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Saturday 21 April 2018

The Final Countdown. Day 18: Athens - Olympia


Our alarm went off stupidly early again (this is going to be a running theme for the next four months, I think) and we made ourselves some muesli and headed out. Dani was already downstairs and we said we would be back in a little while after we bought our bus tickets.

Googlemaps suggested the ticket office was about a 10 min walk away but it was through the dodgy area, so we caught the metro one stop instead. Popping out of the station, we held our belongings close to us and started searching for this ticket office. And searching. Finally we came to the shop we figured it had to be - completed closed up. An old travel agent. Shit. This is what happens when you rely on a timetable from 2014.

To hold back the panic, I suggested we just go straight to the KTEL bus station - they’ll at least be able to push us in the right direction. Just around the corner from where we were standing there would be a bus that would take us directly there. Perfect. We got ourselves some little seats (using our 24 hour ticket from the day before) and waited for the bus to leave. Every time I looked up public transport in Athens on Google maps, I would get a little warning suggesting that Google didn’t have the latest timetable information. This was no exception - the time the bus was supposed to leave according to the app and the time it actually left was quite different (although didn’t make much difference to us, just a little extra wait). It’s interesting to note that this is the first European city where I have repeatedly receiving this warning notification.

I kept my maps open so we knew when to get off the bus (as the bus stop was all Greek to me!…ok I finally had to say it…) but quite a few people on the bus had luggage so we were pretty sure we were going to the right place. When the bus stopped, we just followed everyone and saw a big sign for TICKET OFFICE. This was excellent! Inside were a row of ticket booths, most unmanned, so we went up to one and asked about tickets to Olympia. He pointed to the unmanned booth next to him and said “You buy your ticket from here.” Luckily, we had seen someone sitting in there a few minutes before so knew that someone at least existed, and it wasn’t too long before he returned.

Buying the tickets turned out to be relatively simple - there was some initial confusion as he thought we wanted to get on the next bus, but we sorted that quickly and chose the 5.15pm bus instead. This would get us to Pyrgos at about 9pm and then our bus to Olympia would get us there about 10.30. Late, but gave us almost another full day in Athens, which was nice. At the last minute, Dan remembered to ask about return tickets, which gave us a slight discount. When we turned to leave, our ticket man said, “I’m from Olympia, actually. Have a lovely time.”

I feel like I need to put up a post on Tripadvisor to help people with this now as the information I had previously found was so out of date!

We were on a ticket buying roll, and we still needed to get tickets for our ferries to the Greek islands, so while we were out and about we decided to just hop skip it to Piraeus and see if you could get those tickets while we were at it. This would also give us a heads on how to get there in a few days time, laden with our luggage. We had heard horror stories about Piraeus and pickpocketing so we wanted to spend as little time here as possible.

We caught the bus and the metro to Piraeus, being regaled by a considerable number of homeless people on the train - seemingly more than Berlin, even. We looked for the Blue Star Ferries office, and there seemed to be one in 100m, and another in 160m, and we soon realised that these were the travel agent offices and this would be where we booked the tickets. Inside, we listed our dates, and the lady told us the prices. We had hoped to get the €20 tickets to Santorini, but apparently there are only ever 10 of these and we had, not surprisingly, missed out. Therefore: Thursday 19 April: Piraeus to Santorini. Monday 23 April: Santorini to Paros. Wednesday 25 April: Paros to Piraeus again. It cost a little bit, but not completely unexpected, and so once we got our tickets we checked out where our next accommodation would be. 

Literally across the road from the E7 port for our ferry. Perfect! The street smelled like pee but we could get past that.

We returned to our accommodation in Athens and checked out, leaving our bags with the strange gentleman who always hovered around. He didn’t talk to us nearly as much as Dani did, but he was very kind and helpful. As we had already been up for hours, we were ready for lunch. Just around the corner from our accommodation was a small street with vines and pretty lights - and I realised I had eaten here on my previous visit. The gyros was cheap, the wine was cheap, so we set ourselves up in the sun and waited to be served.

As it was before 12pm, I think the place was still in the process of setting up for the day, and our service was on what I like to call “ish” time. This means things happen when they happen, in no particular hurry. We weren’t in any particular hurry either - we had gained much more of a day than we thought we would as our original idea to catch the bus to Olympia would have left at 1pm. Now we had until 5pm to meander through Athens. Eventually we got some service, and our delicious red wine was delivered in a very cool but impractical container, so we proceeded to spill most of it over the table.

This was the first proper gyros of the trip, complete with chips stuffed inside the wrap. It was delicious and hit the spot! Buzzing from our wine, we started wandering all through the Plaka area. It was quite beautiful, and we felt the need for a wine top up and some coffee, so we stopped at the same place we had had coffee on the first day. It seems we were destined to only every drink there, and never consume food! 

As we walked past some shops, Dan noticed a bee hive. This initially made me uncomfortable but when I realised they weren’t getting out, I crept closer. The store owner spotted us and gave us a few samples of the different honey flavours. He also showed us some lip balm and body balm - good for exzema and sunburn, and as our sunburn lotion continually explodes in our bag we  grabbed ourselves a little tub. It smelled lovely, like pine trees.

We returned to the rock overlooking the city and next to the Acropolis and sat here with a multitude of others in the lovely sunshine. Time was slowly moving along, and we were ready to return to our accommodation, grab our things and head to the station.



We picked up sandwiches on the way which would constitute our dinner, and back at the apartment Dani was there to welcome us. We chatted for quite some time, Dani repeating that Sasha, you’re such a good girl, and Dan, you have such babyface, and with cheek kisses and air kisses we finally extracted ourselves and made it out the front door. What a character!

Laden with our luggage, we traversed the metro (always stressful, let alone covered in about 20kg of luggage each) and we were quite relieved when we made it back to the KTEL station. Nothing much to report of the bus journey - I fell asleep for the beginning of it (it was 4 hours to Pyrgos, then another hourish to Ancient Olympia). We arrived in Pyrgos about 9pm and went inside to ask where the bus to Olympia would be and what time. We found out that we would actually be getting back on the same bus we had just gotten off, and if we had looked up we would have realised we had already pulled into the Olympia parking spot. No matter! We were told, haltingly, that the bus would leave at 9.35pm. 9.35pm came and went, but when we all piled on a little bit later I realised that perhaps he had meant 9.45pm.

A lady was waiting with us, slightly crazy of course, and she chatted with us for a little bit. She had been on the bus all the way from Athens too, and had the most bizarre luggage. She was putting a big box that she had been dragging across the floor under the bus, as well as a series of plastic bags, all bursting. Must have done some shopping in the big city! I think her daughter came to meet her at Pyrgos because they went off chatting together. The bus from Pyrgos to Olympia was also uneventful - it definitely took the “local” route which was not direct. There didn’t appear to be any bus stops along the side of the road - people went up to the driver and said something, and a short while later he would pull over and they would get out, often in the middle of nowhere, and often with a parked car waiting to pick them up.

The bus pulled over at one of these stops and we realised it was right out front of our accommodation, not the main bus stop, so we made the snap decision to jump off and walk the half a block to our accommodation.

Check in was easy enough, our room was nice enough, and that’s the story of how we got from Athens to Olympia!

Til next time,
xx

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