Selcuk to Athens

Sunday April 6th, 2014, Athens
This morning we woke up at 5:30, got ready and left Homeros Pension before 6:15. We were down at the train station before the ticket office opened at 6:30. When it did open, we got our tickets for the 1 hour plus ride to Izmir airport for a total of 7.5 lira ($3.75). Buses and trains are really cheap here.
On a bench on the platform, we ate the boxed breakfast that the Homeros lady had given us.

As the sun came up, we took this picture from the platform of a mosque a little ways away. The train arrived on schedule at 6:49. We helped a German couple with a 10 month old baby get all their gear on the train (and get it off again at the Izmir airport). They were staying at the same pension so we had chatted with them a bit.
At the airport stop, there was about a 10 or 15 minute walk into the departure area of the terminal. The airport is quite new and the signage is a little suspect so we took a somewhat circuitous route. However, we got there in time for our 10 am flight. We had another breakfast on the plane courtesy of Turkish Airlines. Edible once again.
At Istanbul Ataturk Airport, the international departures area was a bit of a zoo. We had to go through security again to get into the area, go through a busy passport control area to make sure we hadn't overstayed our visa and then go through another security check to get to the gates. However, we got to our gate just as they were loading for our Istanbul Athens flight so all was well.
Once again, lunch on the plane. It was a fairly short flight to Athens. Here, customs was a very cursory examination of our passports and no visa fee or visa. It's surprising how slack they are given that this is a Schengen Agreement country so getting in here means getting into most of Europe.
Soon we collected our luggage, exchanged our Turkish lira for euros and got more euros from an ATM. We figured out where to catch the metro (for 14 euros to downtown, about $21) and at 3 pm were on our way into the city.
Once we got off the metro, we found our way to our hotel with the help of our Lonely Planet map. It wasn't too much trouble at all. We're staying in the Psyrri area about 1 km from the Acropolis. The hotel (the Athens Central Square Hotel) is fine but the area looks a little seedy. There's a lot of graffiti and dirty streets. We've already seen a few panhandlers which is more than we saw in all of Turkey where we saw none.
After we got settled into our room (with a view of the Acropolis), we went out and bought beer, water and a small roast chicken. It started raining pretty hard so we came back here, did laundry and a bit of travel research, and ate roast chicken in our room. We're tired from our travel day so we're going to have an early night to get up with lots of energy to do the Athens tourist thing in the morning.