Day One and Two...

Getting to Athens and Walking Around

Day 1 was a travel day to Newark, NJ...I flew into LaGuardia and had to take a bus to the subway station and then the subway to the Port Authority to catch a bus to the Newark airport. My digital boarding pass didn't load, so I had to wait until 8 PM for the Emirates counter to open to get my ticket. After finally getting my ticket, I met up with Jason in the terminal and we had sub sandwiches and chips for dinner. The flight was delayed until 12:30 AM, so Jason and I just hung out and talked about his last day in Ohio and the privilege he has to live out his life dreams of traveling around the world. I stressed to him that he will get scared and lonely at times, but he must persevere. "Yeah, I know dad!"

Day 2. Finally, the Emirates flight attendants showed up. They make quite an entrance with their head/neck scarf uniform, and we boarded the plane. The flight was long, and I wasn't hungry when they served dinner at 2 AM so I gave my food to Jason. I wasn't hungry at breakfast either, so I offered my breakfast to Jason as well, but he didn't want it, so I ended up declining breakfast.

We finally landed and they did not loose my luggage, so that's a win. We then took a taxi to the Air B&B which is just a one room studio apartment with a bathroom. It's small but nice enough for our purposes. It took us a minute to figure out how everything worked, like the air conditioning (a wall unit), the window shades (controlled by a panel on the wall), where the refrigerator was (behind a closet looking door).

In Greece, they don't flush toilet paper and use bidets. So I had to tell Jason what the little garbage can next to the toilet was for, it's for the toilet paper after it has been used, and also tell him to make sure that he uses the bidet. There are two small towels on the hook by the toilet / bidet and so I told Jason which towel I had used so that we're not using the same one, ick. Personally, I love bidets, they just seem so much cleaner than just using toilet paper. The first time Jason used the bidet he screamed out "I thought the water would be warm, but it's not, it's cold!" I actually found the cool water refreshing. Anyway...

We decided to get some food and walk around the city. We, of course, got gyros and baklava. We looked for the cheapest place we could find and ended up settling on a place with €4 gyros and €2.5 baklava, which were delicious. I got a lamb gyro and Jason got a chicken gyro. They interestingly put French fries in the gyro. We ate our food in the little square near our place and listened to some performers play music. We then continued to wander.

We got some drinks, and fortunately I brought paper euros because none of the little stores took AmEx, which is the card I brought.

We saw some of the architecture and some ruins as well as the Acropolis from afar and got our traditional Magnum ice cream and just wandered. We saw a couple of guys almost get into a fight over some kind of traffic mishap, no one was hit or anything, but they still were pretty heated. We also saw a ton of cats everywhere. We both noticed that there are a ton more women in Athens than men, like 7 or 8 women to 1 man. The city absolutely caters to this, there are clothing and jewelry stores everywhere. We finally got tired and it was getting dark, so around 9:30 PM we headed back to the room and settled in for the night.

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