It's all Greek to us!!!

Thursday, August 12, 2010
Woke up this morning in good time for breakfast, since its free! We went down and had a great little breakfast with eggs, toast, cheese, tomatoes, tea etc. It was great!! We had also previously decided to go on the walking tour offered by the hostel. It was just after breakfast so we headed to that next. We had a nice tour of Athens from our guide, George. We saw the Olympic stadium, the Akropolis, the town/markets, the gardens and he pointed out a lot of other places too. It was really, really hot today and we were definitely feeling the heat. We had a break for water and something quick to eat half way. Along the tour though, we had met 2 girls and 1 guy who were from California and were travelling too. They were really cool so we hung out with them along the walking tour. When we stopped for break though, one of the girls had to leave as the sun really got to her. We couldn’t blame her, the sun was killing us all. So Scott took Theresa back to the hostel and Marilei continued on with us. At the end of the tour the three of us went for lunch in the square. We sat down at this little greek restaurant and the patio was right on the square where there was shopping as it was right next to the market. There are street vendors everywhere and this guy was selling knockoff Raybans. The guy came right up to our table and we were checking them out and the waiter grabbed the glasses right out of Heather’s hand and told the guy to get lost. He kept the sunglasses though so the guy was really angry. He kept coming up to us and telling us that we need to give them back. We told him that we didn’t have them, that the guy did and he was getting really upset. He kept asking different guys for the glasses back but still getting mad at us. We told him that we would try but that’s the risk you take. He obviously knew that they didn’t like them selling at the restaurant and this can’t be the first time that they have gotten angry with them for selling at the restaurant. At the end of the meal, Heather went and asked for the sunglasses back and apologized for the situation. The guy was really nice and said he would give them back he was just trying to teach the guy a lesson and make him remember this. So this is what we told the sunglasses man and he didn’t give us any trouble so we headed on. We went to the market and probably through the day tried on a thousand pairs of leather sandals. It was crazy. We both finally bought shoes along with some other things. We then headed back to the hostel and got showered and ready as we had plans to meet up with Scott, Theresa and Marilei for drinks at happy hour. The hostel that we were staying at had a rooftop terrace and happy hour was from 7-8. We all met up on the roof along with our roommate Sofie and had a few drinks. Sofie is from the Netherlands and eventually left to meet up with her friend who is from Athens. We were all feeling pretty good at this point but thought we should go have some dinner. We walked a few blocks to try and find a restaurant and we decided on the first one that was close to our hostel and looked quite good. On our way to the restaurant, we ran into a guy selling knockoff Ray Bans. So we struck a deal and got 3 pairs for 15 Euro. What a deal...they are pretty good knockoff’s too. We compared them to Scott’s Ray Ban’s that are real and they did a good job. Anyhow, we went to this little Greek place for supper where we had some amazing meals and great wine to wash it down. We also had a little dance with a Greek man and were serenaded by the band. We were even encouraged to yell “opa”. It was fantastic! Afterwards we went back to the hostel for a quick wardrobe change, then hit the town. We convinced Sofie to rejoin the party and this Greek dude who was staying in our room became our guide. We hit up some good clubs and even stole some people from the pub crawl to come with us. A guy from Italy and one from Spain joined us in our mission through Athens. We even tried to find a gay bar in the area but didn’t have much luck. It was a good night anyhow and we weren’t as hard core as we thought and had to go home eventually.