There were also all these cool shops selling t-shirts. Some even selling my favourite kind, really un-pc and/or funny t-shirts. We were both trying to be restrained and not spend too much on anything, and wait till our last day. After a couple of hours wandering around the main street, we walked up and saw the town hall. Just outside were the meat-markets (not sleazy clubs… but actual butchery). All these butchers with their white aprons smeared with blood, wielding big cleavers and smashing chunks of meat off for their customers. It was actually really cool to see.
There were also pet shops around with cute puppies, hamsters, and other little creatures. I didn’t recognise some of them as we don’t have them in NZ.
We stopped at a supermarket and bought a bunch of fruit for lunch.
(See a resemblance between the two??)
Lefourgue wanted to head to Pireas and see the harbour. So we got onto the metro line and headed for the harbour. We got off the train and bumped into Marion. She invited us to sit with her and Bérengère, so we stopped for lunch. It turned out to be a couple of hours and a few cold drinks before we even moved. It was hot yet again (anyone seeing a theme here?). We finally decided to walk around the harbour. The girls joined me and Lefourgue because they needed to go to their pier anyway. Poor girls had to carry their backpacks in the heat as well. Yes I did offer my services as a pack-mule, but they didn’t take it :-)
The harbour was pretty ugly, just concrete everywhere and the water looked extremely polluted. After walking the girls to their pier, we said our farewells (again) and headed back to the city.
We went back to the hostel to have a shower and head out for the evening. It being a Saturday night, I wanted to see the nightlife, and dragged Lefourgue along with me :-) We ended up walking all the way from our hostel to town. It took about an hour, yet only 5 mins on the metro. We stopped at several little convenience stores along the way to grab a beer or other cold drink.
We got to the city and walked around and saw the city by night. The Acropolis by night is absolutely beautiful. In fact, all the monuments were almost better by night. There were floodlights highlighting them and it was very impressive. I took heaps of photos by night, but the don't really turn out very well because of the slow shutter speed.
We got dragged into one store at one point and Lefourgue bought some books, postcards and playing card. The cards were of Greek mythology and sex :-)
The shop attendant here was amazing. She could speak 7 languages including; French, English, Greek, Arabic and Spanish. It was a family owned store (as most Greek ones are) and she just learnt the languages by herself, only learning languages that she liked the sound of… and had to learn English for the practicality. I asked her for directions to the nightlife, and she told me that the city nightlife is basically closed for summer and you need to go to the beach.
So we started our walk to the tramway. On the way I saw a girl walking towards us looking completely lost and pulling a wheelie suitcase behind her. Just before I asked her if she needed any help, she asked us for directions. Lefourgue being his French self asked his standard first question, “Hello, do you speak French?” in English of course. She blurted out “Wee, blah blah something else in French”. Turned out she was French-Canadian and could speak both fluently.
I told her we would walk her to her hostel because I’m not sure how safe the backstreets of Athens are for a solo-female. Her name was Lena, from Montreal, Canada. We talked the whole way to the hostel, me speaking in English and Lefourgue in French, was strange hearing someone switch between two languages so quickly.
She was by herself for the evening so we ended up hanging out with her. First I played tour guide again and showed her the city by night, then we stopped in a little bar at about 1am to have a drink. After another hour or so of chatting and drinking (water mainly… coz it was hot) we walked her back to her hostel. She had the next day free as well, we told her we were heading to the beach and she could join us if she wanted. So we arranged to meet up again the next day.
Lefourgue and I had to walk home because the public transport finish at midnight. It was a very pleasant walk and actually discovered some different areas of the city that were quite nice, and those that weren’t. We walked through a park that had lots of comatosed drunk people, and also people cutting up cocaine with a credit card and snorting it. There were several police in the park that were sorting it out, so we felt relatively safe, considering some of the police are armed with sub-machine-guns. We ended up getting home about 4am and went to sleep rather easily.
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