Athens

This morning we woke up early, skipped the hotel breakfast again, and went to the Palamidi Fortress thinking that we'd be there for 2+ hours We had to return the rental car before 11am, and wanted to make maximum use of it to drive up to the fortress, saving us from walking up the 999 steps. We arrived at the fortress at 7:45am, before it opened. It was cloudy and windy. Soon after we went in, Chris was already feeling too cold. We walked around most of the fortress before she returned to the car. I continued exploring the rest of it, in particular looking for the steps leading up to the fortress. I quit after a while realizing that the steps would be near the bottom end of the fortress, and I did not feel like climbing back up to the car :)

We left the fortress after 9am, a lot sooner than planned. We drove to the port and fed some fish and pigeons with the bread that we'd been saving from our meals. After we returned the car and walked back to our hotel, the hostess asked us if we still wanted breakfast. That was perfect as the hotel breakfast was pretty hearty - we had to fill up before our 3-hour bus ride to Athens anyway.

We checked out before noon, bought bus tickets for 1pm and had a final walk around the beautiful town before we left. For the last 2 days, Chris had been debating whether to buy a 170-euro clock from an artsy store. We'd already visited the store twice, and we would do it again one last time today. At the end we decided not to buy it since the colour does not exactly match the newly-painted wall of our office.

The bus ride to Athens actually felt quick. We were in the city in a little more than 2 hours. If we knew the city better we could've gotten off at the Metaxourghio metro station. Instead, the traffic to Terminal A was terrible and we didn’t get there until after 4pm. By the time we took bus 051 to Omonoia, it was well after 5pm. The walk through Omonoia to our hotel was not very pleasant, as it was full of some rather shady characters.

When we finally arrived at our hotel, we were a little disappointed . It was rather old, and Chris thought it was relatively expensive. Compared to our last 3 hotels, it is probably not good value. But this is Athens and the hotel is right at the middle of Monastiraki, so it's probably not too outrageous. Plus it boasts a view of the Acropolis.

After we settled down, we set out to follow a guidebook walk around town, starting at Syntagma. We knew we wouldn't have time to finish the walk, and headed for the Plaka neighbourhood for dinner around 7:30pm. We went to bed relatively early in preparation for a full day of sightseeing the next day.