Beer Fund

We found out that the liquor store that we buy our 1 euro pint beers (Alfa), and our 2-3 euro l.5 liter wines gave us a refund for our beer bottles. Not only that but it is better than what we get back in the States. In the States you get back 5 cents unless your "lucky" and you live in Michigan, then you get 10 cents. Well here we get 15 euro cents back for every bottle.

So after a few weeks without returning our bottles we decided to take them to get our money for our beer fund. We have beer bottles in our cabinets taking up space to put our clean dishes. That is when we decided to clean our dishes. Anyway, it took 3 people carrying plastic bags full bottles to bring them. The store owner gave us a funny look when were arrive with so many empty bottles. There turns out to be 38 Alfa's and 1 Mythos. The Mythos was probably because we bough out their entire stock of Alphas... Again. Our Beer fund got a pay raise today of 5,85 euros.

Gotta enjoy drinking legally.

One too many Alfa's? Your call.

Two can play this game Jeff

Greek Independence Day Parade

We got the opportunity to watch the Independence day parade here in Athens.....not gonna lie, did not really live up to the hype. The one we have in NYC is about ten times better in my mind. That being said here is the coolest part of the parade:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KHmgf6O4_8

Pretty freaking sweet.

history lessons

here is a couple of brief history lessons on our first excursion.  There will be a post to come.


Mycenae

Olympia 1

Olympia 2

Parade Video

here is the video.

PATRAS!!!!

Patras Carnival is top three in the world, so naturally were going! Carnival is basically a city wide party. Just like Madri Gras in New Orleans, minus the beads and the boobs :'(. We get a small group of us to go down and party it up Greek style. We book a 4 star hotel right on the beach, one metro stop away from the city center. It was suppose to only sleep two, but we stuck 4 into it, perfect for the college kid budget. Leaving on Friday from Athens, taking  a two and a half hour bus ride to Patras, just what we need after getting up at 7 am to get to the bus station: more sleep.

We arrive, find the subway/train stop to get to our hotel, check in and relax until the rest of our group arrives. We check out the hotels room service menu and order 3 euro sandwiches with fries, 4 orders. Then a couple of hours later after a healthy amount of time in a sauna where we lost all of our water weight, we order more food. You need to keep in mind that the the hotel thinks that their are only two people staying in the room and every time ordering 4 meals. What fat asses they must be thinking. Friday we hit up the bars and see people in Halloween costumes but much weirder. We decided that we were gonna save our costumes for Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday we walk around the city seen the sites, and at night they have a huge parade. The parade consisted of groups dressed up in costumes, floats, fireworks and the same 6 techno beat songs on repeat. The city had speakers set up at every street crossing so there was always music playing the same songs morning and night. Every time your heard them you still got pumped for the party. We left to eat dinner and came back, and it was still going on. It lasted for at least 3 and 1/2 hours.

Our Costumes... 5 euro girl wigs

Sunday we visited the castle that was just up a few steps.... 

it was on top of a hill, looking over the city, and the sea around it.

At night was the closing ceremony where they had a performance with dancing and music on a stage. Then after they set a float on fire. Let it burn! Along with some fireworks! We discover that Greeks are much more friendly when you say your from Australia. So Good'ay Mate! We left first thing in the morning and the only eventfully thing that happened on Monday was that our friend Jamie really had to pee, and there are no bathrooms on the buses, so he ended up peeing in an empty water bottle. Once we got back to our apartment we sat in our beds trying to recover from the weekend.

Video will be up of the parade shortly.