Arrival in Athens

I had never been to Athens before and did not really know what to expect. I had heard both good and bad reports about the city, and tried to keep an open mind. Since I had planned and organised this part of the trip myself, I also had a degree of anxiety as to whether all the plans would come to a successful conclusion.

We arrived from Istanbul after dark and, after clearing customs and immigration, we went outside the airport to the minibus I had ordered. I gave the driver the name of our hotel and we headed out into the unfamiliar Athens streets.

It did not take long for us to see that Athens was not doing too well. All around were abandoned building sites, everything was covered by graffiti and the streets were full of rather dangerous looking characters.

After driving for some time, the driver started to act nervously. He drove slowly past a darkened building and then said, "I think that is your hotel". He then added "It looks like it is no longer open". That immediately sent my stress levels through the roof. We had only just arrived in a strange city and already it looked like we were about to join the thousands of homeless people on the streets of Athens.

He drove back and had a closer look. Although it certainly looked closed from the outside, he did see some light coming from inside. We stopped and rang the bell, To my great relief, the door did eventually open and we were able to carry out bags into the foyer.

Once we were inside, it was actually quite clean and modern. Even better was the fact that they were expecting us. I tried to pretend that I was never in any doubt.

Some time later we had all settled into our rooms and we met back down in the lobby to look for somewhere to eat. We went out the front door and immediately saw that drug addicts were lying in the gutters, most of the neighbourhood was in darkness and we could sense sinister eyes looking at us from the shadows.

We were very tempted to turn straight around and head back into the safety of the hotel, but eventually we decided that we were all starving and really needed something to eat. We bunched tightly together and tried to look all around us as we went in search of a cafe.

Fortunately we soon found a welcoming restaurant, where we enjoyed a lovely meal in the late evening. Although we had only been in the city for a few hours, somehow the walk back to the hotel did not feel as threatening as we had felt on the walk out. Some places are like that.

Tomorrow will be a free day for us to explore the city.Read more