A very long day (and also - dead batteries)

After only about 3 hours of sleep last night, I left my host's house this morning at 8:30am and didn't get back here until after 12:30am. (This is the first CS host I've had that didn't want surfers to be in the house alone, so I had to leave when he left for work.)

Thanos and I had breakfast together and he kind of gave me an idea of which direction I should head. I got to the American Embassy okay (re: a visa for India, but more about that another time), but it was all downhill from there. I mean, everything was fine, but I was lost in Athens for a VERY long time. Apparently, as I was told later, the trip that took me, oh, about 3 hours, should have only taken about 15-20 minutes. What? I didn't have a map, I was just kind of...walking? In a direction that I thought might make sense? Whatever. I wasn't in a hurry, so it was no big deal.

I finally made it to the city centre and was having a good time exploring. I saw the Ancient Agora and Mars Hill mostly. I was right at the Acropolis, but I didn't think I had enough time to fully appreciate it, so I decided to save it for another day. I eventually made my way back towards a central location because my host was going to pick me up after his workday and we were going to decide what to do.

We ended up going to Salamina island (totally not sure on the spelling, I'll have to check) which, according to Thanos, about 90% of Athenians never even go there, so it's definitely not on the average tourist's radar either. We got there at about sunset and it was gorgeous. We rode my host's three-wheeled scooter to a ferry, took the ferry to the island, and then rode the scooter around the island. Imagine the sea and the mountains and sunset and a quaint little Greek town and you've got the picture.

Around 9pm we met up with some other couchsurfers for dinner and drinks. We had souvlaki and tsatsiki and mousaka and this spicy cheese dip of some sort and fried Greek cheese and pita and wine. And it was delicious. :-) A guitar came out and suddenly there's a group consisting of Greek, Italian, Egyptian, and me (the lone American) singing American rock songs. It was hilarious hearing the accents, but oh so fun.

Finally my host and I ventured back, a good 16 hours after we left this morning. I'm exhausted. So even if my camera batteries hadn't died - which they did just as we hit the island (don't worry, Thanos said he'd share his pics with me) - I'm just way too tired after no sleep and a long day to upload pictures right now anyway. But have no fear because I will, I promise!