Best of Greece and 7 Day Aegean Cruise
Day Fifteen – 25 Sept 2009
Weather: Sunny, 26 (t-shirt and shorts)
Terrain: easy (pulling luggage)
The ship woke me at 5:30 as it docked in Pireus. I checked my email on the free wireless that the port provides and went up for the buffet breakfast in La Scala at 6. We had plenty of time to sit and enjoy the last meal on the ship. We gathered up our carry-on luggage and left the ship at 7 where we were to meet George at about 7:15. He gave us the choice of walking to the terminal or taking the crowded shuttle bus. About half of us opted to take the walk.
We walked into the terminal without passing through any security or passport control and George led us to an area where our luggage was gathered. (He had us attach a blue ribbon to the bags so that it was easy to tell apart). Most got their luggage except about a dozen of us from the seventh floor. We had all put our luggage out early and figured it had ended up at the bottom of the pile. (And it was a pile – I could see it on the second floor and it was as though they stood at the top of the staircase and just dropped all the luggage on top of each other). So, lesson learned – put your luggage out as close as possible to the midnight deadline and you should get it early. (Not that it really matters…everyone had to wait for us).
The terminal was a madhouse but George kept us together in the chaos. Slowly, our luggage arrived and we joined the rest of our group. As George was not accompanying us to the Divani Caraval, I gave him his tip and thanked him for a fabulous week. Moerig, the TD rep in Athens, led us to our bus and as we drove to the hotel, she gave us our transfers. I get a taxi at 3:40 early Sunday morning. <ugh>
The Divani Caraval is a great hotel and really puts the Divani Acropolis to shame. The lobby is beautiful (with an amazing chandelier) and the rooms are modern. It has a bar fridge, safe, tv, shower condiments and an umbrella. There is no kettle or iron. Internet is expensive at 10 Euro per hour in my room or 5 Euro per hour in the lobby (and the hour is continuous – no breaking it up). The business centre costs 6 Euro for 15 minutes. Apparently, there is a cafe nearby.
After dropping off my bags, I joined several others and we proceeded for the much longer walk into Plaka where we shopped and had lunch (there is a shuttle from the hotel to Syntagma that leaves on the hour from the hotel, but we were too late and didn’t want to wait for the next one). On our way back, we came across two kids who were playing guitar-like instruments and “singing.” They got every coin we had in our pockets.
The short video can be viewed here.
By 3 pm, we’d had enough and took the subway from Syntagma Square to the intersection a few blocks from the hotel. It was easy to navigate the subway and it was only one Euro. It was a one stop ride to our stop and another 15 minute walk to the hotel.
I returned to my room to take a shower. The bathtub only has a half door on it and the floor got soaked. It did my laundry and with a couple hours to dinner, I went down into the lobby and surfed the internet for an hour, checking emails and my flights. When I got back to my room, the towels had been changed and there was a chocolate on my pillow.
Yup. I really have to stop leaving my underwear all over my room.
We went to dinner a little early and checked out the restaurants right around the corner from the hotel. I noticed a fast food burger place called Simply Burgers, so my dinner for tomorrow night is covered. We ran into others from our tour at one taverna and had dinner. I had a chicken crepe which looked nothing like the picture. The place had great desserts but we skipped.
We got back to the hotel at 8 pm and said our good-byes. I packed my bags for tomorrow and went to bed as early as I could to help with the early wake-up on Sunday.
I wanted to go to the Acropolis tomorrow to see if I could get a picture with a blue sky since it was raining the last time I was there. I checked the weather.
Yup. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow.
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