Thessaloniki-Athens-Piraeus Day 5

June 18, 2010

Day 5 Thessaloniki-Athens-Piraeus

The border crossing at 02:00 was not exactly a pleasant wake up call.  Like last time, we got marched out of our bus and made to stand in a line up.  We probably stood there for 30 minutes waiting for everyone to get stamped.  This part was just the exit stamp.  A few people were having issues.  The guards singled people out and even held onto one girl's passport for a while.  They were eventually okay.  After using the bathroom in duty free, we got back on the bus to drive about 150 m to the Greece side and were marched out of the bus again.  This time it was so that we could get our entry stamp for the EU.  At this stop we started talking to a girl from the States who had been traveling for a while.  It made the time go by much faster, which was nice.  It was a bit cool out, but pretty soon (probably another 30 minutes) we were back on the bus and heading to Thessaloniki.  We got a few more hours of sleep before being awaken at our final destination.  Here, we ended up sticking with the American girl for a while since we were all heading to the train station anyways.  We bought tickets to get back to Athens and then chatted for a while.  She described our method of traveling as "traveling as a sport".  I found that really interesting.  While chatting, we found out she works for Couch Surfing, which was really cool.  We parted ways after a while and Trevor and I decided to head to Goody's to use some free internet before our train came.  We ate some food, used the internet and then caught our train.  This time the train was awful.  It was crowded and uncomfortable.  I don't think the people sitting across from us actually had tickets, because every once in a while someone would come by, mention that it was their seat and then would say nevermind.  The fact that we had people sitting across from us made the whole experience more uncomfortable.  But we survived and made it into Athens around 18:15.  At this point we needed to figure out how to get to Piraeus, the main port of Athens, where we would be catching the ferry the next day.  After finding out that there was a 24 hour metro strike, the route we had planned to take, I managed to find out that you could take the train over there.  So we waited for the train.  It almost seemed like it wasn't going to come, and when I asked the guard standing on the platform, in his broken English, he tried to tell me that that's how it is in Greece.  It wasn't too much longer when the train finally made its way into the train station, thankfully.  Piraeus was a couple of stops away and once there, we went on a hunt for our hotel.  Along the way I bought some delicious looking cherries from a street vendor.  We found our hotel after a few twists and turns.  It was a much nicer hotel than we usually stay at (although the price made it a lot less nice) at least in the lobby.  Once settled into our room we headed to the Anek Lines office to pick up our tickets.  Along the way we grabbed a quick bite to eat and then headed back to the room where we got ready for the next day.