Day 1.
Arriving into Athens at 9am sounds like a great idea but showing up to your hotel and the room not being ready sounds like a typical consequence of that.
The Crown Plaza Hotel in Athens City Centre is adorable. It’s urban and all of the people have been kind and friendly so far.
My flight was so smooth. Both of my flights from Los Angeles to Philly and from Philly to Greece were child-free! And as a bonus the flight from Philly to here was EMPTY! We all pretty much had rows to ourselves in the 3 section seater plane.
It was a 9 hour flight from Philly to Greece and though I had plenty of room to relax, I could not. I couldn’t sleep. When I arrived. I felt the desire to sleep hit me hard.
I napped and decided to take it easy as the following days would be filled with a ton a of walking and touring.
Post nap I visited the pool bar and then decided to walk outside a bit.
Downtown Athens reminds a lot of Naples in Italy-City. Gritty. And not that pleasant but I appreciate it none the less. I think the highlight of my walk was seeing an old man come out of his apartment to shoo away a single pigeon. It was on the walkway stairs not even the old mans place. It was quite entertaining and I’m not sure why it bothered him so much.
At 6pm I had a briefing with Globus Tours and met some fellow travelers. A group of women well into their 50’s and traveling together invited me to dinner at Vlassis where we shared some lovely life stories with and shared a couple bottles of wine along with a delicious meal of Greek salad, and seafood risotto.
Tomorrow the real tour of Athens begins.
