Mediterranean Tour 2007: Hot Days in Athina

The glamorous life I lead at work took me immediately from Istanbul to Athens. The last stop on my Mediterranean Tour 2007.

Although I can't say things got off to the smoothest start once I landed, due to a rather unhelpful meeting coordinator, Athens was pretty fantastic. I arrived from Turkey in the evening, hopped in a cab, made sure the materials were there for the meeting the next day and headed to the hotel, which looked out on the Mediterranean. It was beautiful. Only problem, it wasn't the resort we were supposed to be in because they hotel had been overbooked. Ah, and this was only the start of the hotel saga.

Meetings took place on Friday, no problem. Saturday I and all of my clients checked out of the temporary hotel so we could check into the main resort everyone would be staying at. Unfortunately when we got to the new resort, none of the rooms were actually ready. And wouldn't be ready until 2pm that afternoon. So we started the second day of meetings, which also went quite well, took a break at lunch to check in again. Only half the rooms were ready. So half of us checked in (not me), and came back with horror stories of the "Bungalows" they had been assigned to by the hotel. These stories included: bags of garbage sitting outside the door to the room, cockroaches, half eaten food on the terrace, and dirty floors for a start. Needless to say, I was really looking forward to seeing my little bungalow that afternoon. . . and sadly it didn't disappoint although comparatively it wasn't that bad. Sure there were bugs there (which my shoe helpfully took care of), but at least it seemed clean. The only problem was that they had misplaced my luggage and there were no towels in the room. None. But I was better off than most, and by the end of the evening I had convinced the hotel manager that I definitely needed to be moved by the next morning at the latest (which they did).

So I went swimming in the gorgeous lagoon you see here and I was happy.

The only other odd hotel moment occurred at about 1am in the morning after I had just turned the light out to get some sleep. There was this very loud knocking on the door and someone tried to open it. So being sensible I leapt out of bed (into flip flops of course because I couldn't imagine walking on the floor barefoot), and ran to the door where I shouted "Hello??" several times without receiving an answer. In the most comical way possible (although it didn't seem so at the time), I shoved a chair under the main door, ran over to the deck door to make sure it was locked and pulled all the shades closed before calling security. Which it turned out had been exactly who was banging on my door trying to get in. Apparently, the Greek guard who spoke no English had experienced a breakdown with his golf cart. Yup. This is my life. I moved into the main hotel the next morning.

The rest of the trip was pretty quiet, mostly sitting by the water and jumping in the ocean whenever it got too hot. We were in the middle of a heat wave in Athens while I was there. In fact it go so hot that they actually closed the Acropolis to visitors one day!

So I can't lie, I did absolutely no sightseeing, but I did manage to make it to one of the nearby islands with some of the clients. One, who shall remain nameless, kept us waiting for almost an hour while he waited for housekeeping to bring him a pair of flip flops (which he could have perfectly easily purchased on the island itself). A group of seven of us took the ferry over in the morning, we didn't make it to Hydra, but we did go to Aigina
and rented out scooters and rode across the island in the most amazing heat you've ever seen. It felt like we were driving through an oven, but it was amazing. And I have to admit that I lived out one of my long held European dreams: I rode around, in the hot summer sun on the back of a moped on a Greek island with a foreign man I hardly know. Now the fact the he was one of my clients is besides the point. His name is Jean Carlos and he's Italian and that's all that matters to me! :) That said, we had a fantastic time that day on the island. It actually felt like a holiday for a few hours which was nice.

I can't wait to go back and actually do some touristy stuff, but this was a pretty good work trip I have to say.