arrived in Athens

I'm going to keep this short, but I made it to where I'm staying in Athens, the Hostel Aphrodite. Things all went pretty smooth getting here until it came to navigating the metro system. It turned out some of the trains had different routes because of construction going on. So that delayed me about an hour, but I managed to get things straightened out with some help from a few locals who knew English, though the little Greek that I learned has already come in handy. And then I had to haul myself, two backpacks (one largeish and one small) and the box with the bike about ten blocks from the metro station, but it wasn't too bad. The streets were fairly empty but the few people out seemed very friendly, men sitting in chairs on streetcorners talking, etc. Although it was a bit of a pain going that way at least I saved about 50 bucks that a taxi would have cost from the airport. And the ridiculous load that I have right now will look a lot better once the bike is out of the box, and most of the stuff is on the bike.

So I got to the hostel about 12:30 or so. It's pretty decent, marble steps, slightly scruffy, but basically clean and the room is nice and cool, must be air conditioned because it's still pretty warm outside, and free internet access. It's about 1:30 in the morning here, I'm hanging in there thanks to having an open seat next to me on the second flight, so I managed to get a little bit of sleep. But I'm basically headed straight for the shower and then bed, definitely plan to sleep in and then see how things are looking in the morning. The project for tomorrow will be to put the bike back together. Thanks to the free internet I'll be able to check email fairly regularly, at least while I'm here for the next few days. Hopefully I can manage to upload a video or at least some photos from these computers...Alright I'm headed for the sack. Or rather, a nice cold shower, then the sack.