uber

Technically, it would be the third night we’ve been here, but do we really count the first night since we were so exhausted when we got here?!

The jet lag had not let go of it’s grip on us, but I can at least say it loosened. None of us were up before 1:00 pm though! With Willow getting sick, we had more laundry than expected this early in the trip and needed to quickly figure out the washer, then venture up to the roof to get it on the drying line. In this weird head of mine, I actually dread doing laundry when I’m at home, but get a little pleasure from it when I leave the states and have to line dry my clothes. Though I had never done it in 45 degree, windy weather on top of a three story roof!

With the chores done, we finally left the house, sometime after 5:00 pm. We called an Uber and drove over to “The Mall”. Yes, that’s what the actual name of it is! I read that it was a four story mall that was the first of it’s kind to be constructed in Greece and one of the largest in Southeastern Europe. Not a bad place to go when sunlight is about to run out and you need to get the kids out of the house!

The mall is huge! We really only went around one floor, and possibly only half of that floor! I forgot how much I love the shopping in Europe! There are so many stores we don’t have in the US that are filled with cute clothes and very inexpensive compared to shopping in the US! The girls always get excited and love to shop in these places!

I’m not sure if it’s common in malls in Europe, since I’ve only visited a couple, but their dining area was nothing like what we have in the malls in Texas! The restaurants are actually nice! Not the crappy choices of nasty Chinese food, baked potatoes or chick-fil-a. Yes, I know how much people like chick-fil-a, but I prefer real food over any kind of fast food.

We sat at a nice gourmet burger place that had a big Lego play area for kids, where Willow was quick to run off to. I’m not sure what I expected, but the burger was actually good and came with a side of truffle mayo and fries. I’ve had burgers in other countries and sometimes they don’t exactly taste like burgers, but these were good!

We left as the mall was closing, heading to the taxi area where we called another Uber. According to the first Uber driver, only taxi drivers can drive for Uber here now. It wasn’t that way at first, but taxi drivers started to feel the pinch from the popularity of Uber and the union of about 60,000 taxi drivers got together and protested. This amazing thing happened and the government listened to the people! They changed the rules for Uber that only taxis can take the calls now. I’m stumped as to why the word union is a bad word in America.

We were waiting in freezing cold for about 10 minutes and the Uber wasn’t there, so I cancelled it, thinking we would just take a regular taxi. The only reason I cared to take the Uber was because I could put in the destination and they would know where we were going, without me messing up the name of the street or confusing the driver more. That’s just one of those security blanket type things I like to use as a crutch when I’m traveling. Unfortunately, when I opened the door of the taxi, he told me no! We had 5 and he would only take 4. Sooo, we called for another Uber and waited even longer! Thankfully the Uber taxi doesn’t seem to mind that we have 5!

After a short day we were back at home, trying to get to bed at a decent hour to get up the next morning and do something in the day. I can’t say we have been really successful at that yet!