I had a horrendous sleep, partly due to the neighbor’s light glaring in my face and also in part because I was worried I would sleep through the 3:15 alarm. Just tossed and turned for hours.
We woke on time and the taxi was 10 minutes early.
The Ryan Air self check in terminal were all not operating bar one up the other end of the terminal. Rather than printing all our tickets at the same time with the one booking number like every other airline I have been on so far, I had to register each separate ticket, one at a time. Tedious and annoying.
We boarded- no free food and no entertainment which was fine. Because ofall the stuff us, we now had no allocated seats, so the lively but frazzled steward gave us the back row to wait till we saw where we were sitting. Turns out they were our seats. At least we didn’t have to move!
The plane taxied out and then accelerated fast. All of a sudden it stopped. A few moments later they explained that the lift was registering a plane door being opened even though it was actually shut. They closed it a couple times till the light went off and then up, up and away!
We landed in a very calm friendly environment at the airport.
I stopped at the ticket booth to buy our bus/train tickets in to Athens. They said that tickets for all public transport are free until next week. Woohoo!!
The trip in was long but uneventful. We saw some long queues at ATMs.
We got off at Syntagma to transfer to the train to our stop. Syntagma had police but was calm. I was just grateful that it wasn’t as hot as Rome.
We got off at the closest stop to our accommodation and then walked the rest of the way. We were not in the nicest part of town and as we walked closer to the destination, we could see more rubbish on the streets and it looked less and less ideal. We got to our road, where there was a lot of men just dawdling on the road. Just standing there, all up and down the road.
I could see the colorful and distinct name of our ‘hotel’ with its distinct flags flying ahead.
Yes, it looked like the photo in the website. I marched confidently ahead feeling good about this.
We crossed the road and entered what looked like a derelict building, dear reader. The bottom floor was a shell. A tiny sign said that reception was on the next floor. We went up. I could recognize the dining room seating from the website. But there was no one around. Just the reception man. He gave us our key, air con remote, TV remote and said ‘ 2nd floor.’
We eventually found our rooms, neither of them were in the 2nd floor. We were in two separate levels which I was perplexed by for the ghost town of a place this was and also because of how far in advance I had booked it.
Let me say that apart from the photo with the flags, none of the other photos looked anything like the reality. We were shell-shocked. The rooms were dingy, with low wattage light bulbs and filthy doonas. The carpets were badly stained and the boy’s room STANK! My bed had no doona at all.
I left everyone to settle in and went foraging for lunch. We had seen tons of cheap food options on the way in. I went back there and got some pastries and drinks.
They were very mediocre, so I was glad they had been cheap.
As we wailed and bemoaned our accommodation, I knew that we needed a nice dinner in an ambient location to ease the blow.
I had researched and found an authentic taverna just past the tourist part of Plaka while we were still in Australia. I googled it quickly and knew it was the right place to give us a great intro to Athens.
It took a little convincing to get a couple of the kids to come but eventually we were off. It only took two blocks for us to hit a much nicer area with tavernas spilling out into the streets. We walked past very pretty parts of Plaka and then came to our taverna To Kafeniou in a tiny lane. We asked to sit outside.
And then the magic of ambience and good food transformed 6 shell-shocked travelers into relaxed happy humans chatting over first the delicious taste sensations and then just everything else. We were intrepid explorers once again!
We wandered back happily and managed to watch a couple of TV shows in English before falling sleepily into bed.
That was about the best sleep I ever had. 10 hours!
The room looked a little friendlier in the morning sun. Dirtier but more friendly.
Breakfast was leftover chips and caramel popcorn from Rome and then we headed out by 10:30 towards Plaka. We climbed up to the Areopagus first and the view over beautiful Athens was priceless. The rocks were incredibly slippery and the wind blew fiendishly.
As the Acropolis was half shrouded in scaffolding and it cost €12 each to view it up close, we decided to give it a miss. We saw lots of tourists with icy drinks near the Acropilis. €4.50!!!
We headed back down and got our slushies and cappuccino freddos for less than €2 each.
I do believe that that freddo is the taste sensation highlight of the trip so far. The man at Coffee Island ( big shout out to them!) ran through a bewildering list of freddo options then saw my face and said ‘too much?’
I said ‘I just want what I see everyone else walking around with. They have to white top.’
‘Ahh you want the cream on top?’
‘Yes please!’
So a freddo is basically a double shot over a generous amount of ice with a huge dollop of thick whipped cream. ( actually the lady sitting next to me on the plane – I am writing this enroute to Barcelona- thinks that they make the milk creamy using ice). I tried drinking it without mixing it and it was good, but when I stirred it all up it was just amazing.
Refreshing, sweet, not too creamy. I could have gone back for seconds immediately.
We had decided to try a trip on The Happy Train. It is a little motorized non-track train that can go through the little streets of Plaka, but that would do an entire touristy circuit of Athens in one hour.
Not traipsing all across the city on foot was sounding pretty good. Quite a few Happy Trains went past without stopping. Then one cane by and stopped. We were first in line and had been for a while, but the large group behind us had booked it all out.
About 15 minutes later, a Happy Train came by and picked us up. While the ‘commentary’ was just brief pointing at the occasional sight and hard to hear, the trip was picturesque and we could not have covered that amount of ground in our very short stay here.
We did a full circuit then hopped off to go to get lunch. I had seen a couple reviews of Bairaktira that serves up succulent €1.80 gyros.
We went there and were magnanimously welcomed by the owner who swept us in yo the interior which was air conditioned. A quick glance at the menu and I couldn’t see a thing under €8!
I went to the front outside where they were making and selling gyros for passers-by. These were €2, but sotting in would cost more, the lady said.
I gathered us up to go stand in line instead and eat somewhere in the shade.
From nowhere, the owner was back insisting we sit down. I motioned to the gyro stand and said we needed to go there. He looked very stressed actually and nearly forcibly sat us back down, muttering under his breath and gesturing at our table to a waiter. The wrapped bread that had been placed there was taken away. Our gyro order was taken and we sort of held our breath waiting for the bill.
‘What will happen if it is the menu prices, Mum?’
‘I will make a complaint’, said I far more bravely than I felt.
6 delicious gyros and cold water all soon arrived. Delicious, delicious, delicious,
My only gripe was that in his stews, the man didn’t ask how we wanted them so the 10 year old’s was covered in tzatsiki so he ate very little of it.
Our bill was perfect!
The food was so good that as we left, everyone but myself and the 10 year old got second helpings.
We wandered through Plaka’s flea market looking for souvenirs before heading back for a well-earned siesta as we had been out for about 5 hours now.
At 6 after stopping to get me some roasted maize, we went back to the same fantastic cold drink stand and the same gyro place to get takeaway dinner.
We loved our very brief time in beautiful Athens. I am taking away some brilliant memories
It was a night of packing up and admin, for instance-finally getting my email to work after hotmail thought I was doing something suspicious and closed me down. It has been hard to fix as the wifi was woeful.
Ok- worst sleep ever!
The Soho Hotel seems to now have some long term guests, families with lots of men. I have made assumptions as to what kind of long term guest these are, but don’t want to put it on print.
All well and good except that they were the loudest, most inconsiderate people ever and we have stayed at youth hostels with party animals. These people were tromping up and down stairs, talking and shouting ti well past 2 am. Doors opening, slamming. Maybe it was because it is Ramadan.
Then some truck parked just outside doing something that sounded very loud and very doomsday for about a half hour, I at first thought it was a street cleaning truck, then a garbage collection truck. But it hung around way to long got that. And when we walked in the street the next morning to all the rubbish strewn in the street we knew it was nether of those.
We grabbed up our belongings, took the remotes and the keys to the reception desk and walked down the street. It was 5 am and nary a soul on our street. 2 blocks down though and nightlife was still going strong.
Our train had quite a few patriots going home. We felt extremely safe though.
After all that amazing free transport, we got to the checkin counter and were able to check in all our hand baggage into the hold for free too. Yes, please!
A cappuccino freddo at the airport was €4.10 so I contented myself with imagining yesterday’s.
I was disappointed not to gave entertainment on board the flight, besides a silent generic showing of things to see in Greece. But we got breakfast! Great coffee, an olive and meat pastry , buns and Greek yoghurt with honey ( so good)
We were 20 minutes ahead of schedule and getting ready to land when the pilot announced that air traffic control wanted us to stay airborne for another 10 minutes.
It took a while to claim our luggage, and then we were out to the taxi rank as I had worked out that a taxi would be about half our train fares in to our location.
The taxi system looks like chaos but is a well organized machine. 3 official people were matching groups to taxis. One of told me that a 6 person taxi was ‘impossible at this time’. So we moved to the next person who was on it! 10 minutes later we were zipping our way in to Barcelona. The huge cemetery set into a massive rock formation was the first thing we saw.
We drive past amazing statues in to the heart of the city itself. We bid our taxi driver farewell at La Rambla. We were a little early for check in so while some waited with the bag, I went looking, using the directions given me by the host. It took me ages and a couple phone calls to the host, who told me to find to look for the bike rental- and then climb the first floor to 1.1A.
I kind of hoped he had said he would climb down his one flight of stars and wave so I could see him easily and quickly, but no bother.
I found the set of apartments in front of the bicycle hire rack and it had the number 1.1A on it. Bingo! Go me!
I went back optimistically- we hoisted up all our heavy bags and trudged off to our new home.
The heat was invasive and stifling. We got to the unit, and pressed the number. A lady called down from the window. We looked up to see her pointing at the unit opposite. No bother. We hadn’t climbed any steps yet. We went across and pressed 1.1 A there and the door opened. We climbed up to the first floor. We knocked at that door. A lady opened it and without any expression of surprise, pointed up. We did the ‘gracias’ and climbed up the next flight. And the next. We knocked at doors. Nothing and no-one.
Not good.
I left everyone there and went back out to re-walk the directions.
This time I turned left and there, in a little lane was a bike rental shop, dear reader. Not a rental rack, a rental shop.
After collecting the follower intrepid a, we struggled over to the new location. We climbed the first few steps to our host. It turns out that he rents all the apartment in the building and had kindly put us in the attic apartment 126 narrow, winding steps up with all our luggage.
It was a small but clean apartment with its own balcony, being that it was in the attic. The best thing was the air conditioning. So cold and refreshing.
We spent the afternoon recovering with lots of cold drinks. I felt we probably needed a positive dining experience. We went to Colom Restaurant, only 2 minutes walk away.
They had a tapas and paella deal and the host had recommended them. No one else was there. Apparently the local swim till about 9 and then fill the restaurants till about 1am.
Eating out in Barcelona is expensive, especially if you have just come from Greece.
We let the maitre de order our tapas for us and then we got a seafood paella and a paella negras which has been colored with squid ink.
The tapas were brilliant and spot on. The garlic mayo for the patatas gravas was soooo amazing. No one else wanted the mushroom so it has them and smothered them with the mayo. Probably too many seafood tapas for Kara.
To be honest, I was underwhelmed by both the paella. I probably should have ordered a sausage paella, if there was one. Our waiter was fantastic though and showed us how to get to the big mall on the beach.
I finished the evening with a stroll aground the bay and we relaxed in our air conditioned house.
I woke rearing to shop for groceries. The walk along La Rambla to Carrefour via the ancient La Boqueria market was cool and pleasant so early in the morning. Only the vendors out, setting up their kiosks. Though it was only just opening and many stalls still were getting organized, I could tell I was going to need to come back and get some delicious local food. First though to the supermarket. It is what you have to do, when the budget is tight.
Carrefour was closed. *sight*
Back I turned towards La Boqueria where I bought crusty bread, pastries, strawberries and coconut pieces.
It was a tasty start to the day. We were all up and out the door by mid morning to go look at Gaudi’s imaginative architectural genius.
We caught a train to the Apple of Discord, where 3 style of modern architecture are on display. I love Gaudi’s colorful and ornate designs. I had planned that we walk for about a half hour following ‘ Gaudi’s footprints’ till we came to his gothic grand finale ‘La Sagrada Familia’.
I asked a lady if we were headed in the right direction and she said it was way too far away to walk. We would have to catch a train.
This threw me, financially as well as mentally. I was pretty sure we could walk it quite easily. But I had no internet and we just went back and caught another train to be on the safe side.
Seriously, the length of the walk to the platform to get to Sagrada was about a kilometer in itself!!!
Sagrada is under construction and had some scaffolding. My photos made it look more gaudy than Gaudi. It was an awesome sight rearing up before us with it surreal design like something out of a fairytale.
After some oohing and ahhing and lots of photographing, we caught the train home.
I popped back to the now open Carrefour. It is massive. The only annoying thing was that I couldn’t find where to weigh and tag my fruit, so I couldn’t get any.
We had Spanish tortillas for lunch. So delicious and so very cheap.
Off and on all afternoon, we could hear the most appalling retching, gagging and vomiting from outside our open toilet window. It sounded like the person was dying. It would go for minutes at a time and then nothing for s couple of louts. I assumed it was a very drunk person.
Bodie and I were actually quite concerned and went looking from our balcony to see if the person needed help. It was actually a newly pregnant or bulimic woman.
We had a long rest. We are quite weary I think, so I feel like we didn’t give Barcelona our all. I wish I had booked a drive-around tour of the city at the very least.
After home cooked dinner we popped back to the market in the ‘cool’ of the early evening. The cheap fresh fruit drinks and little luxurious squares of baklava were irresistible.
One last walk around the the boardwalk and into the shopping mall itself and the sunset on our Barcelona experience.
Everyone was up on time to take our luggage and catch the train to the main train terminal Sants. From there we caught the regional service Renfe to Perpignan. Quick pastries for a snatched breakfast before boarding the train. It was a comfy train, not fast but scenic and air conditioned.
We arrived as planned and through me counting at the name of the bus station, we were pointed in the right direction and we walked nearly a kilometer to catch the bus to the airport to pick up our car rental. I was nervous about this leg of the journey as it was going to involve the troublesome card from Germany; the one that I could not withdraw money from for a while. Unfortunately this was the only card that the company accepts. So I was frankly terrified and I sat on the bus, trying to think through other transport options.
We arrived at Hertz and the moment to process my card came and went with no drama at all. Woohoo. The biggest vehicle this place had on offer only just got us in and we had to let rally squeeze the luggage into every available crevice. But, it did have good air con!
I already loved France, despite the energy-sapping heat. We stopped at a truck stop to get lunch. The prices of cheap sandwiches were outrageous. We literally could not afford to even buy doughnuts at this place and stick within our tight food budget.
And then baguettes came to the rescue. Cheap, free and the best bread I can remember eating. We had it with butter and boy oh boy! It was eating like kings, I tell you.
Did I mention it was hot. Nowhere looks pretty in the sweltering heat of early afternoon and I was less than impressed with Provence as we wound our way to our home for the night.
It was around this time that I had my bright idea.
I have booked a minority’s of our accommodation this time around on Booking.com . It is great because you can make your reservations well ahead of time and most of the places don’t charge till you show up.
Our Disney accommodation is the most expensive by far on this trip. We are not at a Disney hotel because we cannot buy timeshare points for the Paris hotels and that is how we did it so cheap last time. We are staying within Disney resort but at an independent hotel.
So my bright idea was to see if I could find rooms at our hotel in the same days but cheaper. I had a look on the little phone that has 3G and yes, our same room type was there for €120 cheaper! I had a good think first before I went ahead and booked this new much cheaper accommodation, making sure the days and facilities were exactly the same. Why, this reservation was one that cannot be changed. The money would be paid instantly, and canceling would still cost the full payment.
It was just such a good deal! And there was only one room left at this rate. All this time, 3G was chopping and changing- losing connection. I began trying to buy the room and several times had to restart as connection was lost. Just as I pressed ‘commit’ button, I noticed that the currency that the phone with 3G uses is not Euros at all, it is British Pounds. So I was not making a saving, I was spending more! This dawned on me in a split second. I click ‘x’ to try to stop the transaction but of course at that moment 3G came good, didn’t it? I had bought the stupid room. Blimey Charlie!!!
And on that infuriating note, we arrived.
Orgnac L’Aven is a commune famous for its stalagmite caves. We were staying at the accommodation part of the local restaurant that is just out of town near the caves itself. We got out of the car and wilted immediately in the intense heat. I was thrilled to get into some serious air conditioning. Our charming host took a while to realize we were actually staying there. When he finally got us upstairs he opened the door to our rooms and with no small flourish, pointed to the overhead fan that was barely circling and said ‘air’. You have got to be kidding me! The windows were all open in both rooms letting in all the stifling heat.
There were two standing fans, one in each bedroom. The one in our room had lost its face. I went and got another from our host to put in the boys room, trying to create some extra air. Then I barricaded the naked fan with our luggage so we couldn’t hurt ourselves and turned it on. Desperate times!
The late afternoon consisted of us trying to cool down as well as trying to connect to the atrocious wifi.
Bodie got straight on and was happily relaxing with Netflix, whereas the rest of us kept having our same password rejected as ‘incorrect’. Grrrr.
The restaurant underneath us was ridiculous price-wise- but they did sell the cutest little watermelon slice-ice creams for €1 each.
We found an awesome supermarket about 30 minutes away. Brie is soo cheap and delicious here. All the food looked fantastic and was cheap.
I saw a pizza place that did some really cheap pizzas. We drove home with pizza, drinks and snacks.
Afterwards, I took the 10 yr old to play across the street at the flying fox.
It was cooling down beautifully outside. Unfortunately the same could not be said for our rooms. Despite the windows being wide open, the temperature stayed hit, humid and stifling.
I put the 10 yr old in a tepid shower before his bedtime. Then I had a nearly cold shower and felt very much better for about a half hour. As we heard off to bed, I noticed that the girl child who had gone to bed much earlier, was not coping at all. I coaxed her into a cool sower as well and she was refreshed enough to retry sleep.
I cursed the caffeine I had had at dinner timers I tossed and turned in the muggy night.
We woke in our still warm room early and a little excited. Time to drive to Paris! The weather report said it was going to be a lovely mild week. Woohoo!
We broke up the 6 hour drive by doing our new family activity: pulling in at expensive food-stops , spreading out in small groups and hunting out €1 baguettes to tear ravenously into.
At our main lunch stop I was excited about lashing out and buying a cappuccino. But somehow whilst watching the 10 yr old’s antics on the jumping castle outside, I got too involved, threw the cup in the air and its entire contents rained down on my lap, mostly in my crotch, of course. I had only had 1 sip too. I was grateful that at least no-one else around made a big deal of it.
We were nearing the little airport in Paris where we would be dropping off the hire car.
It took us a while to navigate exactly where Hertz is at Orly Airport.
Returning the car was a simple procedure. The one downside of the process was the hidden costs in the car hire. For the overnight hire, Expedia had quoted me one price and I had budgeted for that and some extra. Unfortunately the extra came out to be $590 more than the original quote. It is disgusting!
Anyhow, at this stage I did not know that. We happily got a taxi ( again, cheaper than train tickets!) to our unit.
Our unit was a fantastic space, in a safe part of The 7th arrondissement, a 2 minute walk from the Rue Cler market street and a 5 minute walk to the Eiffel Tower. The wifi was fantastic.
I found a very pricey supermarket which was a little disheartening, having by this time become aware of the car hire debacle.
I brought home crepes and the fixings for chicken crepes and lemon sugar crepes. Bought crepes are not at all exciting, but we coped, knowing we would be eating the real thing soon from a street vendor.
Later, Kara and I popped out to see the Eiffel Tower. Hardly a soul was around and it was quite magical seeing it in real life for the first time. On our way home we stumbled upon a much closer and cheaper supermarket. Woohoo!
Dory the Explorer 