Day 92

1:2
Athens:Greece

Title: Helix


Quick Update: I noticed on Ally's laptop that the the two smaller photos are super noisy. They look like they were shot at ISO 3200 (which my camera hates doing) or something. On my computer, however, they look just fine on the blog, they look fine on flickr, and their original copies look fine. I know that whenever I actually DO take a horribly noisy picture, my screen has no problem showing it, so that's probably not the problem.

Whatever, I'm over it. Sorry if they look like crap to you. Just try to imagine what they would probably look like in their full glory.

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I flicked a light switch in our hotel our first night there, there was a pop and everything went dark. I blew a fuse that put the whole floor into darkness. Ally and I were seized with delirious (we were exhausted from jet lag and traveling) laughter, so we ran to the smoking veranda just outside of our room and waited for someone else to tell the hotel that the lights were out.

Our room had a random door that led out to a spiral staircase, and the smoking veranda was beyond its railing. I don't know what the stairs were there for...they seemed like some kind of emergency escape almost, but no other rooms in the hotel had them except for the ones directly above and below us. This picture is of our door as seen from the smoking veranda.

Once the lights went back on, Ally and I decided to see where they went. The building is about 6 stories high, and we were on the second. We started to climb and realized that we were walking right outside of other people's rooms, and some of the windows to the bathrooms opened right to the stairs. We kind of ducked and tip-toed past these because I'm sure we weren't allowed to be where we were.

Anyway, after navigating past some holy stairs (the fall-and-break-your-neck kind, not the heavenly kind), we finally got to the roof of the hotel. Again, I don't think we were supposed to be there, but the view was reeeeediculous. We were right at the base of the Acropolis, and they floodlight that bitch so much that it's probably clearly visible from space. We hadn't really seen many views yet since it was our first day and we slept through most of it, so this was a rather dramatic introduction to Athens. Ally and I spent a few surreal minute up there, soaking up the clear night views and crisp air, then went and crashed headfirst into our bed.