Days 4 & 5

During the day on Friday Katherine and I went to a park in Palasport (suburb in Rome) to just hang out and walk around. We had a bit of a picnic - playing cards and chatting when  we noticed a huge difference between the parks in Australia to Rome: the enormous amount of PDA (Public displays of Affection). It was truly ridiculous at the amount of couples in the park rolling inappropriately around on picnic rugs. At any one stage there was at least 5 couples in a 200m radius from us ranging in age from 15 year to 80.

Our last night in Rome was a bit of a let down, we were supposed to go out dancing (to the Gay Village) on Friday night but Alfredo and his friends (who are all on their final exams for high school) decided they were too tired after taking us to the pub the night before and so couldn’t take us out. Needless to say, Katherine and I were very disappointed. Instead, as good Australians do (says Katherine) we found a pack of cards and taught Ivano how to play KOB (King of Beers ha) and made fruit cocktails, so the evening ended up being a lot of fun.

The Saturday morning wake up was cruel…. We had to be at the airport at 6:30am. We used some fancy electronic check in and when we went to drop off our baggage, we discovered that our small (underweight) backpacks are in fact, according to the Italians, over sized. So after trekking it around the airport, being man handled by security.. we eventually managed to get on our delayed flight to Athens. Once off the flight we then realised flight, that this was our 4^th country and time zone in less than seven days.

It is not only the Italian airport with non-existent customs; Athens airport had not only no customs but it has no immigration (where you get your passport stamped). We collected our baggage and walked straight out of the airport! We caught a train from the airport to some station in the middle of Athens… (where we thought we were supposed to be) and I decided that it was a lot like the dodge end of China town but they weren’t Chinese. Truth be told, it was rather scary…. We got chatted up by the police men who we asked for directions and whistled and ogled at by creepy local (not greek) men. After being completely lost as a consequence to the directions of hotel that DOES NOT EXIST, we found a nice hotel who’s receptionist/person told us where to go and called us a taxi.

Once we finally arrived at the hotel (President Hotel… if anyone wants to check it out) we discovered that we are terribly impeded in looking up world events.. from when we originally wanted to book Paris during the Tour de France and was wondering why it was all so expensive.. to wonder why Athens was so crowded to then learn that the Special 2011 World Olympics are being held in Athens…… with the opening ceremony TONIGHT. ‘

Minus all the faults during the morning, we ended up lying by the pool with a fabulous view of not only Athens but lovely attractive males, starting up our summer tans. An interesting start to Greece.

Andia

Cait and Katherine