Athens, Greece - Day 1

Once again, we woke up early Wednesday morning, prepared for a long day of traveling, and walked to the Thessaloniki train station to board our train to Athens. Unfortunately, the train was delayed by over an hour. And, even when it came, we spent over 30 minutes trying to find our seats. It was hard to communicate not knowing the language. However, we were able to find some English speaking people. They directed us a few carts down, which was a sleeping cart, where we were not allowed. After being told to go to the same cart 3 or 4 different times, then getting kicked out of it for being in the wrong place, we finally gave it one more shot. This time, the sleeping cart had magically turned into a normal cart, and our seats were exactly where everyone had been telling us. Weird that they changed carts during our boarding time! That made it very confusing! At least we got to where we needed to be. I wish I had understood some of the language!

The train ride to Athens from Thessaloniki was pretty long, but at least I was able to spend a lot of the 6 hours catching up on a bit of sleep, as well as enjoying some beautiful scenery. The surroundings quickly became much different, as cities became harder to find and the landscape became very rocky and mountainous.

When we finally arrived in Athens, we took a short bus ride into the city, to the Athens International Youth Hostel. The hostel was pretty nice, and we stayed around that vicinity for the night, as it was already very late. Other than going out to get a quick gyro within a few blocks of the hostel, we just stayed in. We did get some neat sights from the balcony though. First, a covered motorcycle drove by, with a German Sheppard “surfing” on its roof. Minutes later, a cat across the street was jumping balcony to balcony, a couple of stories up. Athens sure had some crazy animals!

Before heading to bed, we packed up all of our belongings appropriately into our carry-ons, as we had yet another trip to make in the morning. This one sounded well worth the effort though: A short flight to the island of Crete!