Athens

Well another summer another trip and another blog, well the same blog really but you get the idea. We have just startted our trip and already it seems that I'm already behind with the blog as I started last year's the day before I left. Regardless this year's trip is composed of Greece and the Balkans... and then Romania. We don't have too much of a plan as of yet 'winging it' as David loves to put it but so far things seem to be working out. The flight here was, as always, an adventure in and of itself this year getting to Munich was no problem at all, I would rank it as one of the best flights I have ever taken with no noisy children and plenty of films avaliable for me to catch up on my movie watching. The connection to Athens however was another affair altogatrher; due to the large ash cloud from the m ost recent reruption of a volcano on Iceland our plane had to take a somewhat more circuitous route than otherwise and thus were some 30 minutes late. Now this would normally be no cause for concern but given that we had only one hour to make our connection in the firstplace and that included getting our bags checking them back ion and going throughn security again those 30 minutes became somewhat more valuable. In the end we were at the ticket office 10 minutes before our flight departed and were being given a list of other flights we had been put on standby for when the ticket agent got a call and ltold us to grab our bags and run to the gate as the plane had been delayed for some reason. Cut to David and I dashing through the airport ridiculously oversized backpacks bouncing around on our backs and arriving in time to board our original flight, there was some brief confusion over our possession of bags which were ludicrously oversized for carry-on but we managed to fit them into the overhead bins regardless. The second flight was shorter than the first and the only other propblems with it were the number of hours that David and I had been awake by this time so after some expert navigation of Athen's subway system and somewhat tangled, narrow streets we have arrivefd at our first hostel.