It’s been a short stay, but we’ve achieved what we wanted to. We landed in Athens two days ago at 7am local time after sitting on a 12 hour flight from Singapore. Weary from the predominantly sleepless night we just had, we left the plane and made our way to Greek Immigration.

Five minutes off of the plane and we were already amazed. There is a smoking section in the airport. Indoors! I think that’s when I truly realized that we were now in Europe.

We grabbed our bags and made our way to the train. Some sketchy Greek pronunciation from myself bought us two tickets to the train, where we boarded and made our way to Acropoli station. It was a pretty easy ride, with one train change at Syntagma station.

After leaving the train we made our way up to the quiet streets in the early morning. It was a nice relief from the humidity of Singapore. Around 11°c and fine. We checked into our hotel, Airotel Parthenon, literally 200m from the metro station, and had a shower. For anyone considering going to Athens, it’s a quality place. Cheap for young travellers like us, but has everything you need. It’s four star in Athens, probably equated to a 3 star in Adelaide, but it’s clean and it’s central – we could get to all the historical sites in anywhere between 1 minute to 20 minutes on foot. Since we are travelling together, it worked out cheaper than the backpackers place down the road, and this way we got our own shower and room – something we wanted after the long flight.

To see the Acropolis and other sites surrounding, it will set you back 12EUR. You can see the Parthenon from everywhere. It’s just so impressive. We were basically pinching ourselves the whole time we were here. It’s so surreal, and everything is just so much larger than life.

On the flip side, it’s almost as though every man and his dog (literally, I don’t know if people own these dogs, but there are dogs everywhere) is in on the deal. For the major tourist attractions of Greece, the gardens, paths, and all of the infrastructure surrounding seems somewhat makeshift. It looks as though they are constantly working on the Acropolis, however when you walk around, you can see where rubbish has been thrown after previous repair jobs.

For these reasons I have mixed emotions about Athens.

Enough negativity though, we both enjoyed this place. Yesterday’s lunch was at Thanassis, where we had some authentic lamb kebabs. Melted in your mouth!

We were worried about visiting in February – not really sure what the weather would be like, but it was perfect. I’d definitely come again during this time of the year. Yesterday it rained in the morning, but it was only drizzle and it didn’t affect us at all. The rest of the time the sun was out and we were comfortable in a jacket.

Ultimately we had a great time here. The people are friendly, the streets are very picturesque, and the history is just something neither of us have seen before. It was short, but sweet.

Our Athens Adventure on the way to somewhere - ..you're only lost if you know where you're going..

We booked our flights a little while back. Being the “safe” people that we are, we decided to book early, rather than wait for a killer deal. Because of the uncertainty of the trip, we ended up just booking one way tickets – From Adelaide to Athens via Singapore, flying Singapore Airlines.

It ended up costing us AUD$1050 each. Considering they are one way flights, we were pretty happy for the price. We have a ten day stopover in Singapore.

We booked the flights through Jetabroad. I’ve found them to be the cheapest website for an Australian person to book international flights through, however other people rave about Best Flights too. I think the best idea is to find a few “cheap flights” websites, and just go from there. Search them all regularly until you find what you need, then book. Watch out for hidden fees though, as they can bump up the cost of your once cheap flight.

Since we are getting married in early January, a few weeks before leaving on this trip, we will be taking a week for ourselves before actually backpacking. After flying into Singapore, we will stay two nights, then fly out to Langkawi, in Malaysia for 5 nights, then fly back to Singapore before heading off to Athens.

To get to Langkawi we are flying with Air Asia. Return it is costing us SGD$166.80, which at the time was around AUD$135. Booking directly with Air Asia was the go – it was considerably cheaper booking through them rather than any of the “cheap flights” websites. I’ve heard mixed reviews about Air Asia, but the next cheapest option was Malaysian Airlines for around $440 EACH! We’re going to spend up big on the accommodation for the “honeymoon” part of the trip, so we both decided the cheaper flights were the go. They are only 40 minutes or so anyway, and our connecting flights are days apart, so they shouldn’t be able to screw us over that badly.

So that’s where the flights are at. Once we are in Europe and we know when we want to fly to Canada we’ll start looking for cheap flights to Toronto. I’ve heard that it’s a lot cheaper to fly to somewhere in the US, although I don’t really want to go there. That said, if it’s going to save us a wad of cash I’ll go..

Booking some cheap flights on the way to somewhere - ..you're only lost if you know where you're going..

We’ve already done some preparation, but I’ve only just organised the website. I’ll try and cover what we have already bought/organised/planned in the next few days. There’s still so much to do!

To set the scene, our current “plans” (we don’t really have any plans, just happy to see where it takes us and happy to change our mind mid-trip) are to fly out to Singapore, then to Langkawi (Malaysia) to honeymoon for a week or so. After that we will fly to Athens in Greece, do some sightseeing, maybe some snowboarding in Greece, and then catch a ferry across to Brindisi in Italy. From there we will make our way up to Udine to meet Jess’ family in Italy and see how they live, eat their food and so forth. After that we will just try and see what we want to see, and go where we want to go.

Europe has some pretty popular tourist destinations but we aren’t real “touristy” people. We will see some of the sights just because we are there at the time but I doubt we will really be going from landmark to landmark. I’m happy to be proven wrong though, so long as we enjoy it.

After we are done spending our money in Europe, we will then head across to Canada to work for the rest of the year. I’d love to live and work in Whistler, so I can ride bikes day in day out but we’ll see. It’s not my trip, it’s our trip. With that said though, Jess seems pretty keen to live the “village life” for a while so it could work.

Who knows though, we might be home a month after we leave!

It’s happening! on the way to somewhere - ..you're only lost if you know where you're going..