Published Thursday November 18th, 2004

Ah.. How about an entry from 11,528 metres above the sea? Sure! I'm on Swiss flight LX1831 from El. Venizelos airport in Greece to Zurich in Switzerland. Flying over mainland Greece, but not for much longer. Heh.. I saw the Acropolis one last time from the air.. Gave me a lovely last perspective of the city of Athens.. I've liked and enjoyed Athens.

Yesterday I hung about my hotel room watching M.A.D., the Greek music television as well as wandered through old Athens, or the Plaka. I bought some things and so forth..

I went and had dinner at a rather early 18.00. I had not really eaten a whole lot the past 3 days so that I could fully enjoy one more delicious Greek meal. I'm going to miss the Greek food, especially the pita-gyro wraps/rolls.. mmm.. *sigh*

As I said, I had eaten very little, Marco-style very little, thusly I very much enjoyed my large, very large Greek salad with Greek olive oil and balsamic vinegar of 0.1% acidity (or so it was advertised in the menu..) This was followed by veal meatballs which were wonderfully seasoned and prepared. Fried potatoes, zucchini, and other vegetables. It was very good and after eating all of this, I was very full.

After leaving the restaurant, which was outside because the temperatures at night were still in the low 20ties degree Celsius, I found some book store where I bought a Greek cook book with 300 recipes. Woot! Once this transaction was complete, I returned to my hotel room after some final wandering through the Plaka.

The Plaka in Athens is awesome. It's the old part of the city, and as there usually are in old parts of a city, the Plaka is littered with small little streets and curb-side stores and shops.. Whats also interesting is the Athens flea market which is in the same general area. There are shops less tourist oriented and more average, everyday Athenian driven. LP resellers, CD's, clothing, Weird and useless antique and miscellaneous crap and junk stores, books.. All sorts of interesting and fascinating things for sale and purchase in various small stores. There is an equilibrium in all the people and chaos here.. A sort of structure in the chaos. It's a great and exciting feeling to be apart of, or just walking through it all. Shopkeepers verbally throwing out deals at you to get you to stop in their stores, waiters trying to get you to eat at their restaurants or cafes.. It was especially interesting to see how many people thought I was Greek. I wasn't carrying any camera bag or other tourist identifiers, so the experience was as natural as it could be, walking through the Athens flea market.. It's a lot of fun, and definitely a place I recommend people to visit if they go to Athens.. It's right by the Monastiraki metro exit, and near the Ancient Agora below the Acropolis.

I got up today, Wednesday, November 3rd, at around 09.00. I hung about for a bit to kill some time because I would rather sit in my hotel room than at the airport. Though, by 10.45 I had paid and checked out of my hotel, Hotel Omega, and was on my way to the Monastiraki metro/subway station where I paid EUR 2,90 for a one way trip to the airport on any public transportation. When I arrived in Athens, I had taken a bus on route E95 from the airport to Syntagma Square and from there the metro/subway to Omonia Square, but this time it was much simpler to just take the subway/metro all the way to the airport on subway/metro blue line 3. This was much simple and seemingly more direct than the bus was. In the subway/metro station, it was announced over the intercom that one is not allowed to smoke, eat, or drink in the metro system. By 12.20 I had arrived at the very modern and nice El. Venizelos airport and had checked in.

Airport procedures of checking in and dropping off luggage is so much more convenient here in Europe than it is in the U.S.A, at least L.A.X. (hell-hole.) I just walk up to the counter when its my turn, give them my passport, they give me my electronic ticket, drop of my luggage, and wallah! I'm done.

When I had finished with check-in, I went and had a chocolate croissant and then went to lounge around in the executive Swissport lounge because I had a business class ticket on the flight and was special and all that.

The lounge was filled with low sofas which "they" probably got from the gigantic, typical blue I.K.E.A. building/store right next to the airport. (One cant miss it when entering or leaving the airport of Athens, whether by bus or metro/subway, or the highway.. It's inevitable.)

I lounged around in the lounge for a good 90 minutes of lounge lounging.. on I.K.E.A. furniture. It was a grad-jolly lounge-full time, indeed!

At around 14.10 I was told by a lounging-assistant that I could now board my flight. Thus I did so and got onto the brand new Airbus 320.. which is practically void of passengers.. There are a total of 3 people here in business class (including myself.) The steward and stewardess have so little to do that they're constantly hoovering over the 3 of us, asking if we would like more tea or coke or whatever.. I even had a conversation - I'm flying over the alps as I write this word- with he steward about digital and film cameras. 185 kilometres to go.

With all of this liquid I've been drinking constantly throughout this flight because my glass or cup was never allowed to be empty by the constant attention given to it, I now really need to pee! A completely unrelated link: www.chipita.com I ate a lot of their products while in Greece.



I like how they start the descent before even entering Switzerland.. Ha-ha.. Furthering the amount of random comments: It looks so cold outside.. eek!


Indeed..


Heh, well.. This is the last entry from my trip to Greece.. and thus.. this saga... comes to an... end.


Ta-da!

Fin

Note that photos in this entry have not been altered and could possibly use some white-balancing, contrast, brightness, saturation, and hue adjustments among other touch-ups.