Friday July 4th early am, managed to sneak in a little breaky courtesy of the Le Torre family, receive a firm hand shake from Alfredo and administer a promise to return.

The trip to Pisa Aeroporto wasnt very eventful, chatted with an Alitalia pilot whilst in the check in queue at the airport, they have to queue up with the rest of the plebs if they arent actially flying a plane, something which he wasnt over the moon about, whinged about cuts in salary and benefits.. all this adding to the general “i’m about to go into an airplane” anxiety.

All went swimmingly at checkin, i did tell the girl that I was not going to return on the return leg and yes she gave me the same what the hell did you go and tell me that for kind of expression… shoot me for being nice.

Passing through the scanners at the departure lounge italian metal detector yielding part time Armani model made me remove my belt as it was the only metal object i had on my person but was upsetting his instruments. For a few seconds there i thought he was going to retain the belt, which concerned me as my pantaloons are becoming less pant and more loon as my trip progresses, but after some more purposeful scanning and examination by the guy behind the glass it was handed back to me without protest.

Underpants safely covered and chance of performing impromptu calvin klein underwear model poses greatly diminished i waited to board the plane to Roma. Pisa is a small but reasonably busy airport, so you are ferried to and from planes via thoe big wide beautiful tarmac buses, this still didnt stop people pushing in front of you when it came to getting through the gate and onto the bus. One guy actually protested that he was in front of me, i replied with “absolutamente principessa!” and let him through, the super clever, a club which i will join the next time i pass through such airports sat about waiting for everyone to board the bus and then made their way through the gates.

Flight to rome, no real incident, passage through Rome, also smooth, absolutely no customs formalities to deal with, a few scanners some passport waving but no stamping or any sort of offical seal. One source of amusement whilst awaiting departure in Rome was a group of peasants who were going back to there 1 goat village, one young lad within this group was carrying a 1980s style VHS video recorder and was attempting to ever so sneakily video tape some form of sculptured blonde model type who was quietly looking for herself in a copy of Vogue. The fact that 2 people had to support him while he was in super stealth voyeur mode and that the machine made so much noise that the security personnel kept casting concerned glances his way didnt reduce his joy at succesfully capturing more prey on his 180 min long play TDK.

Flight to athens, yeah, we got there, landed at about 3:00pm very very hot, in the city that most greeks love to hate.

I spent over 2 months in Italy, witnessed the occasional incident that the tourist guides watn you about, pickpockets, baggage thieves, shonky accomodation peddlers… within 20 minutes in Greece i had covered all the options. 1 guy tried to steal the used tissues i had left in the open pocket on my backpack, luckily i managed to watch him for 10 seconds whilst he pretended to be scratching his leg. Several guys selling accomodation, one guy came up to me and started speaking to me in Greek apologising for being late and saying the car is this way… nice try sunshine.

And I was still in the customs area!

Outside i got myself a good blast of athens polluted hot air and joined the rapidly moving but enormous queue for cabs, as i approached it from the wrong side there was some dispute that erupted between 3 or 4 cab drivers, apparently one of them had ordered a medium frappe with milk and was given a bendy straw rather than a straight straw as is the tradition from his village. I neared just as fist hit face and two hugging cab drivers tripped over the curb towards back pack carrying Chris. I fell under them, several others joined in, one of the guys who “manages” the taxi queue came over and asked if i was ok, as soon as i spoke half a word of greek, the concerned look he was trained to use in such moments was replaced with the more common, “go to hell” glaze that greeks share between themselves. I got up checked to see if I had left any limbs behind and joined the queue.

In a B Grade movie I would purely by chance become a passenger in the taxi of one of the purpotraters of the above act,.. close but no cigar. I stood in the middle of the road, threw my pack into the back seat and sat in the front, saying the usual niceties to the driver, in Greek, even asking him if it was ok for me to sit in front, in Greek, which i dont think is a standard tourist phrase book comment, told him i wanted to go to vouliaymeni… again.. not a standard tourist response… yet it took him about 10 minutes of bumper to bumper oppressive heat traffic to ask “ellinika omilas?” yes i replied.

Athens is a toilet, more correctly athens was a toilet, now it is a toilet whose walls, floor, ceiling and entire toilet making experience is being reconstructed, adorned with olympic rings and given new names. My driver dived down dirt roads trying to find the most experience crammed journey to my destination. After we had gotten to know each other (cough) he even took me on a detour of a very nice beach where all the “mora” hang out, he even stopped for a quick chat, had he asked me how i take my frappe i would have glanced at the meter, but alas he realised he had a traditional role to perform and eventually after pulling the faulty meter manouvre, dropped me in front of my resort style hotel near the beach of vouliaymeni.