Friday, November 02, 2007
Athens
I badly planned my holidays this year and ended up with 2 almost back-to-back. This time I was off to Athens with 2 friends who I met at BBC Bristol: Dilster and Hoskins.
The holiday didn't exactly go off to a flying start for Dilster, as he found an old mouldy banana in his bag which had gone all over his clothes.
Still, desite Dilster reeking of banana, we persevered and saw all the sights.
The Temple of Zeus:
The Acropolis:
Unfortunately Hoskins couldn't get the name of the place in his head, and kept calling it the Apocalypse. He eventually got fed up of Dilster and I guffawing at his error, and just referred to is as 'Stones on the hill', which I felt didn't entirely do it justice...
From the Acropolis, we could see an even higher hill:
...so of course we had to scale that one. This was easier though, as there was a Funicular Railway. As we sat on the train, waiting for it to depart, Dilster proclaimed, "This is going to be one of THE best views from a funicular railway."
He's obviously not been on many...
...it was inside.
Still, he made up for his banana deodorant and his dodgy views, by coming up with some interesting facts:
Greece smokes twice as much as any other European Nation.
One third of the population of Greece lives in the Greater Athens area.
There are estimated to be 150,000 dogs in Athens.
He then started wondering how many windows there were in the city, at which point Hoskins and I started crying into our beers.
The low point of the holiday was probably when we got lost, so decided to get a cab home. It turned out we were approximately 50 metres from the hotel. I don't think the taxi even got out of second gear...
But the high was finding that Greek people love tourists, especially ones with blonde hair, and would let us queue jump into nightclubs...where I found my new favourite drink - Pea Juice!
The thing we didn't ever get round to was to use the hotel pool, despite the 'eye-catching' advert in the lift:
Maybe next time...
The holiday didn't exactly go off to a flying start for Dilster, as he found an old mouldy banana in his bag which had gone all over his clothes.
Still, desite Dilster reeking of banana, we persevered and saw all the sights.
The Temple of Zeus:
The Acropolis:
Unfortunately Hoskins couldn't get the name of the place in his head, and kept calling it the Apocalypse. He eventually got fed up of Dilster and I guffawing at his error, and just referred to is as 'Stones on the hill', which I felt didn't entirely do it justice...
From the Acropolis, we could see an even higher hill:
...so of course we had to scale that one. This was easier though, as there was a Funicular Railway. As we sat on the train, waiting for it to depart, Dilster proclaimed, "This is going to be one of THE best views from a funicular railway."
He's obviously not been on many...
...it was inside.
Still, he made up for his banana deodorant and his dodgy views, by coming up with some interesting facts:
Greece smokes twice as much as any other European Nation.
One third of the population of Greece lives in the Greater Athens area.
There are estimated to be 150,000 dogs in Athens.
He then started wondering how many windows there were in the city, at which point Hoskins and I started crying into our beers.
The low point of the holiday was probably when we got lost, so decided to get a cab home. It turned out we were approximately 50 metres from the hotel. I don't think the taxi even got out of second gear...
But the high was finding that Greek people love tourists, especially ones with blonde hair, and would let us queue jump into nightclubs...where I found my new favourite drink - Pea Juice!
The thing we didn't ever get round to was to use the hotel pool, despite the 'eye-catching' advert in the lift:
Maybe next time...
