Athens: The Metpo

The taxis in Athens were on strike until literally the day we were returning to Qatar.  Needless to say, we were thankful that a reliable, relatively easy, and as-far-as-we-could-tell relatively safe mass transit was available.  The name of it, like everything else, is written in Greek letters as μετρό.  Often, the Greek letters are spelled in all caps, which looks like METPO.  The "r" sound (rho) looks like a P. So when Jack laughed and pointed out that those crazy Greeks called their trains a "met-po," we started calling it just that.

Having been on other metro trains, this one was very similar except with the sparser availability of English.  So when something happened...let's say, for example...a stop being closed on one side because an archeological dig had commenced (which it did), we were extra grateful to the wonderful people of Athens for (in English) being friendly and eager to help.  All we would have to do is look confused and we'd have five different people offering assistance.  Really fabulous people. 

By about the third day, we figured out that (1) Jack and Hank rode for 1/2 price, (2) Hannah rode free, and (3) buying a 24-hour ticket is much cheaper (around $1 per person?) than being doofus Americans and buying a new ticket every time you wanted to go some where...

We love the Metpo!