so as Vivienne last left us (i believe she mentioned something about my complete loss of dignity in front of a large crowd), we were sitting in a Bangkok internet cafe killing time very effectively.
well, there is little to report of the journey between the lovely chumphon in southern thailand and the (really) lovely city of athens, greece. other than the fact that the total journey took us 78 hours, with no opportunity for showers or any attempts at personal hygiene, it was really pretty boring. heathrow's terminal 5 was actually pretty disappointing, we spent our 5 hours there eating dairy milk chocolate and taking up more than our fair share of seats.
i'm pretty sure the most fun we had was at either end of the journey, as i began the evening pushing vivienne around bangkok international airport on a luggage trolley with our bags in tow, to the great hilarity of the thai check-in ladies and to the general irritation of everybody else. then, several days and multiple time zones later, we emerged into the sunlight in athens (who told us it was hot?? it's got nothing on cambodia!) feeling pretty clever as i had used my european union passport for the first time (i felt like a bit of a fraud queueing up with all the greeks but whatever, the line was shorter).
we caught a really slow bus from the airport to our hostel, but as we were actually delirious with tiredness we found our favourite last-resort game of word association made us hysterical with laughter, so much so that the other people on the bus must have thought we were either drunk or insane. or both.
anyway we finally made it to the very lovely Athens Backpackers (the best hostel in athens we hear, no excuses for not staying there if you make it to greece!), had our first real greek food for dinner, literally at the foot of the acropolis, and were invited out by the waiter to 'test out his new car'. a likely story.
parents, you will be pleased to know that we declined his offer and went home to bed. friends, you will be pleased to know that he wasn't even good looking. nice try, greek man.
the next day (i can't remember what day of the week it was, we struggle with which month we're in so days kind of merge into one another) we hit up the tourist-packed but absolutely amazing acropolis (see photo) and a few of the other ancient ruins around the city. in the afternoon, we caught the metro to a shopping area near another set of ruins called the roman agora, and instead of going into the ruins we bought a kilo of cherries for 2 euro, sat on some steps and ate them all.
that night we did a pub crawl which was fun fun fun, and the next day ate baklava for breakfast and basically wandered around the very lovely city of athens. we also spent a bit too much of the afternoon playing guitar hero in the greek version of HMV, but we played with some nice australian guys from the hostel and these greek kids killing time in their summer holidays, so we figure we can still consider it to be a cultural experience. sort of.
our third and final night in athens was well-spent playing middle cup with some norweigan guys (both of whom were more than 2 metres tall, they made vivienne look laughably short which was a bit of a novelty) and some girls from the netherlands, before having to get up horribly early the next morning to catch our ferry to MYKONOS, apparently the most expensive place in greece. yay!
so i will add on anything i've forgotten later, but don't go away because sometime between tomorrow and three weeks from now vivienne will update you on the PG-rated version of our time in the greek islands. how exciting!
but please send us your comments and your love, the photos may eventually go on facebook but don't hold your breath.
hugs and kisses from your two favourite gap-yearers
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