Things I learnt today...
Wednesday 19th of June
Another great breakfast- this really is the life! Last night, we came back from dinner and a kindly person had folded our pjs on the bed, laid out slippers, turned back our beds and left a chockie on the pillow. Yeah ha!
Marty is off at the conference today so I got to explore by myself. I seemed to end up in the flash (read: expensive) part of Athens… the prices would seem exorbitant if they were in dollars and then you double them for euro- yikes! €415 just seems like too much to pay for a bikini top….
During my wandering this morning, I encountered a section of town that housed the police and also a number of embassies and government ministries. Consequently, there was quite a bit of security around and all of the police had VERY LARGE GUNS. It’s just not something you see in New Zealand, I guess. We prefer our police to keep their hardware hidden away unless absolutely necessary. I wanted to take a picture but didn’t want to draw attention to myself in light of the fact that, well, the guns were VERY LARGE. It’s easy to forget that while Athens is an extremely westernised city and virtually everyone seems to speak at least a smattering of English (“You want, you want?), it is in fact, on the edge of a particularly volatile part of the world. I didn’t realise until I got here that the US have a base on Crete that they have utilised extensively during the ‘war on terror’. It seems that the Greek government has kept it pretty quiet- something to do with the fact that it’s reasonably unpopular with some of its neighbours.
I spent the middle part of the afternoon hanging around the conference in order to hear Marty speak- he did a great job, of course. Crazily, his old boss from Dunedin spoke immediately after him- it’s funny who you run in to J
After the talk, I went for a walk and got slightly ‘misplaced’. During this, I learnt a couple of things about Greece:
Greek supermarkets (more of a large dairy by NZ standards) like you to have close to the correct change and don’t take any form of plastic
38 degrees is REALLY hot, especially when you are not quite sure where you are
On returning to the hotel, I made a bee line to the pool and collapsed in a heap…38 degrees is enough to do me in…
Another great breakfast- this really is the life! Last night, we came back from dinner and a kindly person had folded our pjs on the bed, laid out slippers, turned back our beds and left a chockie on the pillow. Yeah ha!
Marty is off at the conference today so I got to explore by myself. I seemed to end up in the flash (read: expensive) part of Athens… the prices would seem exorbitant if they were in dollars and then you double them for euro- yikes! €415 just seems like too much to pay for a bikini top….
During my wandering this morning, I encountered a section of town that housed the police and also a number of embassies and government ministries. Consequently, there was quite a bit of security around and all of the police had VERY LARGE GUNS. It’s just not something you see in New Zealand, I guess. We prefer our police to keep their hardware hidden away unless absolutely necessary. I wanted to take a picture but didn’t want to draw attention to myself in light of the fact that, well, the guns were VERY LARGE. It’s easy to forget that while Athens is an extremely westernised city and virtually everyone seems to speak at least a smattering of English (“You want, you want?), it is in fact, on the edge of a particularly volatile part of the world. I didn’t realise until I got here that the US have a base on Crete that they have utilised extensively during the ‘war on terror’. It seems that the Greek government has kept it pretty quiet- something to do with the fact that it’s reasonably unpopular with some of its neighbours.
I spent the middle part of the afternoon hanging around the conference in order to hear Marty speak- he did a great job, of course. Crazily, his old boss from Dunedin spoke immediately after him- it’s funny who you run in to J
After the talk, I went for a walk and got slightly ‘misplaced’. During this, I learnt a couple of things about Greece:
Greek supermarkets (more of a large dairy by NZ standards) like you to have close to the correct change and don’t take any form of plastic
38 degrees is REALLY hot, especially when you are not quite sure where you are
On returning to the hotel, I made a bee line to the pool and collapsed in a heap…38 degrees is enough to do me in…
1 comment:
Enough already about the heat!
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