Riots, beers, and sleep what more could you want?

NYC was a pretty good time but it kinda puts a damper on it when you are carrying around a backpack with all your things in it when it is a little under 80 degrees and it is humid. After leaving my buddy's place we headed out to Rockefeller Plaza. As we are walking around this guy named Don ends up coming up to us and asking us what we are doing, where we are from, and all of that. Well it turns out he was a tour guide and said he would give us a free hour tour and bring us to the top of the Rockefeller building (a $20 and $30 value for free!). After that we continued our walk to Central Park and Times Square and along the way kept getting asked if we were Australian, and then they would ask us why are we backpacking our own country which lead to a hate speech about Delta.

Our flight to Paris was at 8 PM and was the best flight ever. We got served breakfast and dinner (which came with as many baguette as you wanted), got a blanket, pillow, eye covers, ear plugs, and head phones in which we could watch a large selection of movies from the screen built into the persons headrest in front of us (got to watch Invention of Lying and Precious). After catching our next flight to Rome we had a 9 hour layover until our flight to Athens. Originally we were planning on running to Rome but decided to we were to worn out. So we sat at the terminal and waited and waited for 9 damn hours.

We got to Athens around 1 AM and met this girl Jo Ann at baggage claim. She was from LA, and a student in Bologna, Italy checking out Greece for a couple days. We were all staying in the same hostel and had about an hour ride to chat it up. When we were dropped off at the city center there was police every where and it was about 2 AM. We didn't realize the riots where earlier that day and on our walk saw a hole bunch of busted out windows as well as a few burned out cars. When we got to the hostel she ended up giving us her contact info and said when we are traveling Italy we can stay with her (our soon to be first couch surf).

Since it was around 3 AM when we got settled and couldn't check into our room until 2 PM we decided to just stay up all night and get on the 7 AM bus to Nafplio (Greece's first capital). It was a little over a 2 hour bus ride and we both slept about 95% of it. When we arrived we decided that we needed to get a backpack to carry our things rather than using the crappy handbag we brought. After a little hagling on my part we were able to get 2 euros off it. (They Wbird poop on the bag that I claimed lowered the value and after which he licked his finger to clean it off). After we got our bag we headed up to the fort on top of the hill which was probably a good 1000 ft climb up. It was funny passing people as we hiked up. When we got to this one part with what looked like never ending steps this one mom goes said "son of a bitch" as she had her 7 year old kid with her.When we finally got to the top there was way to many middle schoolers running around and it felt like a roller rink. We realized then there was a road to get up and these annoying kids game in 9 full buses.

After heading back from Nafplio, in which we slept 98% of it this time, we got on the bus to get back to the hostel. During that time we had to stop a few times from protesters but nothing major. When we got back to the Hostel we found out we got upgraded from the standard 6 bed bedroom to a 6 bed apartment which we shared with 4 Australians. We had our own kitchen, main room, and bathroom. After talking with them they were all traveling for 12 months (we thought 2 was long) and were going to multiple continents! After taking with them we headed out to happy hour which was on the roof of the backpacking hostel. We got to meet a lot of people up there but they were all Americans, Canadians, or Australians. I talked to Phil, a Canadian, for a long time and he said they he has some family in Switzerland that might be able to host us later on.

It felt grate that night going to sleep and getting to be completely horizontal for our first time in about 48 hours. Waking up this morning we are a little hung over but gotta head out now to get some free breakfast.