and doors open to let in the cool night breeze, which was very nice! However, we were woken up around 7:00 and then every few minutes by the pealing of church bells from the island's many churches...I suppose it added to the experience of the island, but it also caused us to get up a bit earlier than we intended. We were treated to a big Greek breakfast again by our hotel (breakfast, by the way, was served outside in a courtyard behind one of the hotel's buildings--see the picture below). After packing up our stuff and checking emails and news online, we checked out of the hotel (thankfully we were able to leave our bags there until the ferry left) and took another wander around some new parts of the town we hadn't yet explored. It was a bright and sunny day, in contrast to yesterday, and it was also remarkably breezy. We stopped by the Church of Virgin Mary again, visiting a few shops along the way. From there we walked further along the promenade, out of town a bit and up a little hill to a large monument. We attempted to take a few pictures of ourselves but the wind made taking timed photos difficult as we were worried the camera would be blown from its perch. After walking back into town we had a small lunch which consisted of pork gyro pitas and then took the sea-side promenade in the other direction. We stumbled across some sort of traditional Greek celebration in a square which we later found out to be a wedding. It was very captivating and we ended up standing and watching for a good while. The experience was very multi-sensory as we heard the traditional Greek music while watching the traditional dancing and feeling the Aegean breeze and warm sun. It was nice to just sit and enjoy the experience and let it take over your mind and thoughts. Even Greeks were stopping and watching. Eventually though we had to leave in order to get back up to our hotel in time to catch the shuttle back down the the port...it was time to leave Tinos.

We caught the ferry around 3:00 in the afternoon and were in for another 4 1/2 hour ride back to the Piraeus, again stopping at Siros on the way. The ride felt faster this time as we remembered to leave out our books to read and cards to play and we also had a late afternoon frappe on the boat. Both of us found ourselves a little sunburned, though nothing too serious as its already gone as I write this. We arrived at the Piraeus around 7:45 and found the Metro from there, which we hoped would take us into Athens no problem. Well, that would be too easy. After just one stop there was an announcement in Greek and everybody except a few obvious tourists got off the metro. Then a conductor came around saying "last stop" in bad English and providing no other explanation ("last stop" made no sense as the Piraeus was the first stop of a Metro line that supposedly had about 20-30 stops). Eventually we discerned from several conversations with a few people who spoke decent English that we had to get bussed for several stops (we assume the Metro was being repaired or something, but it remains an assumption as we were never really told what was going on--needless to say after a long ferry ride we were both somewhat distressed at this late evening disaster). So when the bus stopped at what looked like a Metro stop and everyone on the bus started getting off, we just followed the crowd down onto a waiting train. This proceeded to get ludicrously crowded. When our stop finally came we had to push through crowds of people with our huge bags to get off the train and when we emerged on the street felt very disoriented despite having been to this part of the city before. It was quite dark by now and the streets were thronged with tourists and people selling random goods, which made getting through the crowds again very difficult (not to mention nerve-wracking as we kept checking to make sure nobody was rifling through our bags). After a bit of confusion we eventually found our way and fought through the crowds, arriving at our hotel a bit after 9:00. The hotel was in the Plaka neighborhood where we had stayed the last time we went to Athens with the Gordon group and just being there again brought back so many good memories. Our room had a balcony with an Acropolis view and the hotel had a roof terrace where you could sit and enjoy the panorama. We waited until 10:00 for some of our friends to arrive (they got lost trying to get to the hotel) and then struck out to find the Byzantino Taverna for dinner (the place we had eaten at when in Athens before). It was a delicious dinner of Pastitsio (for Allison) and chicken souvlaki (for me), though we were both tired so after finishing we headed back to our hotel to get some rest.

Views of our hotel on Tinos (the 2nd is the breakfast area)