8 March 2010 (Monday #1) - our hotel

Here’s a map of Greece (see the colored part):

Conrad and I flew into Athens (see circle and arrow), and we stayed there every night of our trip, although most days were spent exploring outside of Athens.

When Conrad and I arrived at the Athens airport, a cute little man met us inside, holding a sign so we’d find him. (I was expecting our names to be on the sign, but it had the name of the travel agency instead. Momentarily confusing.) He took our luggage and drove us to our hotel, which was about 45 minutes away, in the heart of Athens. We all had a lively conversation! Not. I asked the man if he spoke English, and he replied, “No English.” So, Conrad and I whispered just in case he did speak our language. Why did we do that? We weren’t exactly divulging any national secrets.

While we were going to our hotel, it was rather dreary outside, with rain threatening. Our view was further hampered by the taxi’s really dirty windows. See (all photos are clickable to enlarge):

We later learned that Athens is one dusty place (ancient decaying ruins? constant excavations?), and all vehicles there are downright dirty. The grimy windshields probably limited visibility, but the drivers were all over the place anyway, so it didn’t seem to be a problem.

Here’s our hotel—the Divani Palace Acropolis (a name I never once could recall when a driver asked us where we needed to go; I kept trying to say Da Vinci, but he was in a different country [when he was alive], and he wasn't a hotel):

You’ll notice the hotel is short; it only had about seven floors. Skyscrapers are not allowed in Athens, maybe so as not to overshadow the Parthenon? The tallest building in Athens is only 17 stories high.

Here’s another photo from the hotel website, showing our hotel from a different angle:

Do you see what I see? Yes! It’s the Parthenon! The website repeatedly says the hotel offers a “superb view to the Acropolis” (what the Parthenon is on top of).

Photo from the hotel website of the swimming pool area:

There’s that Parthenon! (It seems to be moving closer.)

View from the hotel roof:

The Parthenon is particularly stunning when it’s lit up at night, which happens every night.

After we checked into the hotel, we ran to our room, went straight to the window, threw back the regular drapery and the room-darkening drapery (nice feature!), opened the slider to our private balcony, and looked out upon . . .

buildings and orange trees. Who took the Parthenon?? We tried to see the Parthenon from our hotel from every angle during our 8-day stay there with no success. We even tried the roof, but the roof access was locked.

Parthenon or no Parthenon, the hotel was quite nice. Here’s the front desk:

I didn’t take a photo of the actual people who were at the front desk while we were there. Suffice it to say, I was well-known by the staff, who snickered every single time I walked by the front desk.

Their snickering might have been related to this mailbox in one of the hotel lobbies.

If you’re ever in Greece and want to mail 24 postcards, they’ll expect you to put stamps on all 24, not just 10. The unstamped 14 cards will not be discarded. Rather, the postman will remove them from your hotel’s mailbox for the staff to display at the front desk.

One of the hotel lobbies:

See what a nice place the Da Vinci Something is?  

Me walking through a side of that lobby above:

I’m way in the back to the left. It was there that we accidentally stumbled upon free wifi for a couple of days. Sweet!

I’m seen above walking to the restrooms, but this photo was not taken on the day when I accidentally locked myself inside one of the stalls for nearly 30 minutes. (Free advice: Know the country code for where you’re traveling. I had my iPhone with me in the stall, but I couldn’t call the front desk to rescue me, because I didn’t know Greece’s country code. Conrad said he’d rather I rotted in the stall than called for a rescue. He embarrasses easily.) Prior to getting stuck, I was so proud of myself on that day. It was my first time to go into the ladies’ restroom in our hotel lobby instead of the men’s.

Our room looked just like this:

. . . except that the layout was in the opposite direction, and our accent color was purple. Oh. And we didn’t have that view of the Parthenon.

Here’s the far side of our actual bedroom:

That would be Conrad sound asleep. With his mouth hanging open. He snores.

Our bathroom was swathed in marble (everything in Greece is swathed in marble!) and had all the modern amenities, as well as a few oddities.

For example, apparently the concept of a shower curtain hasn’t arrived in Greece yet. This was our tub:

Instead of a shower curtain or door, we had a glass thing (see right of photo) . . .

that shielded about 1/3 of the tub. Unless we pointed the shower head straight down, it shot water all over the bathroom.

If we pointed the shower head straight down, we had to stand at the very end of the tub to get under the water, which brings us to a second problem with the tub. Notice anything?

The end of the tub was about 6” across, meaning we had to stand with one foot lined up in front of the other. But wait; there’s more! Every few minutes the hot water disappeared, causing the showeree to have to sprint to the other end of the tub until the water warmed back up, at which time the showeree had to do a backwards tightrope walk to end up in that little niche under the shower head.

This was our toilet:

(There are those who might wonder why I’m ignoring the 100s of photos we took of GREECE and focusing on a hotel room. It’s easier to focus on a hotel room than on 100s of photos of Greece.)

See the little button thing on the top of the toilet tank:

It gives you the choice of flushing the toilet completely, or doing a one-half flush. If you push the ½ part, sure enough, it flushes one-half of the contents of the toilet. I don’t get it. Gross.

We started each morning with a herkin’ buffet breakfast in our hotel’s restaurant. Here’s one wall of the buffet and some of Conrad’s fingers:

Conrad and the restaurant staff all glared when I tried to take photos, so I put up my camera and ate—breads, cheeses, eggs, pastries, fruits, meats, juices, coffee, Greek yogurt, . . ..

Ancient ruins are all over Greece. Every time people dig a hole, especially in Athens, they’re likely to stumble upon antiquity. For example, a part of the bottom floor of our hotel was glassed off, because when they were renovating the hotel, they found these ruins under it:

This sign explains those ruins:

(That’s me and my new camera reflecting in the sign.)

By the way, most of the ruins in Greece consist of a few fallen and crumbled columns. The Greeks have fantastic stories built around each set of these columns.

Enough is enough. Time to tackle those 100s of photos that actually show Greece. I’ll be back soon. I hope.