Previous Day
Destination: Greece
Duration: 9 Days 7 Nights (Oct 18~Oct 26, 2011)
Day 1: KL -> Doha -> Athens
Looking blurry and sleepy, we arrived at KLIA around 7am to meet up with our Reliance tour manager – Sylvester Lee. We were flying Qatar Airways from KL-Doha and then transit from Doha-Athens. We were so surprised when our tour manager gave us the complimentary pass for Plaza Premium Lounge! Wow, I’d never stepped into any premium lounge in airport before and this was totally new and exciting for a middle class worker like me. *blush*
 |
| The Lounge! |
 |
| The Passes... |
We went into the lounge like a couple of Stone Age people visiting the city for the first time. There were lots of comfortable sofas, some collections of magazines, fancy looking computers and a spread of breakfast buffets. The receptionist even gave us the password for free wireless without any prompting when we were going in – she actually said: “Just in case you need it for your iPad or iPhone!” The breakfast buffet was a simple one with some fried noodle, scrambled egg, sandwiches, cereals, fruits and drinks such as coffee, tea, sodas, fruit juice and water. The sofa was really an awesome change after one night stuck in Coffee Bean not-so-soft sofa. They also had lots of power outlet to let people charge their phone or laptops. Awesome!
 |
| Surprisingly Full of People... |
 |
| Porridge with some condiments |
 |
| Sodas & Ice Cream |
 |
| Juices, Tea & Coffee |
 |
| Baked Beans |
 |
| Almost Empty Scramble Egg! |
 |
| Fried Noodle.. not bad! |
 |
| Cereals & Milk! |
 |
| Toast & Jams |
 |
| Yoghurts & BANANA!!! |
 |
| Some Egg Sandwiches... |
The KL-Doha flight took around 7 hours and the seat layout was 2-4-2. The interior seemed to look more worn out if compared with our MH flight to Brisbane(link). We were served with a packet of nuts & juice before given a menu for our meal. The meal consisted of:-
Appetizer: vegetable and pasta salad with sweet tomato concasse
Entrees:
Beef in sweet soya sauce with steamed white rice, carrots, French beans & red capsicum
Or
Butter fish in creamy leek sauce, chive mashed potatoes, buttered carrot & spinach
Dessert: Pandan cream caramel & chocolate
 |
| Pack of Nuts from Qatar |
The butter fish tasted nice with the sauce even though it might be a tad too salty. The beef was okay. The appetizer was simple and refreshing whist the pandan cream caramel was simply too sweet for my taste – but it did smell very good. We got Kit Kat for chocolate. We ordered Heineken and 7Up Free to go with the meal.
 |
| Butter Fish Set |
 |
| Heineken!!! |
 |
| Beef Set |
Before getting off the plane, we were served with a light meal of chicken herbs calzone. It tasted like pepper & oregano and I loved it! It was definitely much better than the horrendous pie that we got served on MH during our Australia trip (link). We were also given a pack of munchies biscuit.
 |
| The Chicken Herbs Calzone, Munchies & 7UpFree |
 |
| Yummy Yummy! |
We arrived in Doha for the transit and apparently we had to take a bus to get from our plane to the transit hall. I didn’t see any direct hallway connecting the plane to airport. My expression of Doha was HOT & SANDY. We were taking photo of one of the departure gate that we had to go through to catch our flight to Athens and an airport crew standing near the gate actually scolded us for taking his picture! Come on, man! Who would want to take his photo? It was not like he looked like a movie star or something!
 |
| A Picture from the Plane of Doha.. |
 |
| Gate 16 - the Gate to our Athens flight... & the self-proclaimed stalked "movie star"! |
At the departure, we also had to take a bus to get to the plane and it was not really nice to be cramped in a crowded bus and the airport crew kept asking the passengers (with luggage and all) to get in more to let more passengers in even though the bus was already so full!! It was like LRT after working hour in KL! Boo!
 |
| Our Qatar Flight to Athens |
Our flight from Doha to Athens took around 3 ½ hours and we were served with airplane meal again. The menu consisted of:-
Appetizer: Farfelle pasta salad with mixed vegetables and parsley vinaigrette with tomato basil dip
Entrees:
Cajun style chicken with leek compote, mash potatoes, seasoned green beans & carrots
Or
Braised leg of lamb served with roasted red onions and parmesan polenta
Or
Teriyaki vegetable noodles, bok choy
Dessert: Pineapple upside down roll, cheese and biscuits, butter & chocolate
 |
| Cajun Chicken - This is Scrumptious!! |
 |
| Lamb Set |
The cheese spread they’d given for the bread/biscuit was yummy! The Cajun style chicken was really great too! The chicken was really tender and well marinated. The lamb was tender and did not have the scary “lamb” smell as well. The salad was again refreshing with slightly sour tomato basil dip. The dessert tasted wonderful as well. But my main point here was: it was GODIVA Chocolate!!! Oh my God!!! We were given Godiva Chocolate!!! *Squee*
 |
| GODIVA!!!! *faint* |
Oh… did I mention that they provide you a bottle of wine whenever you request for wine? It was so cool! So far I’d only experienced it on Air France. Never realized that Qatar Airways practiced this! WINE WINE WINE!!! Let’s ramble!!! *double squee*
 |
| Red & White! |
We arrived at the Athens International Airport at around 6pm local time (Greece is 5 hours behind Malaysia) and there were only 2 custom counters opened for those with foreign passport – guess others were getting ready for the strike in Athens?
 |
| Picture taken from Plane - see the white matchboxes? They are houses! |
 |
| Picture taken from the Plane - Amazing Terrain! |
 |
| Athens! Here We Come! |
 |
| In Athens Airport... |
After getting the luggage, we got on the tour bus and were warmly welcomed by our ground tour big boss – George. George gave us an update on Greece situation – basically the government got votes from the people due to promises that the people would be hired as public servant, but then they over-hired and thus causing financial problem in the government. Now the Greece government would like to cut the public servant’s pay and of course the public servants were pissed thus the strike! We were told that we were very lucky to arrive in Athens on Oct 18 as the airport controller would be having strike on Oct 19 & 20 and we wouldn’t be able to land! Phew! Then he proceeded to mention that they would reverse our itinerary to delay the Greek Islands due to boat strike on Oct 19 & 20 as well. Therefore we would be sent to the north to stay away from any potential incidence in Athens. Our revised itinerary was:-
Day 1 (Oct 18): Arriving at Athens in the evening
Day 2 (Oct 19-STRIKE!!!): Leave for Delphi & Kalambaka
Day 3 (Oct 20-STRIKE!!!): Visit Meteora Monastries & Back to Athens
Day 4 (Oct 21): Leave for Mykonos by Ferry/Speed Boat – one of the Greek Islands
Day 5 (Oct 22): Leave for Santorini by Ferry/Speed Boat – another Greek Islands
Day 6 (Oct 23): Full day at Santorini
Day 7 (Oct 24): Fly back to Athens for city tour
Day 8 (Oct 25): Full day Athens free at leisure until plane departure at 7.55pm
 |
| Our Tour Bus... |
We were then brought to Arsenis restaurant to have our 1st traditional Greek dinner. They served us with vegetable soup (carrots, tomato, cucumber, onion etc). It tasted like our Chinese ABC soup. After that we were served with octopus, deep fried eggplant, deep fried cucumber and some dips (hummus?) as appetizers. The octopus is chewy and fresh and the deep fried stuffs were nice to eat with the dip. The deep fried bigger version of anchovy was yummy! We were told that all their food was cooked with olive oils. We felt full even with the soup and appetizer. Our main course was deep fried sole fish – the fish was fresh but too oily. I think a lot of Malaysian would think it tasteless – I added black pepper and salt to enhance the taste. It was then followed by our dessert – 2 slices of apples and kiwis. :p
 |
| The Restaurant or should i say Tarvena? |
 |
| The Interior |
 |
| Soup, Bread, Olive Oil & Vinegar... |
 |
| Deep Fried Eggplant |
 |
| Hummes? |
 |
| Octopus with Olive Oil... |
 |
| Deep Fried Cucumber |
 |
| The bigger version of anchovy - it was yummy!!!! |
 |
| Our main course - Deep Fried Sole Fish |
 |
| Dessert |
It was really tiring and we were transferred to our hotel in Athens – Novotel (4 star). The hotel location was quite strange as it was located just outside the city center. The neighborhood area was full of graffiti and we were told it was best not to walk outside as it could be dangerous! *gasp* The explanation given by George was they chose this hotel because it was outside city center and we would be able to leave Athens to other location easily during strike. *sweat*
The interior of the hotel was actually quite nice. I heard that they just renovated the place. Our room had sofa, reading table, bed, LCD TV and a nice bathroom (no bathtub though – bummer!). It looked modern and spacious. We tried to get on the top floor as we read on internet that the hotel rooftop having a bar & pool with a wonderful view of Acropolis. But I guess luck was definitely not on our side as it was closed! UGH! Thus this ended our 1st day in Greece.
 |
| A View of the Hotel Room in Novotel |
Next Day (Delphi & Kalambaka)
No comments:
Post a Comment