Gate 1 Group Meeting

So we had our group meeting (about 41 people on our tour), mostly from the US, a few from Canada. Many have been on multiple Gate1 tours. Tour guide (goes by "Effie", short for a very long Greek name) was a woman who has been leading tours for 18 years and for the last two years for Gate1. She spent first 15 minutes talking about pick pockets and how Romanian gangs were infiltrating the subways and picking pockets right and left (she didn’t know I had mine taken till afterwards). Bottom line - you basically don’t want anything of value on your body, so leave most of the stuff in the room - maybe take 1 credit card, a little bit of cash hidden under the shirt, etc. Leave your passport in the safe. Unfortunately, on the way to the hotel, I had most of my stuff together in one passport holder simply because the passport holder offered slots for credit cards - won’t do that again and will be sure to have debit card hidden in a sock or something because without that, you have no cash and then you have a bigger problem. I was lucky Janet had her debit card with a different number on it then mine (we both have debits under the same acct but fortunately we had different numbers). And it was fortunate that Janet had taken her Costco card with her which just recently has 0% foreign transaction fees. Had I been on my own for this trip I would have had none of those fallbacks.

I was very lucky they didn’t get my cell phone - that would have caused some major headaches.

On my way to the embassy tomorrow morning, I will be wearing a little sleeve device that slides over your arm and has a zipper in it and will be hidden under my shirt with the cash I need for my new passport (Janet had just recently purchased that for the whopping sum of .30 at Target.) Turns out the Embassy will not take credit cards unless your name is on the card and since they will only allow me into the embassy and I have no credit cards, I have to bring cash. Once I get that damn passport, I think I’ll be getting a taxi to bring me to the hotel and drop that temporary passport into the safe, before trying to hook up with the group again near the Acropolis.

I will say through this all, that Gate 1 has been great. Their emergency contact person Demetrius stepped in to get me to the police station and is also going with me to the Embassy in the morning to make sure I get there ok. That’s pretty darn nice, I’d say.

Hotel Stanley is nice - desk clerks very nice and helpful. Lots of Gate1 tour groups going in and out of here at the same time. No complaints about the room. We had come in a day early and the desk was good about keeping us in the same room that Gate 1 had set up for us. That was a big help in letting us take advantage of our next day without having to check out and move again. Went up later that night to the rooftop bar for a great view of the Acropolis. Hotel is in a rather seedy area (probably helps to keep the cost of the trip down), but metro stop is right outside the front door, so no real need to wander this area at night. Still, I rarely feel frightened in foreign cities at night, something I wouldn't necessarily say holds true back in the USA>Read more