It's been a few days since I posted anything. I haven't really been anywhere that I could and I haven't had much down time in the last few days. I left you on the evening of the day that I arrived in Athens. That night not much happened. The hostel was nice other than the two girls who spent about an hour late at night and then early in the morning rustling through there things and being seemingly purposefully as loud as possible. There was a positive side to them waking me up before sunrise, however. It gave me a chance to hear all the new bird sounds early in the morning. I was feeling lonely and nervous about the city so I decided to take the free Athens walking tour that the hostel offers everyday to meet people and to get a better bearing on my surroundings. When I got to the meeting spot there were only 2 other people there and so it was easy to quickly get to know each other. One was a 25 year old girl, originally from Chicago, who works as teacher for young children in Prague. The other was a 27 year old guy, originally from Austin, who works a teacher in Madrid. It turned out that the tour guide was very sick, so there wasn't a tour after all. The 3 of us decided to explore Athens a bit together. We walked up to the Acropolis, went to the temple of Zeus, the stadium of the first modern Olympic games, and the National Garden of Athens. The National Garden was a huge disappointment. Everything seemed dead and unkempt. Maybe its just the wrong time of year to visit. After that we just walked around a bit more before deciding to get food. After talking to them, I decided to cancel my reservation at the hostel for the next night so that I could explore a couple islands with them. The next morning we headed to to Piraeus to catch a ferry to Aegina. It was a quick trip lasting only about 45 minutes. Our first goal when we got there was to find a beach and go swimming. We walked quite a ways in the hot sun without finding an actual beach, so we settled on a rocky area with shallow water and lots of sea urchins. The water was a bit colder than we had expected so we didn't swim that long. We spent the next couple hours just lounging in the sun. Our plan was to catch a ferry from Aegina to Hydra where we would find a place to stay for the night. Unfortunately we didn't take the time to look up ferries from Aegina and it turns out that you cant go anywhere from Aegina besides Piraeus. We decided to stay on Aegina for the night and caught a cab to what was supposed to be a very popular beach town destination. On the ride there we were able to see a lot of beautiful scenery. Apparently Aegina grows a lot of pistatios, so pistatio trees, along with old growth olives, are everywhere. We arrived at the town we were going to stay at and it looked like a ghost town. There were only a hand full of shops open and no one on the streets. It seemed like about half of the building were abandoned. We checked into a cheap hotel and the owner told us that the reason the town was so dead was that the hight season doesn't start for another 2 weeks. We headed down to the beach and in the distance up a hill there was what looked a huge partially built hotel made entirely of concrete. We found out later from a local that that is exactly what it is. Apparently in the 80s the Greek military had forced the builders to stop building. I'm not entirely sure why. We walked up to it and climbed all over. It was really big and really creepy. There were dark halls and rooms with rubble all over. There was an empty pool and a huge parking garage. From there we walked up the hill a ways and took in the view of the bay, sail boats, and other islands in the distance. After that, we headed back into town and got some dinner in an almost empty restaurant. We ended up spending the evening in a bar with the locals doing karaoke.
The next day, the owner of the hotel was nice enough to give us a free ride up to the ruins of a temple on the hill. We spent some time there and then walked back down to the town. We spent some time walking around the town. Like in Athens, there were many stray dogs and cats. They were all so sad and wanting human attention. At 2:30, we caught the bus back to the port, bought tickets for a ferry to Piraeus, and headed back to Athens. The Texan and I had to find a new place to stay since the hostel we were staying at before was full. Almost everywhere in Athens was full. We ended up staying at a pretty crappy hostel in a bad part of town. The two of us spent the rest of the evening hanging out with a very drunk Irish man. We met him in a sports bar, and the Texan and I would have been content to just stay there and get to bed at a reasonable hour, but the Irish man was adamant about going to a club to try and pick up girls. We ended up following him to an area of Athens that is full of dance clubs. To the Irish man's dismay, hardly any of them would let us in, and when they did, they would refuse to serve us. It was a bit irritating because they kept asking if we had money, or who we were. In any case, I was glad not to go into any clubs and we ended up heading back to the hostel soon after. Today I got up early and headed back to Piraeus to catch the 7:30 ferry to Mykonos. I thought that I would be able to sleep a bit on the ferry since it was supposed to be a six hour ride, but it turns out that economy class on the larger ferries in Greece is just a cafeteria. I tried to sleep a bit with my head on the table, but I didn't sleep much. When I arrived in Mykonos it was very quiet. I walked up the road a ways and talked to some people who gave me a ride to a room to stay in. The room is right downtown. There are almost exclusively locals here and they are having some kind of pre-easter dance celebration on the beach. I'm not sure how long I will stay here. Perhaps a couple nights. I'm considering more and more calling it quits on the islands after I leave Mykonos and just heading back to the mainland. I wish I didn't have to go back through Athens, but it looks like that's my only choice. I'll try to book a room ahead of time this time.
I would love to put up some pictures, but I'm writing this on my phone and don't have access to a computer and have no way to upload photos from my camera.
I will try to write another blog tomorrow, but I can't make any promises.
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