We woke up before 7:00 and got ready for breakfast. It is not as elaborate as in the Trafalgar hotels. Nor does it have to be. There is a good selection of fruits, cheeses, cold meats, eggs, bacon, sausages and roasted tomatoes. Of course there is also juice, bread, sweets, and coffee.
While we were eating we found a card on the table telling us that omelettes are included with a long list of ingredients. We will try that tomorrow. Today’s breakfast was excellent.
After brushing our teeth we bagged our laundry and headed downstairs. I asked at the desk for smaller bills for a fifty. He could not do that. They keep very little cash in the drawer. As we got to the door he asked if we were going to the laundromat. When we said yes he showed us a laundromat right across the street and told us that the hostel would give us change since it is their laundromat.
The sign for the laundromat is small and there are only 4 machines. When we entered there was a woman there with a large suitcase. She was waiting for a room at the hostel. She had arrived shortly after midnight and the hostel was full. So she came in and did her laundry. She explained how the machines worked. Her name was Jazzy and she was from California. I went to the hostel and got change for my 50 euros. He made sure to give me enough coins for the machines.
I went back to Alice and Jazzy guided us through the process. It was not difficult. Load the washer. Put 5 euros of coins in the slot. Click on the picture of the thermometer for how hot you want the water. Add the soap and close the door. Push start and wait 30 minutes for your load to finish.
With that done we had a nice conversation with Jazzy while we waited. She is a travel agent from Los Angeles. She just attended a wedding on Santorini and is now traveling to check out some places and create a vlog episode to show clients. She is 52 and does a lot of solo traveling for her work. We talked about how nice people can be. She said in 11 days of recent travel she only purchased 2 meals. People keep insisting that she join them. I wish we had talked about how she meets these kind strangers.
The 30 minutes flew by and our washer was finished. We unloaded it into the dryer above it. Alice said the clothes looked cleaner. I agreed. Maybe we need to change detergent. I fed 2 euros into the dryer and it gave us 30 minutes of drying time.
Right after I sat down a young lady came in. She was confused by the machines and spoke no English. Jazzy went right to work showing her how to do things. The lady really jammed things into the washer. I felt that she overloaded it. She started it. There is a countdown timer from 30 minutes to let you know the progress. When it got to 28 it stayed there for about 10minutes while the washer did 2 turns one way then 2 turns the other way then stopped for a while. After some discussion about how wrong this was the lady went to get the attendant. He was not supportive and said nothing could be done until the load was finished. Jazzy gave him a lesson in laundry and said how our machine had worked. He shrugged an left.
After a little while the washer started counting down but not in any normal order. The attendant came back with another lady. They had set their timer for when the load should’ve finished. It was not done. It took another 15 minutes. They agreed to give the lady a free load and she moved her clothes to the next washer. The attending lady said the problem was too large a load and the wrong soap. The lady was using hand soap not laundry detergent. They corrected the soap but the woman still put all her stuff in the washer.
During this time our dryer was finished. We folded our clothes and bid them both goodbye. Jazzy was still helping. We were grateful. We crossed over to our hotel, hung clothes in the closet, and headed out.
We had already decided we were just going to walk the Plaka. In 2 minutes we were there. It was 10:30 and we set a slow pace. We looked at everything. Even looked at things we knew we would never buy. Prices varied widely for the same things in different shops. It was interesting to watch the shopkeepers size us up and gear their pitch accordingly. Sometimes it was insulting, but it all seemed like a game. We ultimately bought some nice things for Shelly and Sean. We almost bought some things for Alice, but we decided to wait for the islands or Kusadasi. We looked for an extra suitcase but only saw junk. We bought like that in Indonesia once and the bag barely made it home. A better bag that we bought in Cape Town has held up for many years. We will keep looking.
After 4 hours of meandering we were lost. Mapsme showed us most of the way back before it decided we should go way out of our way. Google maps came to the rescue and got us to the Acropolis metro station. Walking toward the hotel from there we stopped at a restaurant to sit and have a pork gyros and a beer each. What a joy that was. The gyros was delicious and the beer was cold. We were not rushed we just had a good time eating and people watching.
Eventually we returned to Hera. We finished the day working on our stuff and going to bed at 9:30. This was a good day.
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