Two short nights

Due to the joy of a natural late checkout time (12:00 - no idea how that happened but happy it did) we slept in before getting ready and sorting out the pack up to get home. Complicated by a long stopover with no access to the luggage.

Having some time to kill before the trek actually began, we left the baggage in the basement and went out on the streets for a hefty lunch.

Ended up in a doorway of an upper class establishment for a fabulous meal of benny eggs with a few extras thrown in for good measure. They did not seem to be in any hurry so we effectively filled in the time there. No rushing around, no grabbing snaps of olde worlde remnants. All been done before. Just watched the procession of people wandering by or hanging around, one with an old style tobacco pipe. Had not seen that for a long time. Obviously oblivious to the impact on others in the eatery. Back to the hotel to collect the bags, booked Uber to the airport and got ripped of a bit as they charged another 10 euros on the quoted costs. Not sure entirely how that happened. All of a sudden not so keen on the idea of taxis being booked via Uber.

Some sort of unexplained delay saw the big bird eventually lumber up into the smoky skies as bush fires were burning somewhere. We shot off into the night leaving the sunset to linger over the Acropolis as we plunged into the darkness, taking a slight detour around Gaza which seemed to make a lot of sense.

A few hours later we were decending past the evil tower of Dubai, now a glittering spike of lights amongst a sea of coloured sparkles. Some bright spark in the airport operations decided our bird should dock at the end of the terminal. That's ok they said as the passengers can be ferried to their next door. This means of course those up the front. Those of us down the back had a 45 minute walk to get out the departure gates. Yes really. The terminal is that big. At midnight, a tide of humanity streaming along the never ending raised gantries, this was exhausting, especially with carrying extra carry-on,  needless to say there was a fair amount of carry on the more and more we realised we realised how much longer we needed to carry on. Especially when the advice given about visas was incorrect. Midnight and its 36 degrees.
The stop over hotel is huge, very old (to Dubai standards) and thanks to the time taken to get into it and the poor timing advice to leave in it the morning we only got 4 hours downtime when it could've been at least 6. So another hang around an airport terminal. Plus new rules that involve a bag check looking for water bottles. The world is going crazy.
The seat selection for this last hop was stressful a few months ago and it turns out all is good, great in fact as the seat next to us is vacant. Feels more comfortable than the premium eco seat
on the way out. Behind us the bulkhead gives us space to store stuff as well as under our seat and the one in front. Still have a stewardess cupboard above though of which they don't care how loudly they bang it. Pity the people close to the screaming babies, which screamed all trip. 13 hours of screaming. Wierd parenting going on there.
Arriving in Melbourne and it's a crisp zero degrees morning. Cloudless sky as the sun starts to illuminate the horizon below the old moon and venus glowing in partnership just above it.

Offspring No.2 kindly picked us up, we trundled down to Abbotsford to have fabulous brecky in a Japanese influenced cafe' as the joy riding balloonists drifted by over the river parks nearby indicating that nothing has changed here apart from an eggsistanal crisis (did I mention how cold it is here?)

Three grouse gyros

Our last full day in one place. It was pretty much similar to all the others in that it was spent adventuring and taking a plethora of fo-tos in order to manage to capture at least a couple being blog worthy. Pity any poor recipient of the full slide show when (if ever) compiled.

Due to the high quality (not) of our room we completely ignored the residences facilities and hit the streets in search after a basic breckie. Took a while but it worked out superbly. Found a restaurant in a very leafy square which was surrounding a seriously impressive church. Some of the trees were Plane trees, so sort of felt comfortable with that.

The church was of course Greek Otrthodox so anyone living in Oakliegh would feel at home as well. Hardly any patrons. A couple of elderly local gentleman enjoying an ouzo for breaky was setting the vibe.
The choice of coffee (learning from Albania - late', double shot, large), freshly squeezed OJ, toast and jam was just the right combo after last nights late feast. This blogger was so happy with the coffee that he had a second whilst non-blogger went for a quick shop to get some illegal soap and a potential whole lot of fun with customs at home.
Just as we were wrapping up the place got swamped.  Church service finished it was obviously time for the locals to debrief the service and possibly gossip about the priest. I don't know. Maybe so. What's the difference anyway as we were off to the local square where they hold rebellions in the name of democracy. We'd been there, done that before.  But SIL, FIL1 and MIL1 hadn't and so we joined pretty much every person who'd been in the Plakka last night to stand around in the boiling mid morning sun to watch the changing of the guard.

Love these guys. They are obviously governed very closely and Greece`s Department Of Silly Walks is still well funded.
The crowds were also hilarious. One main complaint though is every two out of three accents is aussie. Everywhere. It's like we've invaded the place and the locals haven't actually cottoned on yet to the fact that they may actually loose their sovereignty because we make up so much of the standing population at any particular moment in time. New Caledonia just realized this recently with the French and look what happened there. Look out Greece, here come the yobbo`s...
With one dad saying to his son, "you can't see - just push your way through the crowd up to the front" and his son trying, stopping two layers in with five to go and realizing that basically his dad is just a dickhead. Then we had the wave of people capturing the event on their devices by holding them up above the heads of those in front and of course blocking the view of those behind them.

This blogger did this as well, one the reasons was to get a shot for the blog (hopefully it will be appreciated). Great stuff. Human nature at it's best....well...at least better than the band of the same name.
All six of us then headed off to the new Acropolis museum, expertly guided by SIL who kept us in the shade for most of the trek ( have I mentioned that it's hot?). We missed the opening of this place last time we were here and struck it lucky in that the lower levels were just released a few days ago.
It was cool due to aircon (and will not repeat the same pun in the same sequence of posts). It was very insightful and they've done a great job of displaying priceless artefacts in a way that hordes of peeps are willing to pay millions per annum to gawk at. We gawked appropriately and made the right noises to each other about how much more enlightened we are because of the experience.

This is what being a tourist is all about. Some of us learned a bit more about ancient Greek mythology (as compared to current Greek mythology ?..I don't know, maybe so). Some of us about past theft of significant local cultural icons and others fascinated by the ancient engineering capabilities of plumbing public toilets. You'd reckon that after 2000 plus years of recognition of the need to deal with this issue they'd come up with an a better way of managing toilet paper in the system, although just now had the epiphany as to why they like to build villages on the sides of hills.. its all to do with the towns sewerage system, driven by gravity which keeps the place clean.. nowadays we pump it back up to the main pipe in the road, back then (i.e. before the internet) people actually had to deal with other people's bodily escretion products from the house above flowing under your house. Yeech. This was also about the time that trade routes to India opened up. Flooding the markets with exotic curries. This would've raised the yeech levels significantly. Then the Persians mauraded through and broke up all the jars, then the Roman's wandered in and tried to apply aqueducts to the solution, the Italians wandered in and dropped explosives on the joint (just so to extend the views of course) and then the archeologists came in and dug it all up and pieced it all back together again.

Just so the milling hordes can do their gawking. And throw coins in the now barren wells. Still don't know why they do that. Maybe it's a sheep thing, or a lemming thing. With the now disturbed ghosts of many millennium past watching, we bade fare the well to OSno.1 and SIL down in the newly opened basement display. Now reduced to a party of four the MIL's and FIL's went in search of another gyros, this time for lunch. Found one relatively close, maybe a notch down on last nights but still great. Not being in any particular hurry we squatted there until they kicked us out. We then bade fare the well to MIL1 and FIL1 who wondered off into the gardens on a loose plan to get to the airport.
Reduced now to a party of two we ploughed back into the Plakka in the midday heat (did I mention that its hot?) to purchase some quality items on offer in the souvenir shops. It seems to be irresistible when it's in your face for so long. Still surrounded by aussie accents. Just can't escape them.

Not too long before we we found a leafy bar with water vapor pumping out from the fans and squatted there. For 3 hours as it transpired as there was nothing else to do but write the blog whilst non-blogger went shopping for more essentials. Not sure exactly what she got but have checked one's own luggage whilst packing. Once bitten twice shy.
It was then back to the room and a subtle takeover of the prime view on the private rooftop bar to capture sunset over the Acropolis on the gopro.

Unfortunately the main view will be of the rooftop party next door on top of a big concrete plain flat wall. Ended up making temporary friends with an American/Columbian couple and their 14yo son. A very pleasant few hours solving the problems of the world. The views were spectacular. They'd put very subtle lighting on the whole hill, so as the world gets darker it gets brighter. Eventually we took the obligatory photos of each other, pulled the pin, went and found a restaurant that we could sit in and have a wrapped gyros. So that's 3 in 24 hours. Pretty happy with that. Just like backpacking in 91.
Another small ice cream to wrap up the day and a short stroll back to the room to collapse once again.