Back in Athens!

And I couldn't be happier about it. I was so done with Santorini a few days ago, but due to ridiculous ferry scheduling I wasn't able to escape until last night. Athens definitely feels like my home base for this trip, or at least the Greece part, and it's nice to know that as soon as I get back here there's an awesome place to stay (Athens Backpackers - highly recommend!).

Despite Santorini being home to 13,000+ people, I managed to get a clinger that would not leave me alone. He was harmless enough, but wouldn't get the hint until I snapped at him last night, telling him to stop following me around. It was frustrating because he was preventing me from striking up conversation with any of the other locals, and I'm sad to say that a good chunk of the last couple of days was spent being a recluse. Between Santorini's cold, windy weather, and the stupid desperate clinger that wouldn't take a hint even when I was blatantly ignoring him, I had few reasons to venture out. Factor in how expensive everything was (€3.50 for tea. TEA!) and I was perfectly content with laying low and eating cheap food.

This won't come as news to anyone, but holy wow Greece is expensive. €20/night for a hostel seems like a perfectly good deal, except that my budget is only about €65/day, and I'd like it to be even lower than that. Groceries for lunch, dinner out, and a drink during the evening add up quickly. Toss in a metro fare, a load of laundry and a bottle of water and that €65 is all but maxed out. I wish more of the hostels had kitchen facilities, because paying €11 for a chicken souvlaki dinner gets tiring. I miss cooking for myself!

I've managed to save on accommodation by taking ferries at night twice so far, and I plan to do the same with the bus to/from Corfu, if everything works out. At €46 for the bus and ferry to get there, I definitely do not want to add a stay in a hostel on top.

And that's the end of me ranting about how expensive everything is!

In other news, it sounds like the package I mailed home from Athens made it in its entirety to home! This is exciting for several reasons, the first being that the two bottles of amazing perfume oil that I picked up in Egypt have not broken! They were packed up pretty snuggly but still, I was concerned.

It also means that I've successfully imported contraband into Canada! In the package were two camel puffs (Coley will know exactly what I'm talking about), and when I mailed it off the woman at the post office looked up what Canada allows and doesn't allow, and for some reason leather was on the not allowed list. I figured I had no choice but to try my luck, as the worst case scenario was they'd confiscate it. I was not about to continue packing them around.

I also mailed home a bag of coral. Coral is so confusing; it's supposedly not allowed, as it's protected and yadda yadda yadda, but it washes up on shores everywhere. I can understand not allowing people to go and harvest it, but if dead coral shows up on a beach? I don't see the harm in taking it home.

When I went to board the plane from Cairo to Athens, I had the coral in my carry-on. When my bag when through the scanner, the security guard flagged it and tried telling me, in very broken English, that it wasn't allowed. It seemed as though he was pointing to one specific colour of coral too. Then? He waved me through with it anyway.

It's not the first time I've been allowed on a plane with contraband.

I'm happy to say that's the last package I'll be mailing home this trip. Mainly because I have very little money to spend on souvenirs here on out (which I'm fine with; it was India that I primarily wanted to stock up on treasures from), and because I can manage carrying an extra bag if it comes down to it. There were so many things I wish I could have bought, as they were dirt cheap, but they were heavy and wouldn't have been worth it to ship home. Oh well!

The next time I travel I'm going to hire a shipping container.