I took a shitty (ahem.. sorry, poopy) bus and ferry combo from Corfu that left the previous night at 9 pm and arrived the following morning at 8 am. There were 3 bus legs and 2 ferry legs! What good fun it is to wake up on an uncomfortable bus every couple hours only to wake up on an even less comfortable ferry an hour later!
Anyway, I did arrive in one piece. Funny that as we were waiting to get off one of the ferries, there was a sign of naval regulations posted for the ferry, and one was : "ABSOLUTELY NO TRANSPORT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES- OF FLAMMABLE MATERIALS!" Looking over we counted 4 huge gas trucks by our bus. Safety is a big concern in Greek shipping, obviously. I was happy to get on land after that.
Arrived in Athens around 8 in the morning. From the stories I expected to walk of the bus, get punched in the stomach, my bag stolen, urinated on, sworn at, and then told to go back to US/Canada/England or where ever the hell I was from. This didn't happen, so thought this was good start.
Travelling with a couple of people I met in Corfu. One a 36 year old ex-president of a retail company in Australia and a 21 yr old japanese college student from Vancouver. They are both very nice and interesting and a good change from insane Aussie guys.
Athens turned out to be not entirely bad. It was cleaner and far less nuts than either Mexico City or Sao Paolo. No one tried to steal from me or swindle me or pee on my leg. The mangy stray dogs were actually not that mangy and actually kind of cute!
Was only in Athens for one day because decided that we would take a night ferry to Santorini and avoid 2 straight nights of accomodation. Another overnight on a ferry. Yee-haw! That makes for 20 hours of travel in the last 36 hours. Ouch.
We went to see the acropolis and parthenon. Really cool. Great views of Rome. History and all that stuff. They are doing a lot of renovation at fast pace to prep for Olympics next summer.
Everyone who is travelling keeps saying how they are SO far behind from being ready for the Games. My question is is, how the hell do they know that? I just see a lot of chaos and half-completed buildings, but I have no idea what this means for next summer. All these aussies think that Sydney will host as a backup. I find this highly doubtful. They will get their asses ready for the Olympics or will render my cool t-shirt moot. That would be a tragedy.
Leaving Athens in a couple hours. Will go get decent dinner first. Have resolved to tell every traveller I meet from this point to tell them how much I LOVED Athens just to throw them off and mess with their heads..