Day 18 & 19- Back to Athens

I'm typing this post up in word on our flight from Athens to Berlin, where I obviously don't have internet access. So, if the tenses I use don't make sense anymore when I actually get internet access to post it, that's why.

When I last posted we were on the ferry back to Athens, we were able this time to take a metro directly from the port to a station near the hostel. And now begins my rant about this hostel:

We weren't sure when we were booking it online why the location had such low ratings, because on a map it looking pretty close to the center. What our map failed to highlight was that our hostel was, unfortunately, smack dab in the middle of Athens' red light district. Which made our walk home a little after midnight...I'm not sure if interesting, disturbing, or disconcerting is the right word here, take your pick I guess.

I mentioned booking it online, and i use the term booking loosely, because they didn't seem to be expecting us when we got there. Rather than being together in the 5 bed dorm that we "reserved" we were split into separate rooms, at least one of which, i discovered, did not have the advertised air conditioning.

We dealt with three different staff people during the approximately 18 hours that we were in Athens, exactly one of them was helpful. The guy working the desk last night directed us to the mall, via the metro for the closest movie theater, That would've been convenient had the metro not been closed for 5 stops forcing us to take to take a 45 minute, 80 degree bus ride until we could get back on the metro. Oh, and we passed at least one other movie theater while on said bus, so that whole bit about the mall being the closest one wasn't exactly accurate either.

The Mall in Athens, cleverly named "The Mall" was a whole other interesting experience. It was four stories tall and, even though all the stores were closed by the tie we got there at 10 pm, there was a fashion show going on outside and the restaurants and bars inside (which by the way included Hooters and Ruby Tuesday's) were all packed. We didn't actually wind up seeing a movie because the first one we could've gotten seats further back than the 3rd row (apparently European movie theaters assign seats?) would've ended after the metro stopped running.

When we got back to the hostel I decided to shower to cool off before attempting to sleep without a fan or air conditioning. I went back down to the desk to get a towel and unhelpful staff member #2 was kind enough to offer me a piece of terry cloth that would be much better suited to drying a dinner plate than a person my size.

I'll stop ranting now to say that, this morning we awoke to, finally, find a useful person sitting behind the front desk. She was able to accurately direct us to an atm, a restaurant, the national archaeological museum, and the airport with skipping a beat. The museum was fairly interesting, but i was a little disappointed by the mask of Agamemnon, supposedly the centerpiece of the whole place.

After seeing the museum we made our way to the airport via another hot and uncomfortable bus ride. On a side note I've decided during the course of this trip, that buses have got to be my absolute least favorite way to travel; they're always hot and apparently the people who design them are all 5'6" or shorter. In the Athens airport we got McDonald's for lunch, mainly because it was the only reasonably priced option, but it was a nice way to break the gyro and spanikopita diet that I've accidentally been on for the last week or so.

We'll be landing in Berlin about 7 pm and theoretically our hostel there offers a free walking tour that we'll be taking tomorrow (Monday I think). On Tuesday or Wednesday we're planning to find our way to Munich (hopefully not by bus) and from there we may hit one more city, not sure where yet, before heading back to Madrid.