Ashley Gets Lost

I really left you all hanging there on the rest of our Athens trip, but in my defense, I needed a vacation after my vacation from vacation. I was exhausted after the trip. It was a cool 95 or more degrees Fahrenheit every day we were there. We had big plans to go out and do fun night business, but aside from the concert, we were too drained from being hot and sweaty all day to accomplish much when it came to night life.

We did go out for Mexican food for lunch on our second day. This restaurant called “Mamacitas” was just down the street from our hotel. On any past trips to Athens, we were all about that Greek food, but we have Greek food in abundance here on Crete and not a lot of diversity. I was absolutely psyched to go eat some tacos! They also had a super fun cocktail menu. Felix’s came out with a burning stick of cinnamon! And don’t even get me started on churros. Felix wasn’t sure if he wanted any, but it turns out he never had a superb churro before, so i had to share half!

After an afternoon nap, we went out for an early dinner and a cocktail at this bar called “The Bar in Front of the Bar”, where we discovered the economical beauty of the “take away cocktail”. Greece has different tax brackets for items when people stay and eat versus doing take away, and take away is cheaper! We got super fancy cocktails with 3 Euros knocked off because we got them in a to go cup and left! We have stumbled into paradise, my friends.

On my last trip, we went out to fancy dinner on the top of Lycabettus Hill, the tallest hill in Athens, which is where the concert was being held. It’s very tall ya’ll. Joshua and I walked up to the base of the hill before riding the funicular to the top. The whole process was a workout, so I decided we were taking a cab up. It honestly would’ve been faster to walk, but I’m glad we saved our energy. The infrastructure is not made for a bunch of people all going to the same place!

I was totally surprised at how different the getting in to the event experience was than it is in America. First of all, the lines were short and moving quickly BECAUSE no metal detectors, pat downs, bag checks, etc. We showed them our tickets and walked right in! It’s so goddamn refreshing to not live somewhere where people like to get murdery at events.

They also don’t charge you captive prices on concessions. I bought four beers and a water for 14.50 Euro.

Placebo really doesn’t want people taking pictures and recording the whole time. I’ve heard of instances of them having people kicked out for doing so. People were doing it around us, but way less than usual. I waited until the end to sneak a couple just to remember it by.

They sounded so good, and it made my little black middle school heart grow three sizes. They played several of my favorite songs. My very low bar for this concert was that they show up after being twice burned in the last couple years, and they exceeded my expectations by not only showing up but by sounding great and looking like they were glad to be there (not always the case, apparently).

We definitely took it easy the next day. We pet pretty much all of these kitties and others not pictured. It was a real banner day when it came to stroking puss!

I made some important calls on this important phone and ate an ice cream cone in which the ice cream had it’s own cone. Here, this picture will help that make sense.

I have a couple more days of culinary/kitty/ancient adventures to share as well as the results from our photography tour. Today I am catching up on laundry (so much laundry!) and wearing my pajamas all day. I made enough dinner to have leftovers tonight, so I am riding high on a swell of lazy. My biggest ambition is to go lay out topless in the pool to give the fire helicopter pilots a gift for all their hard work. There’s a large fire in the south, and they come get water from our bay to dump on them.