Athens Dry Cleaner

Part of day 1 in Athens was tempered by our attempts to find a dry cleaner. See picture at left and below for the reason why I needed one!

I checked the internet and found one that seemed close to our hotel; in fact it was the only one anywhere near our hotel! The hotel front desk staff didn't know where there was a dry cleaner either.

We walked for over an hour before we found it some distance from our hotel. Because of that, I asked if he could deliver to our hotel; that did not seem to be a problem and 5:30 pm was agreed. During the day I was to ring him to let him know the phone number of our hotel (he had the name and address). I tried several times to do so but he wasn't answering the number on his business card. Very late in the afternoon/early evening I eventually managed to talk to him and he assured me my dry cleaning would be delivered to my hotel around 8 pm.

Unfortunately 8 pm came and went but still there was no dry cleaning and, surprise, surprise, no-one answering the phone either!

I eventually contacted him this morning - his excuse - the driver couldn't find the hotel! I guess the five-storey sign blinded him! He said he would deliver it when he closes the shop at 2pm; I declined his offer and said I would be there shortly to pick it up.

I suggested that he should fire his delivery person. His excuse for that was that the delivery person was new to the job. How would I know which parts of his story were true???

Never mind, I have my suit back and won't have to wear my shorts to Derek and Donna's wedding at the end of the month.


Tomorrow morning we leave our hotel at 3:30 am in order to make the connections that will get us to the airport for our flight to Frankfurt.

Why I needed a dry cleaner!
As we were leaving Pamukkale I decided to check the placement of a few things in my luggage. When I opened the suitcase what a mess there was to greet me. My hair shampoo (it was in a plastic bag - I had had this problem on a previous trip and had learned the lesson!) had leaked and gone all over several items of clothing, including my suit (that was going to need a press any way). Fortunately we had more than an hour to wait for our bus so it was a matter of unpacking everything on the pavement, cleaning the shampoo from the inside of the case, removing as much as I could from my clothing and repacking everything. Several people came along to see what I was up to - none of them could do much to help! The bus depot manager did give me a cloth and offered some water.

When we got to the hotel in Kusadasi I was able to send the affected items out to a laundry but the suit I was to leave until we got to Athens.

The lesson to learn from this experience - leave the shampoo at home and stick to old fashioned soap and water.