Our European Adventure

Awoke to the sound of a very unwelcome alarm at 5am. For some unknown reason, our lights wouldn’t turn on, and the delightful fellow at reception generously helped us out. When I phoned back to let him know they were on, he replied, “I know!” and promptly hung up. What a gem. He also tried to make us pay the hotel bill a second time, despite everything we’d been through with the other hotel booking et cetera. We kindly thanked him for his special efforts to make our visit to Athens memorable and comfortable, then jumped in the cab.

The boat trip to Naxos was fairly uneventful, mainly because we slept through most of it! The five hours went by pretty fast and soon we were stepping onto a beautiful Greek island! Hurrah! The old guy who met us at the port huffed and puffed to get our suitcases into the back of his tiny car, then drove us up the hill to the lovely Hotel Grotta. Oh baby! We were greeted by a stunning view from the top of the cliffs out toward the Mediterranean, and by our delightful hostess, who immediately offered us some of her own home made treats and a shot of Naxos’ own “KITPON” (or, Citron, if you’re not Greek) which is lovely and lemony. Woohooo!!

We set straight off for the beach, driven by our hostess’s cousin, Yianni. The weather was nice and we wandered along the shoreline admiring the sunset and feeling pretty good about ourselves for choosing to come to Naxos. Also pretended to be hot models posing on some of the rocks, which was hilarious considering our bad hair, bad attire, and bad flabby whiteness. Oh! Forgot to mention this was our first chance to wear our sandals from the poet sandal maker! I had to quickly scratch off the remaining bits of my chipped nail polish before we left because my feet looked so festy! It’s been a while since they’ve been out in public. Ew!

After our meanderings along the beach we headed back for dinner and ended up at a Mexican restaurant. Enjoyed dinner and the shortcut walk back to the hotel up the rocky mountain path. Nice.

Every Sunday, Athens has a big flea market. It’s hilarious, all the wackos come out to sell their wares. We strolled up and down the cobbled lanes and streets, barged our way through hordes of people just stopping for a look, and laughed at the guys with their illegal fake Louis Vuitton bags sprinting for the hills with the cops chasing after them.

Since we couldn’t get a fake Louis Vuitton bag we bought shoes instead! Saphira got really upset when I wouldn’t shell out 90euro for a pair of cool skate shoes for Jordan (Mel’s nephew). We did however buy a few pairs for ourselves, which made packing our suitcases that night even more difficult!

After the markets we headed up to the Acropolis (we caught the bus most of the way) and in our search for the ticket booth, were pleasantly surprised to find out that we had come on a “Free Day”. Nobody pays! So we traipsed up the hill with a little more spring in our step than usual.

Had fun looking at the ruins and also observing the other tourists. You really get to see the best and worst of people when you are travelling. The princesses who thought it would be clever to walk up to the Acropolis in stiletto boots and lacy tights just so they could do their model poses on the marble stairs were absolutely hilarious, as were the American tourists who all tried to outdo each other explaining the history of the Acropolis in extra loud voices. Our favourite of all was nanna climbing up to sit on the wall and look hot, but instead spending the entire time trying to stop her skirt from billowing up around her like a balloon! Oh yeah, people are great.

After we gazed out at the views we made our way back down and had hot delicious crepes at an overpriced restaurant with awesome views from the terrace, then hopped back on the bus (we had to run, it was very funny) to get some sandals from the poet sandal maker. This guy’s been writing poetry and making sandals for about a million years. He thinks of it as a “double career” although I’m not sure how well he goes with the poetry. His “self-published book of poems” is basically just photocopies of some of his poems stapled together, but what I read of his poetry isn’t half bad. Plus John Lennon and Sophia Loren have both worn his sandals, which apparently makes him cool.

We missed out on the poetry, but got us some sandals – not quite matching, although not different enough to be considered anything less than LAME! Went home hugging our purchases and giggling excitedly about the possibility of WEARING them tomorrow on NAXOS! Woohoo!

*Little aside to the poet sandal maker story: We first visited just for a minute to see where the shop was and what it looked like, and decided to come back later so we didn’t miss out on daylight hours for the acropolis. When we went back the second time to check how late the shop was open, the loud American family who had been there taking up all the space in the shop the first time, said REALLY LOUDLY and RUDELY, “They’re back, oh look, they came back!” and they were all looking at each other and chatting about why they thought we changed our minds and came back. It was so friggin’ rude! I was practically touching them, the shop was so small, and they were talking about us like we couldn’t hear them! Ever since, we’ve been imitating them and laughing about them – saffi does the best impersonation of their twangy accents!

Athens greeted us with a perfect warm sunny morning filled with the smells of delicious food. What a treat to be in Greece, where we LOVE the food! We found ourselves at the funniest little travel agency ever, chatting with Nikos about where else to go after Athens. He asked us where we were from and turns out he has spent a heck of a lot of time hanging out at the greek club in west end! So we’re all like, best friends now. He recommended a few days in Naxos and then Santorini, which we had been hoping to see, so we booked our tickets and were off, hopping up and down and grinning at each other saying, “we’re going to the greek islands!”

Hopped on to our old faithful OTBT (that’s open top bus tour for those of you who aren’t clued in) to see the sights of Athens and get a feel for the place. We loved every second. It was hot, it was friendly, and nobody frowned at us for being dumb, English-speaking tourists! (a rare treat). We all had that euphoric feeling you get when things are working out even better than you imagined they would. Topped off the day with dinner at the Plaka Taverna (in the Plaka district – can’t stop thinking about our next door neighbour’s shop at Acacia Ridge with the same name) which was awesome. Hello garlic! How good is tzatziki! Souvlaki! Mmm.

Worst day of the trip so far. Dragged ourselves out of bed early to make sure we arrived at the airport two hours before our planned departure time of 11am. Okay, not a big deal. YET. At our boarding gate, we learnt that there was a trade union meeting of all ground personnel from 10-12 but that we would be able to board our plane at 12:30 at the latest. Not a huge delay, a bit annoying but we weren’t in a hurry so we weren’t overly worried.

12:30 came and went.

We were offered a free lunch voucher at the airport and a voucher for a free Rome-Athens or Athens-Rome flight that could be used any time over the next year. As if. I’d prefer they gave us ten bucks.

Anyway, apparently another union meeting had been scheduled for 2-4pm, which nobody knew about. And then the story went that the meeting would go until 6pm. And so on until about 9:30 when we finally boarded our plane after nearly 13 hours of patient waiting in the scummy airport! Oh, gross, we were feeling so stinky and crap. By about dinner time I wandered into the perfume store and wafted about half a bottle of Armani Idole over myself before casually walking back out. (Mel did this later at the Athens airport, then spotted an old Italian guy from our flight doing the exact same thing! Ha!)

Saphira made friends with a couple of cuties who were also waiting, which meant there was plenty of “kid noise” around us all afternoon.

So… apparently the problem was that our flight was all set to go except they had nobody to drive the bus. THE BUS! It was seriously a 30 second bus ride. We could have walked and loaded our own luggage onto the plane in about 45 minutes, but hey. Let’s wait 13 hours for the pros to do it!

As we were boarding the plane we were informed that while we were finally on our way to Athens, our luggage wasn’t. (All this information was, of course, translated to us through other passengers, as there was no announcement made – in any language – only different stories coming from different personnel, none of them accurate). So once we were in Athens, we still had to wait another hour or so at the airport for our luggage to arrive on another plane. Sigh…

Bla bla bla, we got to our hotel after midnight, and, oh dear! Whoops! The booking we’d made WEEKS ago had only been faxed the previous day and, what a shame, the hotel was fully booked! So we had to walk to another hotel that they had kindly booked for us. What a joke! This was nuts. I was about to lose it and start yelling and screaming and waving my arms about (like a true Italian) but was too exhausted and basically just fell into bed.

Yahoo! We had finally had our fill of museums and saphira could do something fun! Our hotel was really close to Villa Borghese, which is basically this massive park/garden with cafes, cinemas, art galleries, and even a zoo inside its walls! Our immediate plan was to hire out one of those weird tandem bike things… not like the ones where one person sits at the front and the other one at the back and they both pedal while the front person steers. Way worse. It was more like a flintstones style car than anything I’ve ever seen. We had to sit side by side on this awful bench seat with saffi squeezed in the middle. There was a little basket on the front (I put my jumper in it, where it stayed for about two seconds before it went flying down the road behind us like a big brown flag) and there was a tiny little steering wheel, controlled by the person on the left.

Being the person on the right was crap because you had no control over where you were going. There were no seatbelts or doors, and the roads were hilly and pebbly. So if you saw a ditch on your side, your only choice was to turn your own, entirely useless steering wheel and scream, “Wwhooooaaa!!!”

Suffice to say, we ended up fighting the whole time:

“Turn!”

“No no, it’s fine, we have to go this way,”

“Noo! TURN!”

“I CAN’T!!”

“Then let me drive!”

“Fine! But you’ll be crap at it!”

“WATCH THE ROAD!!”

“I AMMM!!”

etc etc.

It was really fun.

Well, okay, it wasn’t totally fun, especially when we ended up on an actual road with cars and buses and motorbikes trying to whizz past us while we pedalled along, still yelling at each other and screaming every time we hit a bump! Oh, and the brakes! They were so screechy and loud and every time we went down a hill we freaked out and slammed on the brakes (same person who steered had to operate the squeaky handbrake as well – stupid!) and all these Italian people were death staring us for the noise (like we could help it) while Mel complained, “none of the other bikes make such a horrible noise, this is CRAP!”

Oh my gosh, I’m giggling just thinking about how ridiculous we looked that day. We returned the useless thing early just to save our own sanity, even though we made ourselves go round the block one extra time just to get our 10 euro worth. It really was a disaster, AND by the time we got to the zoo it was closing time. What a rip.

Our frolic through the autumn leaves put us in a better mood and we went to bed thinking we’d had a pretty awesome day. Just ignored the whole bike ride extravanganza.

Looking back, I’m not so sure why we thought spending an entire afternoon at the Vatican was such a great idea. Saphira gets impatient and bored even at the best of times, and we were a bit tired after a late night out anyway. So basically we made our way up there and got one of those pre-recorded guide things so we could cruise around at our leisure and not worry about the possibility of a shocking guide like at the colosseum. It was okay, I guess, although a lot of the information was written next to the items you were looking at anyway, so probably another rip off.

The raddest thing we saw straight away was the mummfied corpse in the Egyptian part! Whoa Mumma! She was all black and skeletal but she was definitely a person once, and that was pretty cool.

We got a bit over the religious art – it’s all very symbolic and melodramatic, and despite the intricacy of the designs and vividness of the colours, it’s hard to get excited about it when there is just SO MUCH of it. Saphira was not really enjoying herself and we were all getting grumpy at each other after a few hours. We kind of rushed through the end and only got a glimpse of some of the modern art (which is of more interest to us!) but were totally overwhelmed by the Sistine Chapel. Not only is it immense but it’s so beautiful. We got sore necks from gazing up at Michelangelo’s ceiling. Saphira loved the part about Noah and the flood, I loved the part where God is hurling planets and stars into space, and Mel’s favourite was the Adam and Eve painting.

We rewarded ourselves for persevering through the Vatican with the best gelato ever. Coconut, tiramisu, pistachio, dark cherry and chocolate flavours. Oh baby! If you’re reading this, you’re about to laugh, because despite being in Italy where the food is meant to be totally awesome, we got Indian again for dinner. Different restaurant mind you, and even more delicious. Ha! Decided that our next trip has to be to India.

We decided to go get a really good look at the colosseum and see if we could maybe get a good tour guide like Daniella. Sigh. Nobody can beat her outgoing cheerfulness and encyclopaedic knowledge. So we arrive there and this blonde chick makes a beeline for us and starts asking if we want to go to the colosseum and telling us how long the line is and that there’s this great tour we can take where we skip the line and also get a free tour of palatine hill which is REALLY GREAT and despite all our scepticism she friggin’ won us over with her damn AUSTRALIAN ACCENT!!! We have missed it for so long that we mistook familiarity with trust and decided to shell out for this “amazing” tour. Okay, start rolling your eyes here if you must, but keep in mind there were a bunch of other aussies who also got suckered by her (her name was Tess, which made her even more annoying if you ask me) and they agreed that it was the accent that did it!

So off we go with this Italian, big-haired, big-mouthed woman who reminded us faintly of a cheaper crapper version of Daniella for about five minutes, until we realised that she really had no right calling herself a tour guide. For example: “I bet you are all wondering which is the original wall off the colosseum and which is the new wall???” – pause for effect – “Well, come this way, and I WILL SHOW YOU!!!” (said with absolute glee at the thought of showing us the wall, like we hadn’t already walked around and realised that the really old crumbly falling apart wall was the old one and the stronger new looking one was the new one.) “Ooooh,” said the rest of the tour group.

“Uh huh,” said Mel and Michelle.

There were only like ten of us in the group but Yourguide (that’s what we called her because she said, “hello I am Your-guuiiiiiddde,” really fast like that was her name) kept marching off holding this yellow book – I think she just got it from the colosseum book shop so she could read bits out of it instead actually knowing anything about the colosseum – high above her head so we didn’t get lost. She loved it! She thought she was so special with that book and it was pure comedy the way she would say, “Now come this waaayyyy!!!!” and extend her right arm like she was presenting the most awesome thing ever to the King and Queen, not just trudging around with a bunch of disgruntled tourists. We laughed and laughed.

Oh, the best thing was when she kept losing her train of thought while she was talking so she’d just trail off and never return to what she was saying, she’d just start gabbing on about something totally different instead! So lame! At one stage she quickly told us to, “look around by yourselves and take photos. Please, take your time, be as long as you want!” just so she could wander off and start TEXTING! Argh!

Anyway despite Yourguide’s crap commentary, the colosseum was pretty cool, but we learnt more from the children’s books we bought at the gift shop than we did on the tour. Ha! It was pretty cool to check out the labyrinth under where the stage part was where they kept the animals and gladiators before they went out. It would have been so awful under there listening to the roaring crowd and other guys getting ripped to pieces by lions right above you… Ew. Ancient Romans were gross.

So… after a lot of confusion we realised the tour was over (we didn’t even go up the stairs yet!) so we got to have a little look around on our own. That part was good because we kind of tagged along on other people’s tour groups that were way better than ours and got to hear some cool stories.

We were meant to meet the new tour guide for palatine hill at 3pm and we thought, why not? If it’s crap we can just disappear and give ourselves a tour once we’re inside the gates. But who would’ve thought, a couple of ring-ins joined the tour! Now it’s one thing to listen in on someone else’s commentary, but these two tagged along on the entrance fee as well! Poor Richard, the guide, couldn’t work out why he suddenly didn’t have enough tickets to get everyone in, and the lame mother-daughter combo refused to own up! We wondered, loudly, why the tour group had grown bigger? But still they just stood there looking innocent. I even heard the mum say, “I’m not sure that this is our tour group,” to her daughter! Oh man, it was funny.

Anyway after it all got organised we finally got to check out palatine hill and the roman forum and it was pretty awesome. How can these structures stay put for so many years? They’re ruins, obviously, but even so you’d expect there to be nothing left after earthquakes and wars and different rulers making decisions and recycling materials… but there it was. You could tell where the ballroom used to be. And of course, the story about where the Christians were thrown to the lions seemed to change depending on whom you asked. I guess Rome doesn’t want to own up to all that mess now that the Pope calls it home. We stayed till the guards starting blowing fiercely on their whistles and kicking us out. They were so aggro!

Okay, so we don’t mind Italian food, but after constant pizza and pasta day after day we were craving curry sooooo bad! We looked up an Indian restaurant and had the best curries and samosas. So good. Judge all you want. We still drank Italian wine.