We've arrived! It's about 11am, and we're still pretty groggy from the long flight (about eleven hours). OK, time for a little culture shock. The signs were in Greek and English. (God bless the rest of the world for welcoming Americans like they do!) We were greeted with palm trees and sunshine. Here's Ma looking for the elevator to the metro.
TIP FOR TRAVELERS: As you exit the terminal, cross the street and look for the elevator. The signs have a hard time indicating "up" instead of "straight".
More culture shock.
1.) The billboard says "Welcome". Interesting.
2.) This car could have fit on my dining room table.
The Athens metro was clean and efficient. We had the place to ourselves at the start (airport). It filled up as we hit the heart of the city. We packed light. We each had one small bag (checked-in) plus a backpack and a purse as carry-ons.
TIP FOR TRAVELERS: There is a two-person metro ticket which includes the airport. It is good for 90 minutes and costs 10 €. You can use it on any metro line plus the city buses. We used it to go to Syntagma station (blue line) and transferred to the red line to get to Omonia Square. The automated ticket dispensers DO give change (coins), so go ahead and use your 20 € bill. To use a 50 € note, see the cashier. You can buy your return ticket ahead of time and not validate it until you are ready to start the return journey. To validate a ticket, stick one end into the slot on a validation machine (you'll see a series of poles stretched across the walkway with little boxes perched on top). It's an honor system, enforced by random conductor audits.
We stayed at the Economy Hotel near Omonia Square. The woman working the reception desk was exceptional!! She took the time to go over EVERYTHING. She let us know where to go for the free breakfast, how to get access to the Internet, walking directions to the various sites, opening hours for all the sites, how to work the A/C, and more. She spoke English very well and answered all our questions. It was a wonderful welcome.
Each morning we would come down to leave our key at the reception desk (encouraged, but not required), and the staff would cheerfully ask if we knew how to get where we were going and if we needed any assistance. They were very friendly.
Our room was small but adequate. The bathroom wasn't much bigger than a postage stamp, but there was a shower, a toilet, and a sink in there. The shower curtain had a tendency float around and stop up the drain so you had to play around to get it to stay. There was plenty of hot water. The electricity requires the room key to be in place. You have about 30 seconds to get out of the room before it goes black. The A/C is controlled by a thermostat. We set ours to 24 degrees. To turn it on, you must close the glass door to the balcony and have the room key in place.
TIPS FOR TRAVELERS: There was no alarm clock and no washcloths provided. Bring your own. They did provide shampoo, bars of soap, two small towels and two large towels. Sheets were changed daily. There was a desk with a mirror in the bedroom with a hair dryer next to it. The little refrigerator was in the closet (opposite the bathroom door).
Internet access was free. You would go to the reception desk, ask for a slip of paper with a code on it, and proceed upstairs to the breakfast room. There were two computers there. You typed in the code to begin a 30-minute session. You could probably have gone back for another code, but 30 minutes was all we ever needed each night to check the weather, send a couple email updates, and generally keep in touch with what was going on in the world. There is no printer.
The free breakfast was excellent. Ma said the yogurt was the best she had ever eaten. I loved the coffee cake. The OJ was fresh squeezed. They had sandwich-style bread to make toast, plus rolls and the usual butter, honey, jams, and jellies. (Sorry, no grape jelly. That's an American thing.) Ma and I would usually swipe a roll or two as a snack to keep us going on the run. They also had ham slices and cheese slices. I liked to make them into little sandwiches using the rolls. Mmmm!! They also had some canned fruits (like peaches). Coffee, tea, and water were also available.
TIP FOR TRAVELERS: I'd like to take a minute to describe the hotel's location. It's across the street from the Fresh Hotel on a street called Klisthenous. However, the easiest way to get there is to get off the metro at Omonia and take one of the "Athinas" exits to street-level. There are two: one goes to the west side of Athinas and one goes to the east side. If you come up and Casio/Goody's is in front of you, you're on the west side, and you're better off. If you come up and Beast is in front of you, you'll need to cross Athinas (to your right). It's no big deal. Athinas is a small enough street to cross at street-level. Either way, go up the escalator and keep going (straight ahead) past all the little shops. Good to know for later: There's a grocery store called Marinopoulos (Mαρινοπουλος) on the left (east) side of the street. In the middle of the second block on the right, you will see a large yellow-ish building whose stoop practically eats up the whole sidewalk. That's City Hall. (The flower market is across the street.) Go past the City Hall building to the alley beyond. Turn right. At the end of the alley (about 200 feet) is the Economy Hotel. The alley is really just access to a little park behind the City Hall plus it provides a storefront for an Arabic grocery store and an adult entertainment shop (on your left). Never mind those. It sounds a little rough, but it's actually very easy. We did the trip many times, including several times at night, and I felt very safe, especially on the busy Athinas street.
Here's a view from our "balcony". It was about 12" deep, so I'm not sure I can call it a true balcony. The street running roughly top to bottom in the picture is Klisthenous. The street coming in from the right is the alley. The green space (top of photo) is adjacent to City Hall.
The elevator was tiny. Ma, I, and our luggage just barely fit.
The alternative was to climb the spiral staircase to the fifth floor (actually the seventh floor because the Europeans say the ground floor is zero instead of one and the floor above that was "H" for breakfast).
The Syntagma metro station was big and airy. When Syntagma station was being built, the construction crews unearthed lots of artifacts which were put on display (toward the back of the picture). They also made sure to include cool modern touches like this clock.
National Gardens
One of the unusual plants we saw in several places in Athens was something that looked like a giant agave cactus. (This picture was taken later on the way up to the Acropolis, but it shows a large specimen of the same plant we saw everywhere in the National Gardens).
...the Panathenaic Stadium.
There's also a great view of the Acropolis from there.
