So, we got off the bus and after some confusion about where on earth we were going (Truism 19: Wandering around a Roman restaurant in a group all in costume will make the locals look at you funny) we found our seats for the "Groupo Historico Banquet Thingy."
We really had no idea what this event was going to be like, and it was a pretty cool event, I'll admit.
First off, the food was excellent. We started with a lovely antiPasto dish of several different meats, artichoke hearts, and all sorts of other goodies (I stole several foods from those of the people sitting to my left and right (The Magical E! and QoD, respectively). Hipster was sitting on the other side of The Magical E! which will be a factor in a few minutes, when I start discussing the dancers.
After that, a course of pasta (outstanding), then a course of chicken or pork and carrots (lovely), and then a course of a really wonderful dessert which I consumed and have already forgotten.
All this was mixed in with a sort of floor show, consisting of speeches, a beauty pageant, concert, and dance numbers all mixed in together.
The show started with a group from Germany that is part band, part archeological research group, and they were very cool. They played several different pieces using traditional instruments and did some of the dances as well.
They were following by the parading of 20-some-odd competitors in the "Who will be the next Athena?" competition which is held every year.
Many of them were very cute, and Hipster and I began running commentary about which ones were most adorable and which were off-the-charts attractive.
Thus, the permanent mental scarring to The Magical E! was probably begun. Already she had been unsettled by our time in Greece (courtesy of Vickie, even I saw more models of male posteriors than expected) and her seat between us probably did little to keep her sane.
It got worse though, when the ancient dance troupe (whose name, I'm sad to say, has been misplaced) began performing.
Now, I should point out at this point that I'm a dancer, trained for ballroom but with an appreciation for almost all forms of dance (with the possible exception of the bump-and-grind style most popular in clubs--it's both ugly and mundane). As such, any dance exhibition (be it ballet, belly, or ballroom) is absolutely riveting to me. In this case, the traditional dances performed were from the canons of such groups as priestesses and courtesans, performers who relied on the salacious nature of the dances to capture the attention of men both rich and powerful.
As such, most would say I was leering. I categorically refute that statement. I was observing! Closely.
Heh.
So anyway, since we already had a running conversation going, Hipster and I grew no less bawdy when the dancers arrived. We were impressed, and our commentary reflected that, via praise of both their abilities as dancers and their attributes as women.
Not, I think, inappropriately, but certainly in a direct and honest manner.
At least that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I think we unnerved the girls by being so honest about our opinions though. I think they are more used to men who do their best to steal their glances between comments about how they don't care, and how their current girlfriends are way more attractive to them, and etc. Since we were both single, and direct, we surprised them.
In any case, the dancers (who did several cool numbers, including one with scarves and one very awesome one with candles in little clay pots) were quite skilled, and I applaud their work. Bravo, say I!
In all, I don't think the banquet was worth what we paid for it though, and if I could do it over again, I'd probably skip the entire event. But that's just me.
In any case, the show and dinner were great, and we enjoyed ourselves.
Thankfully we managed to catch the bus back, and arrived to find our rooms cold, but at least we had blankets (the rest of us having been furnished with them) and promises of hot water and heat the following day.
Little did we know how badly we'd need them.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Camping Not-So-Fabulous
A great deal has happened to me on the course of my travels, including spilled drinks, lost reservations, buildings collapsing, beds breaking, misplaced luggage, fellow travelers fighting either verbally or physically, famine, fire, plagues of locusts, etc. I tend, as anyone who has traveled with me will admit, not to complain. I tend to always talk about the positive, gloss cheerfully over the negative and do my damnedest to be a good sport.
(And ok, technically I've never had to deal with a plague of locusts, but all those other things have occurred--even the collapsing building.)
However, in the interests of not just skipping Rome all together, I must mix in the bitter with the sweet, as the saying goes, and tell you about one of the worst travel experiences of my life. So, with my apologies, the following will most likely feel like a laundry list of complaints. I'll try to keep it light and throw in enough jokes to keep from scaring you off, but feel free to skip it if you wish.
So we get to the site, and since we're in a public service vehicle, they have other tasks to do, so they drop us off, in the cold, now persistent rain, with our gear and high-tail it off to wherever Italians in cargo vans go. I think they probably have a big cargo van swap-meet where they brag about their latest adventures and drink coffee from tiny, tiny cups. I theorize that our drivers will have the best story at this particular meet "We picked up 12 American Tourists in a cargo van designed to hold no more than 5 people plus luggage, then transported them through the streets driving as if we were an ambulance!"
My mother goes and meets with the organizer of this crazy event, and we meanwhile stand, in the rain, attempting to keep ourselves warm and dry as best we can considering there is no possibility of either.
After quite some time (20 minutes? It feels like 40.) we are shuffled off to the welcome desk of the place, and from there into two tiny mobile-homes, each split down the middle into two three man rooms, complete with ensuite bathrooms, running (frigid) water, and non-functioning heaters.
We are given sheets, and some of us are even given blankets. (oh happy day! Surely the gods have smiled upon us and granted us luxury!)
So, without hot water or heat we make our unceremonious arrival in Rome. Well, near Rome. Actually getting into the city center from Camping NSF takes over an hour via public transit, but we're near Rome, we think. At least we know Rome is out there somewhere. Everybody is speaking Italian, right? So how far away can the city be?
Of course our entire area, being a campground, a location which is notorious for not being well paved, has absorbed enough water to float a 37 foot yacht in comfortably. Thus we are, by the time we are assigned rooms, slogging through mud, trying our best to stay out of it but failing, and tracking with us enough dirt and clay to build a 5 gallon vase, fill it, and raise flowers.
We get to the mobile homes ("Look guys, it's just like being back in Alabama!") and drop off our stuff, then begin discovering how many 'unique features' our lodgings have.
One of the doors doesn't latch and must be locked or it drifts open. One latches too well (trapping the occupants inside! Whee!). Three of the four heaters don't work. No-one has hot water. All of the rooms are filled with mud (on account of the rain) and the steps shift, sometimes blocking the doors so that people become trapped in their rooms. The situation appears pretty grim.
On the plus side, there's food in one of the rooms, which the girls promptly begin to consume--since we're all starving and they figure that each room had food in it. We discover later that:
A) Only this room had food. It was meant for all. And
B) This food was to be our breakfast for the following morning (whoops!).
Keep in mind that this evening we are scheduled to attend a nice sit-down banquet-and-production, we assume in semi-formal or at least dressy-casual clothes.
None of us would survive the showers without hypothermia though, so we're in a bit of a bind about not looking like a bunch of gypsy-hobos that just fell off the train and put on nice threads.
All this takes a backseat to a much worse revelation though. Our leader has some contact with one of the organizers, and he tells us that we should definitly attend the event (cue eye-twitch and displeased voice) in-costume. Now understand that these are the costumes of ancient Romans, not exactly draft-free if-you-get-my-drift, and designed for much warmer climates than the 50 degree rain we are experiencing. We had hoped for 70+ and partly cloudy and that is obviously NOT what we're going to get.
So we're still trying our damnedest to be good sports about all this. I'm cracking jokes about how I think I see blue skies ahead, and how at least the rain has let up to a drizzle (though it's caused the temperature to drop) and that there's always suicide!
Ok, so I didn't actually make jokes about shuffling off our mortal coils to avoid some bad weather and embarrassing moments, but it was tempting.
Since we're all still trying to be good sports, we nod and mumble "Ok", although none of us is particularly happy about hearing that we've got to wear the costumes out in this weather.
So, without having seen any other members of this Groupo Historico business except our contact, we decide to get dressed and head down to the main area, where supposedly there will be travel arrangements provided for us. (This dinner event is held far in towards Rome, and we must get there by bus).
Now allow me to explain briefly that we are at this point unaware of the bus situation. Quite simply, there are no buses for everybody. There are individual chartered buses arranged by the individual groups (the dance troupe, the Spanish bachannalians, etc) and we are essentially arriving, travel arrangement-less and just trying to hop in other people's private buses. Speaking no Italian, and very few of them speaking any English.
At this point though, we don't know this yet. We're still under the impression that there are buses meant for the whole group.
So we get into our silly-looking costumes, and we huddle in front of our leader's mobile home (Hey Maw! Come see this here funny dress Ah put awn!) in a bunch. 12 drowned cats, shivering in too-little clothing and just thanking the heavens that at least it stopped raining.
We run across our contact organizer, who is, of course, NOT IN COSTUME (this should have been our first clue to go straight back, change into nice clothes, and proceed as planned). We get to the bottom of the hill where everyone is congregating at the bus-area, and there are lots of people. All members of the Groupo Historico. They all appear very nice and friendly and ARE DRESSED IN STREET CLOTHES.
This is NOT humorous to our bedraggled band. We fear we are being made a laughing stock, and that truly fortune and our God have both turned against us in our hour of need.
Ok, so that's being a bit overdramatic.
In any case, it was awkward.
Thankfully we note that a couple of the groups do have large bags and are going to change when they arrive (turns out they were part of the dance troupe that was in the program, performing) and finally 4 people from Germany show up in costume as well (turns out they were also performing).
In fact, only a handful of people show up in costume, and 95% of them are in the freaking show that goes with dinner!
We are not amused.
But we bite our tongues (it's too late to go back and change now) and board the bus, ignorant of everything going on around us in quick, sing-song Italian, and head for dinner.
(And ok, technically I've never had to deal with a plague of locusts, but all those other things have occurred--even the collapsing building.)
However, in the interests of not just skipping Rome all together, I must mix in the bitter with the sweet, as the saying goes, and tell you about one of the worst travel experiences of my life. So, with my apologies, the following will most likely feel like a laundry list of complaints. I'll try to keep it light and throw in enough jokes to keep from scaring you off, but feel free to skip it if you wish.
So we get to the site, and since we're in a public service vehicle, they have other tasks to do, so they drop us off, in the cold, now persistent rain, with our gear and high-tail it off to wherever Italians in cargo vans go. I think they probably have a big cargo van swap-meet where they brag about their latest adventures and drink coffee from tiny, tiny cups. I theorize that our drivers will have the best story at this particular meet "We picked up 12 American Tourists in a cargo van designed to hold no more than 5 people plus luggage, then transported them through the streets driving as if we were an ambulance!"
My mother goes and meets with the organizer of this crazy event, and we meanwhile stand, in the rain, attempting to keep ourselves warm and dry as best we can considering there is no possibility of either.
After quite some time (20 minutes? It feels like 40.) we are shuffled off to the welcome desk of the place, and from there into two tiny mobile-homes, each split down the middle into two three man rooms, complete with ensuite bathrooms, running (frigid) water, and non-functioning heaters.
We are given sheets, and some of us are even given blankets. (oh happy day! Surely the gods have smiled upon us and granted us luxury!)
So, without hot water or heat we make our unceremonious arrival in Rome. Well, near Rome. Actually getting into the city center from Camping NSF takes over an hour via public transit, but we're near Rome, we think. At least we know Rome is out there somewhere. Everybody is speaking Italian, right? So how far away can the city be?
Of course our entire area, being a campground, a location which is notorious for not being well paved, has absorbed enough water to float a 37 foot yacht in comfortably. Thus we are, by the time we are assigned rooms, slogging through mud, trying our best to stay out of it but failing, and tracking with us enough dirt and clay to build a 5 gallon vase, fill it, and raise flowers.
We get to the mobile homes ("Look guys, it's just like being back in Alabama!") and drop off our stuff, then begin discovering how many 'unique features' our lodgings have.
One of the doors doesn't latch and must be locked or it drifts open. One latches too well (trapping the occupants inside! Whee!). Three of the four heaters don't work. No-one has hot water. All of the rooms are filled with mud (on account of the rain) and the steps shift, sometimes blocking the doors so that people become trapped in their rooms. The situation appears pretty grim.
On the plus side, there's food in one of the rooms, which the girls promptly begin to consume--since we're all starving and they figure that each room had food in it. We discover later that:
A) Only this room had food. It was meant for all. And
B) This food was to be our breakfast for the following morning (whoops!).
Keep in mind that this evening we are scheduled to attend a nice sit-down banquet-and-production, we assume in semi-formal or at least dressy-casual clothes.
None of us would survive the showers without hypothermia though, so we're in a bit of a bind about not looking like a bunch of gypsy-hobos that just fell off the train and put on nice threads.
All this takes a backseat to a much worse revelation though. Our leader has some contact with one of the organizers, and he tells us that we should definitly attend the event (cue eye-twitch and displeased voice) in-costume. Now understand that these are the costumes of ancient Romans, not exactly draft-free if-you-get-my-drift, and designed for much warmer climates than the 50 degree rain we are experiencing. We had hoped for 70+ and partly cloudy and that is obviously NOT what we're going to get.
So we're still trying our damnedest to be good sports about all this. I'm cracking jokes about how I think I see blue skies ahead, and how at least the rain has let up to a drizzle (though it's caused the temperature to drop) and that there's always suicide!
Ok, so I didn't actually make jokes about shuffling off our mortal coils to avoid some bad weather and embarrassing moments, but it was tempting.
Since we're all still trying to be good sports, we nod and mumble "Ok", although none of us is particularly happy about hearing that we've got to wear the costumes out in this weather.
So, without having seen any other members of this Groupo Historico business except our contact, we decide to get dressed and head down to the main area, where supposedly there will be travel arrangements provided for us. (This dinner event is held far in towards Rome, and we must get there by bus).
Now allow me to explain briefly that we are at this point unaware of the bus situation. Quite simply, there are no buses for everybody. There are individual chartered buses arranged by the individual groups (the dance troupe, the Spanish bachannalians, etc) and we are essentially arriving, travel arrangement-less and just trying to hop in other people's private buses. Speaking no Italian, and very few of them speaking any English.
At this point though, we don't know this yet. We're still under the impression that there are buses meant for the whole group.
So we get into our silly-looking costumes, and we huddle in front of our leader's mobile home (Hey Maw! Come see this here funny dress Ah put awn!) in a bunch. 12 drowned cats, shivering in too-little clothing and just thanking the heavens that at least it stopped raining.
We run across our contact organizer, who is, of course, NOT IN COSTUME (this should have been our first clue to go straight back, change into nice clothes, and proceed as planned). We get to the bottom of the hill where everyone is congregating at the bus-area, and there are lots of people. All members of the Groupo Historico. They all appear very nice and friendly and ARE DRESSED IN STREET CLOTHES.
This is NOT humorous to our bedraggled band. We fear we are being made a laughing stock, and that truly fortune and our God have both turned against us in our hour of need.
Ok, so that's being a bit overdramatic.
In any case, it was awkward.
Thankfully we note that a couple of the groups do have large bags and are going to change when they arrive (turns out they were part of the dance troupe that was in the program, performing) and finally 4 people from Germany show up in costume as well (turns out they were also performing).
In fact, only a handful of people show up in costume, and 95% of them are in the freaking show that goes with dinner!
We are not amused.
But we bite our tongues (it's too late to go back and change now) and board the bus, ignorant of everything going on around us in quick, sing-song Italian, and head for dinner.
This isn't driving, it's crashing with style!
So the next morning, we got up and after tearful goodbyes with 80, we left, very early, for the Athens airport.
There we boarded a flight headed for the Rome Airport, and, sans two events, everything went smoothly.
The first was QoD falling asleep on a bench in the boarding area of our terminal. Normally not an issue, but she chose to roll over.
Benches, as you, dear reader, may know, are not very wide. None of us actually saw her roll over; we simply heard a loud noise and were impressed to see her sitting up, wide eyed, on the ground. She had that look that cats get when they've just done something incredibly ungraceful and are hoping no-one saw, and we did our best not to laugh, but failed miserably.
The second was my father deciding, 20 minutes before takeoff, to go mail some postcards because he had some Greek stamps left and didn't want them to go to waste. Of course, it turns out the nearest mailbox is in another postal code, so he is the last person to board the plane, at final boarding. When he did finally board, our whole section (and there were 11 of us) cheered for him, sarcastically.
So, disaster and injuries avoided, we made our way to the city to which all roads lead--Roma, the ancient capital of an empire that has never been surpassed.
When we arrived, we had been told we would be meeting one of the organizers from the Groupo Historico, because we had made all our living arrangements through a re-enactment and preservationist historical society that was one of the major players in the annual Founding of Rome Parade, which is held each year in the spring, at the time when it is thought Rome was first created.
The only slight problem here was that our contact was no-where to be found at the airport.
A phone call and some waiting later, my father ran back inside and said "Hey! I found them. There are two guys in a big public service van with a blue light out front and a sign that says "Gladiators". They don't speak any English, but I think they are here for us.
So out we went, all 12 of us, into the rain (because it was proper-raining now--not a light drizzle but a steady, consistent mist that clings to your clothes and chills everything around you, even your hair.
We climbed (all fourteen of us, including the two guys) into a cargo van meant for 5 people and misc. cargo (literally, there was a driver seat, a passenger seat, and one bench for three). We loaded in all of our gear, clambered on top of it, and off we went into the traffic of Rome.
I'll talk more about the traffic of Rome in a separate post, probably called "Elephants, Stampeding Herds, and Bees", but for now just imagine chaos. Half of us facing backwards can barely see, and the overloaded van is hurtling through the slick Roman morning with all intentions of passing everything else on the road, weaving around other vehicles. Eventually when traffic backs up they turn on their flashing blue light and we go flying down the emergency lane like a bat out of hell, probably terrifying the kids, and making both Dad and I laugh "So that's what the blue light is for!"
This part of the trip was a bit crazy, but it was nothing compared to the arrangements we had at Camping Fabulous.
Which, in light of our four days there, is now considered by some in our group "The New F Word."
But that's another story.
There we boarded a flight headed for the Rome Airport, and, sans two events, everything went smoothly.
The first was QoD falling asleep on a bench in the boarding area of our terminal. Normally not an issue, but she chose to roll over.
Benches, as you, dear reader, may know, are not very wide. None of us actually saw her roll over; we simply heard a loud noise and were impressed to see her sitting up, wide eyed, on the ground. She had that look that cats get when they've just done something incredibly ungraceful and are hoping no-one saw, and we did our best not to laugh, but failed miserably.
The second was my father deciding, 20 minutes before takeoff, to go mail some postcards because he had some Greek stamps left and didn't want them to go to waste. Of course, it turns out the nearest mailbox is in another postal code, so he is the last person to board the plane, at final boarding. When he did finally board, our whole section (and there were 11 of us) cheered for him, sarcastically.
So, disaster and injuries avoided, we made our way to the city to which all roads lead--Roma, the ancient capital of an empire that has never been surpassed.
When we arrived, we had been told we would be meeting one of the organizers from the Groupo Historico, because we had made all our living arrangements through a re-enactment and preservationist historical society that was one of the major players in the annual Founding of Rome Parade, which is held each year in the spring, at the time when it is thought Rome was first created.
The only slight problem here was that our contact was no-where to be found at the airport.
A phone call and some waiting later, my father ran back inside and said "Hey! I found them. There are two guys in a big public service van with a blue light out front and a sign that says "Gladiators". They don't speak any English, but I think they are here for us.
So out we went, all 12 of us, into the rain (because it was proper-raining now--not a light drizzle but a steady, consistent mist that clings to your clothes and chills everything around you, even your hair.
We climbed (all fourteen of us, including the two guys) into a cargo van meant for 5 people and misc. cargo (literally, there was a driver seat, a passenger seat, and one bench for three). We loaded in all of our gear, clambered on top of it, and off we went into the traffic of Rome.
I'll talk more about the traffic of Rome in a separate post, probably called "Elephants, Stampeding Herds, and Bees", but for now just imagine chaos. Half of us facing backwards can barely see, and the overloaded van is hurtling through the slick Roman morning with all intentions of passing everything else on the road, weaving around other vehicles. Eventually when traffic backs up they turn on their flashing blue light and we go flying down the emergency lane like a bat out of hell, probably terrifying the kids, and making both Dad and I laugh "So that's what the blue light is for!"
This part of the trip was a bit crazy, but it was nothing compared to the arrangements we had at Camping Fabulous.
Which, in light of our four days there, is now considered by some in our group "The New F Word."
But that's another story.
Friday, April 15, 2005
One Last Day in Athens
Our final day started mid-morning, with a trip to the Acropolis. As the sunlight spilled around us we wandered through the dusty ruins of what might be the greatest pantheistic temple in the world, and is certainly one of the most prolific and lasting architectural masterpieces from ancient times.
After the Acropolis, 80 and I returned to the hotel, grabbed our clothes, and set out in search of a laundry we had found the previous evening. There we were greeted by the owner (or a lady out to make a quick buck, whatever) who greeted us and took our laundry and did it while we waited. With nothing to do we wandered Athens, eating lunch near a small chapel and eventually winding up near Hadrian's Arch, where we sat and basked in the sun until our clothes were ready for our return.
A funny note about Hadrian's arch. It was built in a section of the city that was developed heavily during Hadrian's reign, but it was built by the local Athenians to "honor" their emperor.
It is interesting then, to consider the inscription. On the side that faces the Acropolis and the heart of Athens it reads, "This is Athens, the ancient city of Theseus", on the other side, facing away from the Acropolis and out towards the suburbs Hadrian developed, the inscription reads ""This is the city of Hadrian and not of Theseus."
"Honor" my foot, the real meaning seems clear. "Rome may claim to be our rulers, but we know better than to think that just because they rule they are part of our culture. Don't forget that our city is the city more ancient than any of Rome's emperors."
It is a defiant and charming message hidden in obsequience, and I like it.
Later on that afternoon, we wandered back to the hotel and found the rest of our group, eventually, then headed out to the highest point in the city to see the sunset on Lykabettos hill, the highest point within the city of Athens. Delayed by a grumpy guard of a lift system and a few extra pauses on the many, many steps to the top, we missed the sunset itself but arrived just after the sun had disappeared behind the hills. Instead we savoured the last few moments of light and the brightly coloured sky and grabbed a few more pictures of all of us together. Since my group was getting on a plane to Rome the next morning and 80 was heading for London that evening, it was the last night we would spend together, and the trip had certainly been wonderful, if at times quirky.
There is a picture that will be hopefully be uploaded Tuesday that is one of the last pictures of the two of us taken on this portion of our travels.
On our return we walked down to Monastiraki, dropped the kids at the hotel, and five of us, 80, myself, my parents, and Oh-Oh! all went out to a nice proper sit-down dinner at the taverna in Psiri of which 80 and I had grown so fond. We had a lovely meal and it was a very pleasant evening.
We returned to the hotel and discovered QoD in a state of euphoria over her day, during which she'd gotten to meet the equivalent of her Greek family--the people that were their closest friends when she was just a tiny scrub of a girl growing up in Greece, before they moved back to the States when she was four. She reminded me of my EKG when she would get properly happy about something going her way and people liking her, and it was quite contagious.
Almost the entire group wound up in the open-air rooftop bar area, sharing laughter, new spirits, renewed joy, and a sense that we had touched history and been touched by it as well. It was a nice way to end our time in Greece, and the brightly lit Acropolis that overlooked the goings on there atop our hotel was a constant reminder of the majesty of history and the power it has to change the world, and each of its students, if proper attention is paid to it.
After the Acropolis, 80 and I returned to the hotel, grabbed our clothes, and set out in search of a laundry we had found the previous evening. There we were greeted by the owner (or a lady out to make a quick buck, whatever) who greeted us and took our laundry and did it while we waited. With nothing to do we wandered Athens, eating lunch near a small chapel and eventually winding up near Hadrian's Arch, where we sat and basked in the sun until our clothes were ready for our return.
A funny note about Hadrian's arch. It was built in a section of the city that was developed heavily during Hadrian's reign, but it was built by the local Athenians to "honor" their emperor.
It is interesting then, to consider the inscription. On the side that faces the Acropolis and the heart of Athens it reads, "This is Athens, the ancient city of Theseus", on the other side, facing away from the Acropolis and out towards the suburbs Hadrian developed, the inscription reads ""This is the city of Hadrian and not of Theseus."
"Honor" my foot, the real meaning seems clear. "Rome may claim to be our rulers, but we know better than to think that just because they rule they are part of our culture. Don't forget that our city is the city more ancient than any of Rome's emperors."
It is a defiant and charming message hidden in obsequience, and I like it.
Later on that afternoon, we wandered back to the hotel and found the rest of our group, eventually, then headed out to the highest point in the city to see the sunset on Lykabettos hill, the highest point within the city of Athens. Delayed by a grumpy guard of a lift system and a few extra pauses on the many, many steps to the top, we missed the sunset itself but arrived just after the sun had disappeared behind the hills. Instead we savoured the last few moments of light and the brightly coloured sky and grabbed a few more pictures of all of us together. Since my group was getting on a plane to Rome the next morning and 80 was heading for London that evening, it was the last night we would spend together, and the trip had certainly been wonderful, if at times quirky.
There is a picture that will be hopefully be uploaded Tuesday that is one of the last pictures of the two of us taken on this portion of our travels.
On our return we walked down to Monastiraki, dropped the kids at the hotel, and five of us, 80, myself, my parents, and Oh-Oh! all went out to a nice proper sit-down dinner at the taverna in Psiri of which 80 and I had grown so fond. We had a lovely meal and it was a very pleasant evening.
We returned to the hotel and discovered QoD in a state of euphoria over her day, during which she'd gotten to meet the equivalent of her Greek family--the people that were their closest friends when she was just a tiny scrub of a girl growing up in Greece, before they moved back to the States when she was four. She reminded me of my EKG when she would get properly happy about something going her way and people liking her, and it was quite contagious.
Almost the entire group wound up in the open-air rooftop bar area, sharing laughter, new spirits, renewed joy, and a sense that we had touched history and been touched by it as well. It was a nice way to end our time in Greece, and the brightly lit Acropolis that overlooked the goings on there atop our hotel was a constant reminder of the majesty of history and the power it has to change the world, and each of its students, if proper attention is paid to it.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Mycenae and the return to Athens
After visiting the theater, we went on and saw the location of "Agamemnon's tomb" (probably not his) and the city in which he lived, the city of Mycenae.
It was a neat place to see, and even with the large school groups of high school kids from all over the world (including the Italians, who seemed to be following us around--not that I minded too much, until the boys started making annoying noises in the acoustically reverberant tomb) it was still a neat site and you really got a grasp of just how real history can be, if you live in a place where just over the hill are the remnants of a civilization that predates your own by a couple thousand years.
While there, four of us (Myself, Oh-Oh!, Hipster, and The Magical E!) all continued on down into the cistern of Mycenae, used as a well and water storage point to help them hold out in case of a siege. There is no lighting and the steps descend what feels like hundreds of feet into the earth (in truth it probably wasn't more than 100 feet down, but the winding of the passage meant that within the first 20 feet of descent it was pitch black all around). Thankfully TME had brought along a lamp, so we tramped to the bottom and there snapped a photo I'll try and upload when I get home and acquire a copy.
It was a fun trip, especially because our journey into the depths of that completely silent and inky hole started by scaring the living daylights out of QoD, Oh-Oh! and SSW. We had rounded the first corner and were standing at the base, near the next corner down when we heard their voices at the mouth above us. We knew from our own experience at the first landing that if we extinguished our lamp it would become so black as to make us all invisible, but we were mere 4 or 5 meters from the turn, which was only two or three meters from the mouth of the descent. We extinguished our lamp and waited in silence as best we could until the three of them were standing at the turn at the first landing, still bathed in sunlight and staring hesitantly into the dark. Then we shrieked like all the tormented souls of hell (or at least I like to imagine that is how the three of us sounded to three girls with overactive imaginations staring into a completely pitch-dark pit) and they shrieked back and jumped back a step towards the opening.
Once they figured out who we were, we invited them to join us, and Oh-Oh! came all the way to the bottom of the stairs (several turns and a great deal of dark further down). Once we had safely taken our picture (nearly blinding my three fellow explorers) we exited into the now brilliantly bright landscape and basked in the glory of the Greek sun.
After that we headed for the Corinthian canal. It is much, much deeper than even that image can convey. 80 and I ate a simple lunch of groceries there at the edge of that 80 meter drop, which induced a sort of queer vertigo merely in the approaching of it. Then we climbed back in the bus and headed on to Athens.
In Athens, we dropped our bags at the hotel, then went directly to the Acropolis, where we said mock-tearful goodbyes to Yorgos and Vicky. They were wonderful to us, and we would miss them greatly (we had no idea how greatly until Rome, where the lack of an interpreter and some unforeseen disasters put us in quite a bind). Heartfelt farewells completed, we climbed the steps of the Acropolis, where we were told by a guard that they hadn't started their high season times yet, and we only had five minutes. (Nuts!)
So we saved our tickets for the next day and instead wandered down through the markets at the foot of the cliffs and then back to the Hotel Attalos for a night on the roof spent sharing snacks, drinks, dreams and memories.
It was a neat place to see, and even with the large school groups of high school kids from all over the world (including the Italians, who seemed to be following us around--not that I minded too much, until the boys started making annoying noises in the acoustically reverberant tomb) it was still a neat site and you really got a grasp of just how real history can be, if you live in a place where just over the hill are the remnants of a civilization that predates your own by a couple thousand years.
While there, four of us (Myself, Oh-Oh!, Hipster, and The Magical E!) all continued on down into the cistern of Mycenae, used as a well and water storage point to help them hold out in case of a siege. There is no lighting and the steps descend what feels like hundreds of feet into the earth (in truth it probably wasn't more than 100 feet down, but the winding of the passage meant that within the first 20 feet of descent it was pitch black all around). Thankfully TME had brought along a lamp, so we tramped to the bottom and there snapped a photo I'll try and upload when I get home and acquire a copy.
It was a fun trip, especially because our journey into the depths of that completely silent and inky hole started by scaring the living daylights out of QoD, Oh-Oh! and SSW. We had rounded the first corner and were standing at the base, near the next corner down when we heard their voices at the mouth above us. We knew from our own experience at the first landing that if we extinguished our lamp it would become so black as to make us all invisible, but we were mere 4 or 5 meters from the turn, which was only two or three meters from the mouth of the descent. We extinguished our lamp and waited in silence as best we could until the three of them were standing at the turn at the first landing, still bathed in sunlight and staring hesitantly into the dark. Then we shrieked like all the tormented souls of hell (or at least I like to imagine that is how the three of us sounded to three girls with overactive imaginations staring into a completely pitch-dark pit) and they shrieked back and jumped back a step towards the opening.
Once they figured out who we were, we invited them to join us, and Oh-Oh! came all the way to the bottom of the stairs (several turns and a great deal of dark further down). Once we had safely taken our picture (nearly blinding my three fellow explorers) we exited into the now brilliantly bright landscape and basked in the glory of the Greek sun.
After that we headed for the Corinthian canal. It is much, much deeper than even that image can convey. 80 and I ate a simple lunch of groceries there at the edge of that 80 meter drop, which induced a sort of queer vertigo merely in the approaching of it. Then we climbed back in the bus and headed on to Athens.
In Athens, we dropped our bags at the hotel, then went directly to the Acropolis, where we said mock-tearful goodbyes to Yorgos and Vicky. They were wonderful to us, and we would miss them greatly (we had no idea how greatly until Rome, where the lack of an interpreter and some unforeseen disasters put us in quite a bind). Heartfelt farewells completed, we climbed the steps of the Acropolis, where we were told by a guard that they hadn't started their high season times yet, and we only had five minutes. (Nuts!)
So we saved our tickets for the next day and instead wandered down through the markets at the foot of the cliffs and then back to the Hotel Attalos for a night on the roof spent sharing snacks, drinks, dreams and memories.
News.
From Athens, Greece.
Hey everybody, we're live through the 6th, so there are several new posts to enjoy below, and we managed to even throw in a couple of pictures for you.
There are more pictures on the system hidden where you can't reach them (yeah yeah, I'm a tease--I hear it all the time) and as we update, we'll unlock those pictures and add them to the posts, so try and check back as much as you can, we'll probably be uploading a lot more once 80 gets back to Wales and I get to Rome).
Hey everybody, we're live through the 6th, so there are several new posts to enjoy below, and we managed to even throw in a couple of pictures for you.
There are more pictures on the system hidden where you can't reach them (yeah yeah, I'm a tease--I hear it all the time) and as we update, we'll unlock those pictures and add them to the posts, so try and check back as much as you can, we'll probably be uploading a lot more once 80 gets back to Wales and I get to Rome).
The Theater of Epidaurus.
That morning, we left Nafplio for our next destination, the impressive Theater of Epidaurus.
We briefly entered the museum, where Vicky gave us a five minute rundown of Greek medical practice to compliment the overview she had given us on the bus, and we studied some maps and artifacts before heading to the real reason we had come to this location, the Theater itself.
The Theater of Epidaurus is a huge and imposing structure, approaching as we did from where the actors would have approached, we were given the opportunity to imagine for a moment ourselves as actors in a traditional Greek tragedy. It was capable of comfortably containing an audience of over 14,000 after it was expanded.
It is in nearly perfect condition and the acoustics, which the theater was designed to carry as best as possible, are amazing. The stage is designed with three sweet spots, the center of which would almost always contain the most important actor. This primary spot would carry their voice to literally every seat in the house. Sitting on the very top of 55 rows, I could easily hear Vicky speaking in a conversational tone to four Italian students standing a mere 4 meters or so on the stage. Ironically, the theater's acoustics actually improve as it fills, because it was designed so that as the basin filled with hot air the voices of the actors would be carried along the top of this warm air cushion, easing their travel to the top of the theater.
It was a very cool place for anyone interested in drama, and I enjoyed the stop a great deal.
On the way back to the bus, I was admiring another facet of the stop I enjoyed, one of the many stylish and well-proportioned students from Italy who was wandering back towards her bus, when my mother spun and pointed to me with an exclamation "Y'know, you could do this!"
My concentration completely fuzzled and momentarily disconcerted, not having yet realized that she was referring to leading guided tours overseas, I affected the best Eddie Izzard voice I could and said in a startled tone "Wot, stare at Italian girls all day?"
She laughed. I said "Sure, when do I start?"
She shook her head in an exasperated way and pointed out that the Italian boys were also pretty, but said "They're really just eye candy." Then she began to press home her point--that I have the knacks of a storyteller and teacher strong enough to make use of them in the guiding sense.
I didn't admit to her at the time just how reasonable and attractive the idea seemed. . .
We briefly entered the museum, where Vicky gave us a five minute rundown of Greek medical practice to compliment the overview she had given us on the bus, and we studied some maps and artifacts before heading to the real reason we had come to this location, the Theater itself.
The Theater of Epidaurus is a huge and imposing structure, approaching as we did from where the actors would have approached, we were given the opportunity to imagine for a moment ourselves as actors in a traditional Greek tragedy. It was capable of comfortably containing an audience of over 14,000 after it was expanded.
It is in nearly perfect condition and the acoustics, which the theater was designed to carry as best as possible, are amazing. The stage is designed with three sweet spots, the center of which would almost always contain the most important actor. This primary spot would carry their voice to literally every seat in the house. Sitting on the very top of 55 rows, I could easily hear Vicky speaking in a conversational tone to four Italian students standing a mere 4 meters or so on the stage. Ironically, the theater's acoustics actually improve as it fills, because it was designed so that as the basin filled with hot air the voices of the actors would be carried along the top of this warm air cushion, easing their travel to the top of the theater.
It was a very cool place for anyone interested in drama, and I enjoyed the stop a great deal.
On the way back to the bus, I was admiring another facet of the stop I enjoyed, one of the many stylish and well-proportioned students from Italy who was wandering back towards her bus, when my mother spun and pointed to me with an exclamation "Y'know, you could do this!"
My concentration completely fuzzled and momentarily disconcerted, not having yet realized that she was referring to leading guided tours overseas, I affected the best Eddie Izzard voice I could and said in a startled tone "Wot, stare at Italian girls all day?"
She laughed. I said "Sure, when do I start?"
She shook her head in an exasperated way and pointed out that the Italian boys were also pretty, but said "They're really just eye candy." Then she began to press home her point--that I have the knacks of a storyteller and teacher strong enough to make use of them in the guiding sense.
I didn't admit to her at the time just how reasonable and attractive the idea seemed. . .
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Nafplio, Pastries, and Poseidon's Rage.
So we dropped our things in the hotel and went back downstairs to do a walking tour of Nafplio with Vicky. As always, she led us to the most important things first, and even promised to show us a great place to get a free lift to the top of one of the hills around town, where we could acquire a good view of Nafplio and the surrounding area from the top.
On the way, she led us past a pastry shop. For those of you that haven't noticed, I wax eloquent about pastries quite often. Those who have traveled with me know I appreciate them more, in many cases, than art and even the female figure. One might say I have a jones for pastry. And I hadn't had a chance to satisfy this jones since we left Aegina, until that morning in Olympia. Having acquired a couple of fantastic pastries there, when we past the shop in Nafplio, I was jonesing pretty bad for another taste, and this one had some local stuff, even some that was the Greek Orthodox version of Kosher - safe for them to eat during periods of what they equate with 'fasting'.
So it was that I conducted a small transaction there to acquire some of these local delights. Unbeknownst to me (scowl) 80 had her camera out, and thus she captured me in my most common pose.
Paying the Pastry-Chef.
The girl to my right in that photograph, who I'm nicknaming QoD, was also in one of her most common poses, near the person purchasing treats. She and my math student, (nickname: Oh-Oh!) were both known to gravitate directly towards whoever was acquiring food, and indeed I think 80% of the goods I purchased in this picture were consumed by the two of them whenever I wasn't looking. I don't mind though. If I had tried to consume everything I bought there I would have probably made myself sick.
Around the corner and up the street, we misplaced an important member of our group, photographer and cinematographer extraordinaire, as well as all around nice-guy, my Dad. Nafplio's streets are narrow and winding, and he had dropped back to film one of the squares. A few quick turns at Vicky's walking pace later, and he was lost in the city. By the time we noticed, we doubted he would pick the right random combination of turns to reunite with us, and I offered to fall back and attempt to locate him.
I fell back a few streets in what I thought was the direction we had taken, but the trip was without success--he had vanished into the city. I took a quick run up a few flights of stairs and cut back across what I had though was my group's path, but found that I had lost them as well.
I had no worries about getting lost in Nafplio, it's a small town and my sense of direction was well honed and calibrated by now. However, I would have preferred to stay with the group, since they were getting a guided tour and Vicky was anything but boring.
A few turns later though, I was quite sure I wouldn't find them, so I gave up and headed towards the water. Our hotel was at the far edge of Old Nafplio, where the new part of the city is beginning, and I was on the opposite side of the old portion, up against the water of the bay, and decided to head for the water, where the city was most open and the likelihood of me spotting someone (or being spotted) was highest, snap a few pictures, and then continue on to our hotel and wait for the group to return.
As I headed down to the water, the wind picked up and I found myself impressed by the quickness with which weather changes in Greece for the second time. At the water level where the once-calm bay was now throwing itself against the small sea walls with enough force to create hands and fingers of water that crashed down near the seafront walkway, the speed at which the storm had appeared seemed to magnify. I stopped and grabbed a few pictures that I'll upload later. Watching the waves crash against the wall it was easy to imagine they were the hands of some angry god striking out against the land, and again I could see how ancient Greek religion must have reflected their search to explain their dynamic and constantly fluctuating environment.
I was spotted by my father before I returned to the hotel, and we two wandered for a time, searching for our group without success. As the weather had already cleared again and the once finicky skies were now mostly blue, we found a small taverna which we thought they were likely to pass on their return to the hotel and sat down to enjoy a bit of Ouzo and pass the time.
Nafplio is a pleasant little town and the park which our taverna faced was quite pretty. We were sitting next to a scooter rental place, and it was here that I first tossed around the idea of taking a long vacation later in life by motorcycle, either purchasing one in Europe or having it shipped, and then doing all your traveling from place to place by bike, and storing all of your gear in saddle-bags and maybe a small pack strapped to the second seat frame. It is an idea that appeals to me and perhaps if I someday win the lottery I'll spend a few months and do it properly.
After our Ouzo was gone we headed back to the hotel and discovered that our group had gotten there a few minutes before us. Happy reunion aside, a handful of us headed back to the highpoint in town that they had visited, so that Dad could get some captures of it for the video he's compiling, and we wandered through town.
As I was rather hungry, we stopped in a local crêpe shop and I ordered a savoury one with some sort of cream cheese, ham, and scallion mixture in it, to take with me as we walked.
This turned out to be a mistake, as the stuff was very soft when warmed, and the girl that made my crêpe had obviously never experienced to go Mexican food, and her attempt and sliding my crêpe into a to go bag turned it from "folded over thin pancake with filling" into "jumbled mess of soft, eggy dough and gooey ham-salad mixture".
Eating it was difficult, sharing it proved nearly impossible without allowing your fellow travelers to basically stick their face in the bag and chomp on the contents. Hipster said it felt like trying to make out with someone's hand, and I had to agree that this was a pretty accurate description.
Covered in yogurt, ham, and crêpe-shrapnel, we wandered through town and visited the peak, where we stopped and got some glorious pictures of the port, which I will try to upload later.
We returned to collect mom and a few other girls who had napped, then headed out again for a nice Greek dinner at a taverna downtown. It was very pleasant and we had a lovely time. The six kids sat together and 80 and I shared some chicken dish and something of which I've forgotten the name, as well as a spicy feta cheese slab that for some reason was in the "salads" section of the menu, despite containing absolutely no vegetable matter of any kind.
Commenting on our fellow diners later on the walk back, Oh-Oh!, who is still in high school, uttered what I declared the quote of the day "I need to learn the Greek word for "Jailbait"!".
On our return, we stopped in a local grocery store and I picked up a liqueur I had never seen before but found very intriguing, Drambuie Cream. It has a fantastic flavour, though it is a tiny bit too sweet for my liking, it makes a great dessert. We returned to the hotel with this and a few other acquisitions (sandwich fixings and snack cookies) and most of us gathered in the boys room where we played cards, told stories, and drank the last of the sweet red wine, the aforementioned liqueur, and a new find - Yes!, a cutty sark product to which I can find no references anywhere on the world wide web.
We had also purchased No! which we consumed later. I shared the Yes! among the group and got in hot water about it later (whoops! Sorry Mum), it turned out to taste like an alcoholic ginger beer ('eh) with some other seasonings and just a hint of scotch flavour. Its antonym turned out to be essentially an alcoholic mountain dew, which was interesting if not necessarily my style.
When I ventured downstairs for ice for all of these drinks, I found our guide and driver sitting with the hotels bartender, all thoroughly engrossed in a movie which I did not, at first, recognize. I decided to wait for a pause to make my request for ice, and in the meantime watch along with them. A grey sky overshadowed a small boy making his way home through a suburban winter environment. The kid walked past a large and heavily dinged up pale blue van, which began to follow behind him, menacingly. The kid, a blond, began to eye the van with worry, and the vans passenger and driver scowled at him. Then I recognized the driver, it was Joe Pesci. And that made me realize that the kid was Macaulay Caulkin, and the movie was the original Home Alone. Here I was, waiting so as not to interrupt three Greek 30-somethings engrossed in an American children's Christmas film in April!
After the pause and after I had gotten my ice, I returned to the room and recounted my story, and we watched most of Home Alone, with Greek subtitles, while we passed the time.
We finally turned in around midnight.
Oh yeah, this was also the day my fan club got officially named, and the High Priest and High Priestess were appointed!
On the way, she led us past a pastry shop. For those of you that haven't noticed, I wax eloquent about pastries quite often. Those who have traveled with me know I appreciate them more, in many cases, than art and even the female figure. One might say I have a jones for pastry. And I hadn't had a chance to satisfy this jones since we left Aegina, until that morning in Olympia. Having acquired a couple of fantastic pastries there, when we past the shop in Nafplio, I was jonesing pretty bad for another taste, and this one had some local stuff, even some that was the Greek Orthodox version of Kosher - safe for them to eat during periods of what they equate with 'fasting'.
So it was that I conducted a small transaction there to acquire some of these local delights. Unbeknownst to me (scowl) 80 had her camera out, and thus she captured me in my most common pose.
Paying the Pastry-Chef.
The girl to my right in that photograph, who I'm nicknaming QoD, was also in one of her most common poses, near the person purchasing treats. She and my math student, (nickname: Oh-Oh!) were both known to gravitate directly towards whoever was acquiring food, and indeed I think 80% of the goods I purchased in this picture were consumed by the two of them whenever I wasn't looking. I don't mind though. If I had tried to consume everything I bought there I would have probably made myself sick.
Around the corner and up the street, we misplaced an important member of our group, photographer and cinematographer extraordinaire, as well as all around nice-guy, my Dad. Nafplio's streets are narrow and winding, and he had dropped back to film one of the squares. A few quick turns at Vicky's walking pace later, and he was lost in the city. By the time we noticed, we doubted he would pick the right random combination of turns to reunite with us, and I offered to fall back and attempt to locate him.
I fell back a few streets in what I thought was the direction we had taken, but the trip was without success--he had vanished into the city. I took a quick run up a few flights of stairs and cut back across what I had though was my group's path, but found that I had lost them as well.
I had no worries about getting lost in Nafplio, it's a small town and my sense of direction was well honed and calibrated by now. However, I would have preferred to stay with the group, since they were getting a guided tour and Vicky was anything but boring.
A few turns later though, I was quite sure I wouldn't find them, so I gave up and headed towards the water. Our hotel was at the far edge of Old Nafplio, where the new part of the city is beginning, and I was on the opposite side of the old portion, up against the water of the bay, and decided to head for the water, where the city was most open and the likelihood of me spotting someone (or being spotted) was highest, snap a few pictures, and then continue on to our hotel and wait for the group to return.
As I headed down to the water, the wind picked up and I found myself impressed by the quickness with which weather changes in Greece for the second time. At the water level where the once-calm bay was now throwing itself against the small sea walls with enough force to create hands and fingers of water that crashed down near the seafront walkway, the speed at which the storm had appeared seemed to magnify. I stopped and grabbed a few pictures that I'll upload later. Watching the waves crash against the wall it was easy to imagine they were the hands of some angry god striking out against the land, and again I could see how ancient Greek religion must have reflected their search to explain their dynamic and constantly fluctuating environment.
I was spotted by my father before I returned to the hotel, and we two wandered for a time, searching for our group without success. As the weather had already cleared again and the once finicky skies were now mostly blue, we found a small taverna which we thought they were likely to pass on their return to the hotel and sat down to enjoy a bit of Ouzo and pass the time.
Nafplio is a pleasant little town and the park which our taverna faced was quite pretty. We were sitting next to a scooter rental place, and it was here that I first tossed around the idea of taking a long vacation later in life by motorcycle, either purchasing one in Europe or having it shipped, and then doing all your traveling from place to place by bike, and storing all of your gear in saddle-bags and maybe a small pack strapped to the second seat frame. It is an idea that appeals to me and perhaps if I someday win the lottery I'll spend a few months and do it properly.
After our Ouzo was gone we headed back to the hotel and discovered that our group had gotten there a few minutes before us. Happy reunion aside, a handful of us headed back to the highpoint in town that they had visited, so that Dad could get some captures of it for the video he's compiling, and we wandered through town.
As I was rather hungry, we stopped in a local crêpe shop and I ordered a savoury one with some sort of cream cheese, ham, and scallion mixture in it, to take with me as we walked.
This turned out to be a mistake, as the stuff was very soft when warmed, and the girl that made my crêpe had obviously never experienced to go Mexican food, and her attempt and sliding my crêpe into a to go bag turned it from "folded over thin pancake with filling" into "jumbled mess of soft, eggy dough and gooey ham-salad mixture".
Eating it was difficult, sharing it proved nearly impossible without allowing your fellow travelers to basically stick their face in the bag and chomp on the contents. Hipster said it felt like trying to make out with someone's hand, and I had to agree that this was a pretty accurate description.
Covered in yogurt, ham, and crêpe-shrapnel, we wandered through town and visited the peak, where we stopped and got some glorious pictures of the port, which I will try to upload later.
We returned to collect mom and a few other girls who had napped, then headed out again for a nice Greek dinner at a taverna downtown. It was very pleasant and we had a lovely time. The six kids sat together and 80 and I shared some chicken dish and something of which I've forgotten the name, as well as a spicy feta cheese slab that for some reason was in the "salads" section of the menu, despite containing absolutely no vegetable matter of any kind.
Commenting on our fellow diners later on the walk back, Oh-Oh!, who is still in high school, uttered what I declared the quote of the day "I need to learn the Greek word for "Jailbait"!".
On our return, we stopped in a local grocery store and I picked up a liqueur I had never seen before but found very intriguing, Drambuie Cream. It has a fantastic flavour, though it is a tiny bit too sweet for my liking, it makes a great dessert. We returned to the hotel with this and a few other acquisitions (sandwich fixings and snack cookies) and most of us gathered in the boys room where we played cards, told stories, and drank the last of the sweet red wine, the aforementioned liqueur, and a new find - Yes!, a cutty sark product to which I can find no references anywhere on the world wide web.
We had also purchased No! which we consumed later. I shared the Yes! among the group and got in hot water about it later (whoops! Sorry Mum), it turned out to taste like an alcoholic ginger beer ('eh) with some other seasonings and just a hint of scotch flavour. Its antonym turned out to be essentially an alcoholic mountain dew, which was interesting if not necessarily my style.
When I ventured downstairs for ice for all of these drinks, I found our guide and driver sitting with the hotels bartender, all thoroughly engrossed in a movie which I did not, at first, recognize. I decided to wait for a pause to make my request for ice, and in the meantime watch along with them. A grey sky overshadowed a small boy making his way home through a suburban winter environment. The kid walked past a large and heavily dinged up pale blue van, which began to follow behind him, menacingly. The kid, a blond, began to eye the van with worry, and the vans passenger and driver scowled at him. Then I recognized the driver, it was Joe Pesci. And that made me realize that the kid was Macaulay Caulkin, and the movie was the original Home Alone. Here I was, waiting so as not to interrupt three Greek 30-somethings engrossed in an American children's Christmas film in April!
After the pause and after I had gotten my ice, I returned to the room and recounted my story, and we watched most of Home Alone, with Greek subtitles, while we passed the time.
We finally turned in around midnight.
Oh yeah, this was also the day my fan club got officially named, and the High Priest and High Priestess were appointed!
Olympia II.
The next morning, we awoke early-ish and headed for Olympia again, this time to see the actual grounds on which the Olympic Games were held, millennia ago. The sun was shining and a few light clouds laced the sky, promising a cheerful, if slightly chilly, morning.
The site is amazing, and much more of it has survived than I expected. They have even resurrected a single column from Zeus' temple, which is pretty impressive. The temple must have been huge, and it is said that in the 5th century AD, an earthquake shook the foundations with so much power that the entire temple opened, like a giant stone flower, from the center, and the sides fell away like petals.
This phenomenon is actually visible, just from looking at how the columns on the south side of the temple fell. Amazing, no?
The site also includes the temple of Hera and an ancient building (The workshop of Pheidias, the master behind the creation of the chryselephantine sculpture of Zeus) that was converted into an early Christian church. Plus, perhaps the most important component to modern visitors, the stadium of the Olympic Games. Hipster and I raced the short track to the end and back, chariot style (no circling, just touch-and-go), and I was sorely trounced. It was fun though, and shockingly enough, despite the cold, my lungs didn't freeze up as bad as they commonly do.
In the ten minutes during which we visited the stadium, the sky turned a dark grey, and by the time we were finishing our race it was raining heavily upon us. The rain and thunder had materialized as if by magic from a clear sky, and it was easy to see how the imagination could easily conjure up a finicky god to explain the sudden onset of such tempestuous weather.
We retired under this liquid duress to the relative safety of our bus, and off we went through the pretty Peloponnesian countryside towards our final overnight stay on the tour, Nafplio. On the way there we stopped and enjoyed local baklava and cream pastries in a tiny town in the mountains, and were introduced to Greek coffee, which is to say coffee resting above a very thick sludge that should not, under any circumstances, be consumed.
While we played Checkers and drank coffee, some of the other group members had sought out a place for drinks of a more substantial nature, and the Captain Morgan's and sprite that 80 consumed in the 10 minutes that she thought we had before returning to the bus (it turned out we had 40, whoops!) was a neat trick. She had obviously finally acclimated to my French cousins' lifestyle. Still, we made sure she drank lots of water before we returned to the bus, and that turned out to have been a pretty mean trick, as the drive to Nafplio took longer than we thought, and when we arrived our guide kindly gave us a quick driving tour before letting us out to check into the hotel. My verbal commentary on how much water was all around us in the sleepy seaside port and Dad's imitation of water droplets probably didn't help matters.
My, we are horribly mean, aren't we?
In any case, disaster narrowly averted after our arrival at the hotel, the boys and I had a momentary informational lesson when it was made clear that HR had never been introduced to the concept of a bidet, and our room's ensuite bathroom contained one. A short explanation later, we were exiting when some of the girls dropped by, and it became apparent that some of them hadn't been introduced to the concept either. So a short explanation was worked out, to the effect of "If you blow your nose, you wash your hands in a sink. If you use a toilet, you wash your ass* in a Bidet").
If any of you wants more information, Nexwell has a very informative website about the benefits on their portable bidet product page (bet you didn't know they made portable ones, did you? I'm guessing the customs guys get a kick out of those when they scan luggage at the airport!).
Where was I?
Ah yes, so we checked in and grabbed our gear to go out for a walk. . .
*If you'll excuse the pun: "Pardon my French." Har!
The site is amazing, and much more of it has survived than I expected. They have even resurrected a single column from Zeus' temple, which is pretty impressive. The temple must have been huge, and it is said that in the 5th century AD, an earthquake shook the foundations with so much power that the entire temple opened, like a giant stone flower, from the center, and the sides fell away like petals.
This phenomenon is actually visible, just from looking at how the columns on the south side of the temple fell. Amazing, no?
The site also includes the temple of Hera and an ancient building (The workshop of Pheidias, the master behind the creation of the chryselephantine sculpture of Zeus) that was converted into an early Christian church. Plus, perhaps the most important component to modern visitors, the stadium of the Olympic Games. Hipster and I raced the short track to the end and back, chariot style (no circling, just touch-and-go), and I was sorely trounced. It was fun though, and shockingly enough, despite the cold, my lungs didn't freeze up as bad as they commonly do.
In the ten minutes during which we visited the stadium, the sky turned a dark grey, and by the time we were finishing our race it was raining heavily upon us. The rain and thunder had materialized as if by magic from a clear sky, and it was easy to see how the imagination could easily conjure up a finicky god to explain the sudden onset of such tempestuous weather.
We retired under this liquid duress to the relative safety of our bus, and off we went through the pretty Peloponnesian countryside towards our final overnight stay on the tour, Nafplio. On the way there we stopped and enjoyed local baklava and cream pastries in a tiny town in the mountains, and were introduced to Greek coffee, which is to say coffee resting above a very thick sludge that should not, under any circumstances, be consumed.
While we played Checkers and drank coffee, some of the other group members had sought out a place for drinks of a more substantial nature, and the Captain Morgan's and sprite that 80 consumed in the 10 minutes that she thought we had before returning to the bus (it turned out we had 40, whoops!) was a neat trick. She had obviously finally acclimated to my French cousins' lifestyle. Still, we made sure she drank lots of water before we returned to the bus, and that turned out to have been a pretty mean trick, as the drive to Nafplio took longer than we thought, and when we arrived our guide kindly gave us a quick driving tour before letting us out to check into the hotel. My verbal commentary on how much water was all around us in the sleepy seaside port and Dad's imitation of water droplets probably didn't help matters.
My, we are horribly mean, aren't we?
In any case, disaster narrowly averted after our arrival at the hotel, the boys and I had a momentary informational lesson when it was made clear that HR had never been introduced to the concept of a bidet, and our room's ensuite bathroom contained one. A short explanation later, we were exiting when some of the girls dropped by, and it became apparent that some of them hadn't been introduced to the concept either. So a short explanation was worked out, to the effect of "If you blow your nose, you wash your hands in a sink. If you use a toilet, you wash your ass* in a Bidet").
If any of you wants more information, Nexwell has a very informative website about the benefits on their portable bidet product page (bet you didn't know they made portable ones, did you? I'm guessing the customs guys get a kick out of those when they scan luggage at the airport!).
Where was I?
Ah yes, so we checked in and grabbed our gear to go out for a walk. . .
*If you'll excuse the pun: "Pardon my French." Har!
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Olympia I.
After we left Delphi, we crossed over to the Peloponnese, the giant island that makes up almost half the landmass of the country.
It isn't geographically speaking, an island, but after the installation of the Corinthian Canal, it became one, in that it is completely surrounded by water.
During the Greek bid for the Olympics, a new bridge was planned for Greece, and the Rion-Antirion Bridge is now the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world. However, length notwithstanding, the Greek ferry system is a part of life and with the exception of this opportunity, there wasn't going to be a chance for the kids to experience a ferry ride, so instead of paying the bridge toll fare, we hopped a ferry for the 20 minute ride across the Corinth Gulf.
Ferry ride completed, we climbed back in the bus and began our tour across the Peloponnese, From Rion we drove south and west past Patras, where the ferry for 80 and me had landed a scant 5 days earlier, and on south to the city of Olympia, site of the ancient Olympic Games and home of the temple of Zeus.
In Olympia we went immediately to the museum, since it closed at 3 that afternoon, and spent a couple hours with Vicky explaining what we were seeing. The introduction to Rich Sculpture (a method invented by Greek artists to get around the taboo against sculpting nude females) was especially intriguing, since that method of depicting the female form would last as a major influence all the way up to, and through, the Renaissance period.
The trick was, that aside from the occasional exposed breast, it was considered poor form (and in fact, a punishable offense) to depict a nude female in public sculpture (though nude males were perfectly ok -- go figure), but the artists of Greece were tired of naked men and wanted to study the muscles of the female form. The important differences in physiology meant that women left unstudied were literally a last frontier for the entire community, and their solution was simple. They depicted women soaking wet, in windy environments. Clad in only thin layers of clothing, and with the wind forcing even these to stick to their skin, they once again became depictable with all their musculature on display, thus making their true forms accessible to the viewer. The method is now known as rich sculpture.
Aside from this, we also got to hear about the decorations of Zeus temple, including the 12 panels which celebrate the 12 works of Hercules, Zeus' bastard child and Hera's unwitting protégé, who would rise from hated to respected via his 12 legendary feats of mental or physical prowess.
Interestingly, the statures of the characters matter greatly in these 12 panels. Whenever the stances of Hercules and his opponent form an X (Chi) shape on the panel, it represents a work where his physical strength was the key to the solution. When the characters are strait up, standing peacefully, it represents a situation where his intellect led to his success.
After we had visited the museum we entered our new hotel, then went out walking and shopping and wandered the streets of Olympia, a town founded almost entirely on the business brought in by its many visitors. We went to a local souvlaki bar for dinner, and had a variety of tasty Greek treats and local wines. Many of the Greek restaurants make the wine on site, and their whites are extremely dry (almost vinegary) while their reds are thin and sharp. Both were interesting, but neither were types I would drink regularly.
After a night of tomfoolery (which got us admonishments from several members of our group and nearly got us some from other visitors at the hotel as well) we finally headed to our rooms. We had another long day ahead of us--in the morning, the tour of the Olympic and Temple sites, and in the afternoon, the drive through the Peloponnesian hills to Nafplio, on the other side of the country.
It isn't geographically speaking, an island, but after the installation of the Corinthian Canal, it became one, in that it is completely surrounded by water.
During the Greek bid for the Olympics, a new bridge was planned for Greece, and the Rion-Antirion Bridge is now the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world. However, length notwithstanding, the Greek ferry system is a part of life and with the exception of this opportunity, there wasn't going to be a chance for the kids to experience a ferry ride, so instead of paying the bridge toll fare, we hopped a ferry for the 20 minute ride across the Corinth Gulf.
Ferry ride completed, we climbed back in the bus and began our tour across the Peloponnese, From Rion we drove south and west past Patras, where the ferry for 80 and me had landed a scant 5 days earlier, and on south to the city of Olympia, site of the ancient Olympic Games and home of the temple of Zeus.
In Olympia we went immediately to the museum, since it closed at 3 that afternoon, and spent a couple hours with Vicky explaining what we were seeing. The introduction to Rich Sculpture (a method invented by Greek artists to get around the taboo against sculpting nude females) was especially intriguing, since that method of depicting the female form would last as a major influence all the way up to, and through, the Renaissance period.
The trick was, that aside from the occasional exposed breast, it was considered poor form (and in fact, a punishable offense) to depict a nude female in public sculpture (though nude males were perfectly ok -- go figure), but the artists of Greece were tired of naked men and wanted to study the muscles of the female form. The important differences in physiology meant that women left unstudied were literally a last frontier for the entire community, and their solution was simple. They depicted women soaking wet, in windy environments. Clad in only thin layers of clothing, and with the wind forcing even these to stick to their skin, they once again became depictable with all their musculature on display, thus making their true forms accessible to the viewer. The method is now known as rich sculpture.
Aside from this, we also got to hear about the decorations of Zeus temple, including the 12 panels which celebrate the 12 works of Hercules, Zeus' bastard child and Hera's unwitting protégé, who would rise from hated to respected via his 12 legendary feats of mental or physical prowess.
Interestingly, the statures of the characters matter greatly in these 12 panels. Whenever the stances of Hercules and his opponent form an X (Chi) shape on the panel, it represents a work where his physical strength was the key to the solution. When the characters are strait up, standing peacefully, it represents a situation where his intellect led to his success.
After we had visited the museum we entered our new hotel, then went out walking and shopping and wandered the streets of Olympia, a town founded almost entirely on the business brought in by its many visitors. We went to a local souvlaki bar for dinner, and had a variety of tasty Greek treats and local wines. Many of the Greek restaurants make the wine on site, and their whites are extremely dry (almost vinegary) while their reds are thin and sharp. Both were interesting, but neither were types I would drink regularly.
After a night of tomfoolery (which got us admonishments from several members of our group and nearly got us some from other visitors at the hotel as well) we finally headed to our rooms. We had another long day ahead of us--in the morning, the tour of the Olympic and Temple sites, and in the afternoon, the drive through the Peloponnesian hills to Nafplio, on the other side of the country.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Delphi.
We left Kalambaka early the next morning and continued across the plain to Delphi, a small city clinging obstinately to the side of Mount Parnassus overlooking an amazing valley of olive trees.
We arrived in Delphi around mid-day and went directly to the museum, where we viewed some amazing sculptures and where Vicky painted a rich mental picture for us all of the decorations of the area so that later when we visited the site we would be able to imagine what it must have been like.
In the museum, we not only got to see restoration being done on the museum floor (which was amazing), but we also got to see a fantastic bronze statue of a chariot racer. This fellow here.
He is intriguing for several reasons, one of which is that he was originally part of a much larger bronze statue including an assistant slave and four huge and majestically posed horses.
These four horses were later taken from Delphi and moved to the Hippodrome in Constantinople, and later still (in 1204 AD) the horses and chariot were taken from the Hippodrome and moved to Venice, where the horses wound up being mounted atop San Marco's Basilica.
Ironically, I didn't know anything about those four horses when I was in Venice, but I had unintentionally taken a picture of them in the background of a picture I took of the Venezian flag, and was able to show my fellow bus travelers the four horses of the temple of Apollo on my digital camera's tiny screen while standing on the other side of the Adriatic Sea in Greece.
After a fascinating tour of the museum, we went on to a nice lunch in downtown Delphi (I had moussaka, a cross between shepard's pie and lasagna) and then went on to the site of the temple as well. There we explored the ruins (pictures up later this week, I hope) and the surrounding area, which was lovely.
That night we crashed in Delphi. Well, most of us did, a handful of us set a horrible precedent by staying up until 1:30 in the morning, when we had to be up at 7:30 as usual, and we would find out the next day that three of the girls hadn't actually fallen asleep until just after 4:00.
Whoops.
We arrived in Delphi around mid-day and went directly to the museum, where we viewed some amazing sculptures and where Vicky painted a rich mental picture for us all of the decorations of the area so that later when we visited the site we would be able to imagine what it must have been like.
In the museum, we not only got to see restoration being done on the museum floor (which was amazing), but we also got to see a fantastic bronze statue of a chariot racer. This fellow here.
He is intriguing for several reasons, one of which is that he was originally part of a much larger bronze statue including an assistant slave and four huge and majestically posed horses.
These four horses were later taken from Delphi and moved to the Hippodrome in Constantinople, and later still (in 1204 AD) the horses and chariot were taken from the Hippodrome and moved to Venice, where the horses wound up being mounted atop San Marco's Basilica.
Ironically, I didn't know anything about those four horses when I was in Venice, but I had unintentionally taken a picture of them in the background of a picture I took of the Venezian flag, and was able to show my fellow bus travelers the four horses of the temple of Apollo on my digital camera's tiny screen while standing on the other side of the Adriatic Sea in Greece.
After a fascinating tour of the museum, we went on to a nice lunch in downtown Delphi (I had moussaka, a cross between shepard's pie and lasagna) and then went on to the site of the temple as well. There we explored the ruins (pictures up later this week, I hope) and the surrounding area, which was lovely.
That night we crashed in Delphi. Well, most of us did, a handful of us set a horrible precedent by staying up until 1:30 in the morning, when we had to be up at 7:30 as usual, and we would find out the next day that three of the girls hadn't actually fallen asleep until just after 4:00.
Whoops.
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Welcome to the Bus Tour.
The crew we are meeting finally arrived at the hotel just before 1AM, and stumbled bleary eyed to their rooms. My mother and father, wound up from 25+ hours of high schooler herding, are in no position to sleep immediately, so we pull out the sweet red Patra region wine I had purchased earlier and some snacks we had left over from the previous day. 80 and I are in better condition than the kids, so the four of us stay up talking and telling stories about Greece and the Paris Airport (where they were trapped for 12 hours) while we wait for their high-tension energy to burn off.
By 4AM, the last of the stories have simmered out and we're all starting to drag. The glass of wine has settled and our systems have finally decided that it is time for bed. We drag ourselves to our rooms (I'm staying with the two boys, who I will be naming Hipster and HR for the rest of the posts).
They have both long since fallen asleep, so I set an alarm that has me up first (6:45) so I can grab a shower and we can all be in the breakfast room by 7:30 with our bags packed. The plan calls for us to drop large bags in the left luggage room if we can, then grab a small bag with a weeks worth of kit and jump in the bus for a tour up to the small town of Kalambaka, at the foot of some of the most amazing rock structures in the world.
We hit the bus early, and met our driver, Yorgos (George) and our Tour Guide, the irrepressibly animated and very Proudly Athenian Vicky, who would be our entertainer, informant, translator and go to girl for the next week.
During the ride north we attempting to recover what energy we had all lost the previous day, especially the kids, and made one brief but important stop, at the Pass of Thermopylae, sight of the incredible last stand of 300 Spartan Warriors and 700 volunteers against the invading Persian Horde (estimated at a quarter of a million men) of Xerxes.
Under a tree and flower covered hill lie the bodies of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for their city-state, and the inscription upon their monument and tomb reads thus:
Go tell the Spartans, passer-by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
It is said that when the Spartans were informed of the size of the Persian Army, it was via the following estimation: "Their army is so massive that their volleys of arrows shall block out the light of the sun."
To which, it is said on of the Spartan force of 300 men replied "Good! For in that case we shall fight in the shade."
It is a beautiful place and for any who consider themselves a student of the ways of warriors it seems even now, 2500 years later, to almost shimmer with the raw energy expended in that engagement.
We piled back in the bus after this stop, and continued across the plain of Thessaly.
At the top of a set of astoundingly sharp cliffs, there are a set of Greek Orthodox monasteries. At one time there were twenty-four different ones nestled in the rocks here, but now the number has reduced to six. Four monasteries and two abbeys for the nuns that inhabit them.
Here's a photo from the monastery we visited. [Ad Note: The females were required to wear skirts (which were provided for visitors) inside the monastery.]
Group shot at a monastery.
Just behind where this photo was taken there is a drop of several hundred feet (perhaps 1,000?), and the sensation as you approach it is reminiscent of the opening of C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair. The mind has difficulty comprehending the sheer distance to the ground in the plain below.
Hopefully I can upload a more descriptive picture later today or tomorrow to add to this post.
After we had explored the rock faces and monasteries, we continued on to our small hotel at the foot of the rocks and did a little shopping (on that trip I posted "Boo!"!), then retired to our hotel's outdoor patio. There we introduced the group to a Patras wine like the one mentioned above, and the national Greek past time of Ouzo. We ate a simple evening meal of breads, meats, and cheeses, and then crashed early, since the next morning we were to meet for breakfast at 7:30 again before continuing on to Delphi, the location of the Oracle and Temple of Apollo.
By 4AM, the last of the stories have simmered out and we're all starting to drag. The glass of wine has settled and our systems have finally decided that it is time for bed. We drag ourselves to our rooms (I'm staying with the two boys, who I will be naming Hipster and HR for the rest of the posts).
They have both long since fallen asleep, so I set an alarm that has me up first (6:45) so I can grab a shower and we can all be in the breakfast room by 7:30 with our bags packed. The plan calls for us to drop large bags in the left luggage room if we can, then grab a small bag with a weeks worth of kit and jump in the bus for a tour up to the small town of Kalambaka, at the foot of some of the most amazing rock structures in the world.
We hit the bus early, and met our driver, Yorgos (George) and our Tour Guide, the irrepressibly animated and very Proudly Athenian Vicky, who would be our entertainer, informant, translator and go to girl for the next week.
During the ride north we attempting to recover what energy we had all lost the previous day, especially the kids, and made one brief but important stop, at the Pass of Thermopylae, sight of the incredible last stand of 300 Spartan Warriors and 700 volunteers against the invading Persian Horde (estimated at a quarter of a million men) of Xerxes.
Under a tree and flower covered hill lie the bodies of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for their city-state, and the inscription upon their monument and tomb reads thus:
Go tell the Spartans, passer-by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
It is said that when the Spartans were informed of the size of the Persian Army, it was via the following estimation: "Their army is so massive that their volleys of arrows shall block out the light of the sun."
To which, it is said on of the Spartan force of 300 men replied "Good! For in that case we shall fight in the shade."
It is a beautiful place and for any who consider themselves a student of the ways of warriors it seems even now, 2500 years later, to almost shimmer with the raw energy expended in that engagement.
We piled back in the bus after this stop, and continued across the plain of Thessaly.
At the top of a set of astoundingly sharp cliffs, there are a set of Greek Orthodox monasteries. At one time there were twenty-four different ones nestled in the rocks here, but now the number has reduced to six. Four monasteries and two abbeys for the nuns that inhabit them.
Here's a photo from the monastery we visited. [Ad Note: The females were required to wear skirts (which were provided for visitors) inside the monastery.]
Group shot at a monastery.
Just behind where this photo was taken there is a drop of several hundred feet (perhaps 1,000?), and the sensation as you approach it is reminiscent of the opening of C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair. The mind has difficulty comprehending the sheer distance to the ground in the plain below.
Hopefully I can upload a more descriptive picture later today or tomorrow to add to this post.
After we had explored the rock faces and monasteries, we continued on to our small hotel at the foot of the rocks and did a little shopping (on that trip I posted "Boo!"!), then retired to our hotel's outdoor patio. There we introduced the group to a Patras wine like the one mentioned above, and the national Greek past time of Ouzo. We ate a simple evening meal of breads, meats, and cheeses, and then crashed early, since the next morning we were to meet for breakfast at 7:30 again before continuing on to Delphi, the location of the Oracle and Temple of Apollo.
Boo!
Hey 80!
Hello from Greece!
(Neat trick, 'eh?)
Note for the rest of you: Today in Greece 80 went looking for a web café and some of the rest of us went looking for a supermarket. While walking we stumbled across a web café, and were sure they hadn't found one yet, so I dashed inside and posted this just to surprise her.
It didn't work, since the café she found was closed. =(
Hello from Greece!
(Neat trick, 'eh?)
Note for the rest of you: Today in Greece 80 went looking for a web café and some of the rest of us went looking for a supermarket. While walking we stumbled across a web café, and were sure they hadn't found one yet, so I dashed inside and posted this just to surprise her.
It didn't work, since the café she found was closed. =(
Saturday, April 09, 2005
The Temple of Aphea and The Hotel Attalos
On the 9th, we awoke mid-morning and packed up our things, then headed off with our day packs. I wanted to see if we could visit the Temple of Aphea, which was supposed to be on a hilltop near our hotel, before we checked out around noon.
We climbed upwards through town and encountered some interesting insects, plus a very annoying P.A. system mounted in a pickup truck. Eventually, after getting turned around a little, we found our Temple, and headed there. It is the Temple of Aphea, supposedly a nymph, the offspring of Zeus and a mortal who is said to have moved to Aegina Island, and was worshipped only there for many years as an invisible deity, who was turned such via the aid of the local population.
Temple of Aphea on Aegina Island.
We wandered the temple and gift shop for a time before returning to our hotel, and enjoyed very much the chance to view an ancient site on its own, in its austere beauty, before joining the tour where we knew we would learn the more technical details and history of the sites we were to visit.
Temple of Aphea.
We left the temple and returned to our hotel to collect our bags and check out. They were wonderfully understanding and even declined to charge me for our first missed night of stay, which was very kind of them.
After we had our bags packed, our ancient host even took us the kilometer into town in his tiny blue MiniMoke (it looked like this one).
If you've never seen a MiniMoke before, just visualize the bastard child of a Jeep Wrangler and a Power Wheels car. It would look like this.
It was an adorable vehicle, and reminded me of Chet's Jalopy, from the Hardy Boys novels. We reached town in one piece (thankfully) and hopped the bus to the other side of the island, where we took another Hydrofoil back to Piraeus.
In Piraeus, wiser for our delay with the train system, we elected to take the Metro, and a mere 70 cents got us all the way into downtown Athens, where we disembarked and headed for our hotel, the world-famous Hotel Attalos. Just a block from Monastiraki metro station, Attalos' rooftop bar offers one of the best views of the Acropolis available anywhere in the city, especially at night, when the brilliantly lit sandstone of Greeces ultimate monument serves as a beautiful reminder of the power and endurance of the Hellenic Empire.
Upon arrival, we enquired after the group, which we assumed had already arrived, deposited their baggage, and headed for the Acropolis. We were surprised when the message at the desk for us was a little different than expected: "They will be arriving later."
How much later?
"Sometime after midnight."
So that was a bit of a shock. It turns out (as we discovered later via some detective work and the AirFrance online flight status report system) that they had missed their morning flight out of Paris for Athens, and this had left them stranded in Paris until that evening.
We prepared the space as best we could for their arrival, checked out a local web cafe, and got dinner at a wonderful little taverna in the heart of Psiri, the district just west of Athinai Street. We would return to it twice more before we left Greece. There we discovered one of our new favorite Greek dishes, called yaritolou politiko, it was a pita covered in Greek Yoghurt and Red Sauce with strips of very tender beef. It was excellent, and we highly recommend the dish to anyone else visiting Athens in the near future.
After dinner, we returned to our room and waited for the arrival of my parents and their students.
We climbed upwards through town and encountered some interesting insects, plus a very annoying P.A. system mounted in a pickup truck. Eventually, after getting turned around a little, we found our Temple, and headed there. It is the Temple of Aphea, supposedly a nymph, the offspring of Zeus and a mortal who is said to have moved to Aegina Island, and was worshipped only there for many years as an invisible deity, who was turned such via the aid of the local population.
Temple of Aphea on Aegina Island.
We wandered the temple and gift shop for a time before returning to our hotel, and enjoyed very much the chance to view an ancient site on its own, in its austere beauty, before joining the tour where we knew we would learn the more technical details and history of the sites we were to visit.
Temple of Aphea.
We left the temple and returned to our hotel to collect our bags and check out. They were wonderfully understanding and even declined to charge me for our first missed night of stay, which was very kind of them.
After we had our bags packed, our ancient host even took us the kilometer into town in his tiny blue MiniMoke (it looked like this one).
If you've never seen a MiniMoke before, just visualize the bastard child of a Jeep Wrangler and a Power Wheels car. It would look like this.
It was an adorable vehicle, and reminded me of Chet's Jalopy, from the Hardy Boys novels. We reached town in one piece (thankfully) and hopped the bus to the other side of the island, where we took another Hydrofoil back to Piraeus.
In Piraeus, wiser for our delay with the train system, we elected to take the Metro, and a mere 70 cents got us all the way into downtown Athens, where we disembarked and headed for our hotel, the world-famous Hotel Attalos. Just a block from Monastiraki metro station, Attalos' rooftop bar offers one of the best views of the Acropolis available anywhere in the city, especially at night, when the brilliantly lit sandstone of Greeces ultimate monument serves as a beautiful reminder of the power and endurance of the Hellenic Empire.
Upon arrival, we enquired after the group, which we assumed had already arrived, deposited their baggage, and headed for the Acropolis. We were surprised when the message at the desk for us was a little different than expected: "They will be arriving later."
How much later?
"Sometime after midnight."
So that was a bit of a shock. It turns out (as we discovered later via some detective work and the AirFrance online flight status report system) that they had missed their morning flight out of Paris for Athens, and this had left them stranded in Paris until that evening.
We prepared the space as best we could for their arrival, checked out a local web cafe, and got dinner at a wonderful little taverna in the heart of Psiri, the district just west of Athinai Street. We would return to it twice more before we left Greece. There we discovered one of our new favorite Greek dishes, called yaritolou politiko, it was a pita covered in Greek Yoghurt and Red Sauce with strips of very tender beef. It was excellent, and we highly recommend the dish to anyone else visiting Athens in the near future.
After dinner, we returned to our room and waited for the arrival of my parents and their students.
Friday, April 08, 2005
Beautiful, Frigid, Kavos Bay
When we awoke, it was just after 12, and the cheery Greek sun was beating down on the white stone of the terrace in front of our door with an inviting passion that begged to be noticed. We wandered out and discovered the world to which we had traveled with amazement. Welcome to Kavos Bay.
View From Kavos Bay.
This picture was taken from a vantage point literally 10 meters from the door of our room.
After we had admired the view we discussed possible courses of entertainment for the remainder of the afternoon. After some discussion we chose to spend some time visiting the sleepy seaside village first, then return to take a dip in the cool blue water of the Mediterranean before cleaning up and heading to a seafood restaurant in town for dinner, if our mid-day excursion had turned up one we liked.
With this plan in mind, we dressed in clothes fit for a mid-day stroll and walked the kilometer or so to 'downtown' Agia Marina.
We didn't plan on Humphrey, or the fact that the Mediterranean is so cold as to make you wonder how it remains liquid at all.
We arrived in town and strolled through the city center window shopping and discussing local fashion and house furnishings. We grabbed a few pastries from a local shop and even located a very nice looking seafood place which we planned on trying for dinner. On our trip we discovered a small shop with very nice clothing where we continued a side-quest we'd been working on for the last three or four days: finding a skirt that 80 liked enough to purchase.
We finally found it, and thankfully it survived Humphrey, so she was able to wear it to dinner that evening.
Speaking of Humphrey, maybe it is time to introduce him.
Humphrey was a very very large dog with a Greek Sheep-Hound frame and German Shepard colouring that discovered us when we decided to walk a while barefoot on Agia Marina's tiny gray beach.
He looks like this.
Playing with Humphrey.
Allow me to make clear: Humphrey is not a small dog. That picture is deceptive--He is large. When he jumps, he puts his paws easily on my shoulders, and I stand 6 feet if I stand an inch.
He and Adrienne played a game.
It started as a game of fetch. Humphrey brought us a small item (or we found one, I forget which) and we threw it for him. He would bound into the surf (sending up 5 foot sprays as he did so) and return with it for us to throw again.
He soon discovered that there was a different game of retrieval that was more fun. 80 had set down her shoes to play with him, and in a moment of divine inspiration he caught one of them up in his mouth and bounced off through the surf towards one end of the beach with Adrienne hot on his heels, shouting for him to stop.
After much cajoling, fighting, and finally distracting (during which I attempted to collect all the other items he might find entertainingly chewy, and take pictures all the while) 80 managed to re-acquire her shoe.
VICTORY!
But then she had to keep entertaining him with other things, since he was a pretty big dog and if she lowered the shoe as low as her own shoulder level in front of him he'd just take it again.
Keeping Humphrey's Attention Away From The Shoes.
So after all this trouble, she returns to where I'm standing with her things and begins to put on her shoes. . . and Humphrey steals her entire bag!
Let me briefly recount the contents of this bag: a digital camera, a thumb drive with all of her schoolwork on it, various other important items, and wrapped around the strap, the plastic bag containing her brand new skirt.
At this point I stopped taking pictures and started trying to actively help, so sadly I don't have the absolutely grand moment of her and Humphrey playing tug-of-war with her bag. After a few moments tugging she makes a command decision and lets go. I have no idea why. I think I actually shouted in surprise. [Ad: yes he did.]
Humphrey cheerfully takes off with this bag and promptly scatters the items throughout a dense clump of seaweed.
We chase him down, retrieve the items, distract him again, and finally retrieve the bag, all of its contents, and the now slightly sandy but ultimately undamaged skirt.
We play with him a bit more while trying to calm him down and eventually leave the beach and Humphrey behind in favour of less exciting surroundings - namely our hotel.
When we arrived there, our aged host and his wife were taking a mid-afternoon snack, and his son was nowhere to be seen. When we arrived, he hopefully asked if we wanted a little drink ("some Ouzo?") and we agreed, after all, the Greek island tradition of an afternoon snack and a little Ouzo is one we would be fools to pass up.
We spent a lovely half hour sitting and attempting (mostly failing!) to communicate with him and his wife. His wife's biggest addition to the conversation with a smile and a sigh and the word "Kaput!" which she could say with such convincing emotion as to make you feel as if the entire world had cheerfully tired along with her.
He spoke a tiny bit of English and pretty decent German, so we attempted to converse as best we could, but it was largely futile. They gave us shots of Ouzo and fresh slices of tomato though, along with the traditional Greek dry break, hard as a crouton. We ate with gusto and they taught us a new tradition, a way of performing a Greek toast with a Collins glass (in which Ouzo is served). You grab the far edge of the glass between your fingertips and thumb, causing it to hang away from you, and then clink the bottom edges of your glass against the others. They said "Chin Chin!" which I think, probably like the French, is derived from the Italian "Chintani", meaning "To your health!"
We drank our Ouzo [Ad: which tastes like liquid black licorice] and expressed our intentions to swim in the Mediterranean Sea. He nodded and smiled. "You swim here!" He said, indicating the ladder at the base of the rocks in front of our hotel. "It is very special!"
By this, we can only assume he meant cold.
If you look back in the picture posted at the top, you can just see, in the bottom right of the image, a small white iron ladder that is bolted directly into the rock. This ladder descends maybe a meter before connecting with the Mediterranean, and is the perfect way to get the hell back out of the water before your skin turns blue.
So, using swimming as an excuse to beg out of a second shot of Ouzo, we made our way to our rooms, changed clothes, and returned to the base of the rocks to enjoy our swim. The water cannot have been above 12 degrees centigrade (54 F). I've gone swimming in 15 before, and eventually (though it takes some time) your skin adjusts to the point where the pins and needles feeling fades. In this water that feeling never faded.
We swam for as long as we could take it (80 at first only jumped in and immediately exited, but I eventually cajoled her back into the water for 5 minutes or so) and then returned to the terrace in front of our room, where I stretched out on the white rocks to absorb as much of the friendly sun as I could while 80 took a hot shower to return her body temperature to normal levels. [Ad: I'm a wimp when it comes to cold water. This past summer I wore a wetsuit when the water went below 82 F. 54 F is CRAZY COLD!]
After we had both cleaned up, we returned to our pick for dinner, and had a lovely time.
Well, Mostly.
It Still Looks Like An Octopus!
The place we had chosen was lovely, and we ordered appetizers and drinks (a pina colada and a Mythos) as well as a main course for two--a seafood sampler.
The appetizers were lovely, and our main course was amazing. It came with 3 different whole fish, two large pieces of fried fish filet, two prawns the size of my fist, and two handfuls of calamari.
The picture above is of 80 reacting to a 'baby' calamari, the ones that are cooked whole, and as she put it "still look like little octopi!"
We had a lovely time and the dinner was amazing. We took two hours to eat it all and enjoyed every minute of it. If I could remember the name of the place, I would recommend it highly by name, but instead suffice it to say this: If you are ever in Agia Marina, go slightly to the west side of the seafront and look for the hotel with the water wheel, you'll recognize it immediately, and it is well worth it. [Ad: Just past Hotel Liberty.]
After our fantastic meal, we returned to our room and made a valiant (but futile) effort to polish off Deception Point, our second Dan Brown book, and the bottle of white wine we had picked up in Lecce two days earlier. We were taking turns reading aloud (with me doing most of the reading, since I do the voices, which 80 finds funny, and 80's voice still hurt).
Success in one led to failure in the other and we started falling asleep before we had finished off the book.
View From Kavos Bay.
This picture was taken from a vantage point literally 10 meters from the door of our room.
After we had admired the view we discussed possible courses of entertainment for the remainder of the afternoon. After some discussion we chose to spend some time visiting the sleepy seaside village first, then return to take a dip in the cool blue water of the Mediterranean before cleaning up and heading to a seafood restaurant in town for dinner, if our mid-day excursion had turned up one we liked.
With this plan in mind, we dressed in clothes fit for a mid-day stroll and walked the kilometer or so to 'downtown' Agia Marina.
We didn't plan on Humphrey, or the fact that the Mediterranean is so cold as to make you wonder how it remains liquid at all.
We arrived in town and strolled through the city center window shopping and discussing local fashion and house furnishings. We grabbed a few pastries from a local shop and even located a very nice looking seafood place which we planned on trying for dinner. On our trip we discovered a small shop with very nice clothing where we continued a side-quest we'd been working on for the last three or four days: finding a skirt that 80 liked enough to purchase.
We finally found it, and thankfully it survived Humphrey, so she was able to wear it to dinner that evening.
Speaking of Humphrey, maybe it is time to introduce him.
Humphrey was a very very large dog with a Greek Sheep-Hound frame and German Shepard colouring that discovered us when we decided to walk a while barefoot on Agia Marina's tiny gray beach.
He looks like this.
Playing with Humphrey.
Allow me to make clear: Humphrey is not a small dog. That picture is deceptive--He is large. When he jumps, he puts his paws easily on my shoulders, and I stand 6 feet if I stand an inch.
He and Adrienne played a game.
It started as a game of fetch. Humphrey brought us a small item (or we found one, I forget which) and we threw it for him. He would bound into the surf (sending up 5 foot sprays as he did so) and return with it for us to throw again.
He soon discovered that there was a different game of retrieval that was more fun. 80 had set down her shoes to play with him, and in a moment of divine inspiration he caught one of them up in his mouth and bounced off through the surf towards one end of the beach with Adrienne hot on his heels, shouting for him to stop.
After much cajoling, fighting, and finally distracting (during which I attempted to collect all the other items he might find entertainingly chewy, and take pictures all the while) 80 managed to re-acquire her shoe.
VICTORY!
But then she had to keep entertaining him with other things, since he was a pretty big dog and if she lowered the shoe as low as her own shoulder level in front of him he'd just take it again.
Keeping Humphrey's Attention Away From The Shoes.
So after all this trouble, she returns to where I'm standing with her things and begins to put on her shoes. . . and Humphrey steals her entire bag!
Let me briefly recount the contents of this bag: a digital camera, a thumb drive with all of her schoolwork on it, various other important items, and wrapped around the strap, the plastic bag containing her brand new skirt.
At this point I stopped taking pictures and started trying to actively help, so sadly I don't have the absolutely grand moment of her and Humphrey playing tug-of-war with her bag. After a few moments tugging she makes a command decision and lets go. I have no idea why. I think I actually shouted in surprise. [Ad: yes he did.]
Humphrey cheerfully takes off with this bag and promptly scatters the items throughout a dense clump of seaweed.
We chase him down, retrieve the items, distract him again, and finally retrieve the bag, all of its contents, and the now slightly sandy but ultimately undamaged skirt.
We play with him a bit more while trying to calm him down and eventually leave the beach and Humphrey behind in favour of less exciting surroundings - namely our hotel.
When we arrived there, our aged host and his wife were taking a mid-afternoon snack, and his son was nowhere to be seen. When we arrived, he hopefully asked if we wanted a little drink ("some Ouzo?") and we agreed, after all, the Greek island tradition of an afternoon snack and a little Ouzo is one we would be fools to pass up.
We spent a lovely half hour sitting and attempting (mostly failing!) to communicate with him and his wife. His wife's biggest addition to the conversation with a smile and a sigh and the word "Kaput!" which she could say with such convincing emotion as to make you feel as if the entire world had cheerfully tired along with her.
He spoke a tiny bit of English and pretty decent German, so we attempted to converse as best we could, but it was largely futile. They gave us shots of Ouzo and fresh slices of tomato though, along with the traditional Greek dry break, hard as a crouton. We ate with gusto and they taught us a new tradition, a way of performing a Greek toast with a Collins glass (in which Ouzo is served). You grab the far edge of the glass between your fingertips and thumb, causing it to hang away from you, and then clink the bottom edges of your glass against the others. They said "Chin Chin!" which I think, probably like the French, is derived from the Italian "Chintani", meaning "To your health!"
We drank our Ouzo [Ad: which tastes like liquid black licorice] and expressed our intentions to swim in the Mediterranean Sea. He nodded and smiled. "You swim here!" He said, indicating the ladder at the base of the rocks in front of our hotel. "It is very special!"
By this, we can only assume he meant cold.
If you look back in the picture posted at the top, you can just see, in the bottom right of the image, a small white iron ladder that is bolted directly into the rock. This ladder descends maybe a meter before connecting with the Mediterranean, and is the perfect way to get the hell back out of the water before your skin turns blue.
So, using swimming as an excuse to beg out of a second shot of Ouzo, we made our way to our rooms, changed clothes, and returned to the base of the rocks to enjoy our swim. The water cannot have been above 12 degrees centigrade (54 F). I've gone swimming in 15 before, and eventually (though it takes some time) your skin adjusts to the point where the pins and needles feeling fades. In this water that feeling never faded.
We swam for as long as we could take it (80 at first only jumped in and immediately exited, but I eventually cajoled her back into the water for 5 minutes or so) and then returned to the terrace in front of our room, where I stretched out on the white rocks to absorb as much of the friendly sun as I could while 80 took a hot shower to return her body temperature to normal levels. [Ad: I'm a wimp when it comes to cold water. This past summer I wore a wetsuit when the water went below 82 F. 54 F is CRAZY COLD!]
After we had both cleaned up, we returned to our pick for dinner, and had a lovely time.
Well, Mostly.
It Still Looks Like An Octopus!
The place we had chosen was lovely, and we ordered appetizers and drinks (a pina colada and a Mythos) as well as a main course for two--a seafood sampler.
The appetizers were lovely, and our main course was amazing. It came with 3 different whole fish, two large pieces of fried fish filet, two prawns the size of my fist, and two handfuls of calamari.
The picture above is of 80 reacting to a 'baby' calamari, the ones that are cooked whole, and as she put it "still look like little octopi!"
We had a lovely time and the dinner was amazing. We took two hours to eat it all and enjoyed every minute of it. If I could remember the name of the place, I would recommend it highly by name, but instead suffice it to say this: If you are ever in Agia Marina, go slightly to the west side of the seafront and look for the hotel with the water wheel, you'll recognize it immediately, and it is well worth it. [Ad: Just past Hotel Liberty.]
After our fantastic meal, we returned to our room and made a valiant (but futile) effort to polish off Deception Point, our second Dan Brown book, and the bottle of white wine we had picked up in Lecce two days earlier. We were taking turns reading aloud (with me doing most of the reading, since I do the voices, which 80 finds funny, and 80's voice still hurt).
Success in one led to failure in the other and we started falling asleep before we had finished off the book.
Where Have You Been?!
Before we crashed on the evening of the 7th, we had attempted to call our hotel, Kavos Bay, on the unreachable island of Aegina, with no success. No matter how many times the phone rang, there was no answer.
The next morning, we awoke early (as had become, by this time, our custom) and on the way to the port we stopped and acquired 15 tiny baklava-esque honey pastries and two large cheese-filled something-or-others.
Then we dashed to the port and purchased tickets on a Hellas Flying Dolphin Hydrofoil scheduled to depart at 7AM for the island of Aegina.
We were the last two people to board the craft, and quickly found seats in the back of the main compartment. There we enjoyed our honey pastries and cheese-thing while accelerating to the point where the entire vehicle rose out of the water. The rising effect starts with the front foils, giving one the deceptive feeling of an angle commonly associated with takeoff in a plane, and making the ride feel that much more like a trip through the air, rather than across the water.
When we arrived at Aegina, it was barely 7:45, and the sleepy seaside finishing village which shares the islands name was just waking up. Fisherman tended to nets in the multi-colored boats along the shore, and bakers were still in the throes of their daily routine, heat billowing from the ovens as they pulled forth the day's allotments of breads.
We asked directions to the bus stop in a local shop, and soon found ourselves joining the last few middle-school children boarding the islands only bus. It seems that the regular commuter bus doubles as the children's transportation each morning, and we stood out sharply with our packs among the pre-teen children eyeing us with inquisitive stares.
On the other side of the town of Aegina, the children all left the bus together, making it transition from so-full-I-was-forced-to-stand, to completely empty sans three people, in one stop. By 8:15 we were rumbling our way up the hillsides of Aegina, cutting a sharp line across the island for its opposite side, the tiny village of Agia Marina, where we hoped to locate our hotel, Kavos Bay.
When the bus finally stopped in the three-street downtown, we got out and immediately headed for the water. We have a photograph of the hotel which showed it's location from the coast, and with the curve of the bay we knew we should be able to estimate it's location then head back up and find it on the roads of the town.
Within one block we had been adopted by a large local dog (apparently we looked pathetic enough for him), who cheerfully followed us for the next two miles of our wanderings, peeing on each new interesting landmark we encountered. 80 began to express doubts as to his ability to maintain this lifestyle, but I countered with the knowledge born of years of dog ownership: male dog bladders are liquid containment facilities the likes of which have never been duplicated elsewhere. They can carry enough liquid to mark every important (or even moderately interesting) item for several square miles.
After a few false starts and wrong turns, we found ourselves on a long, unmarked road that looked like, at our best estimation, it had to head directly to our hotel. We passed Dancing Club Leo, a completely quiet building that wouldn't even begin to see activity until the following month, when tourist season actually began.
We began to doubt our choice just as we were passing the Hotel Apollo, the only sign of life for 300 meters, when a small and dusty red hatchback with a striking resemblance to a Yugo puttered up next to us and the driver leaned his head out. "You are going to Kavos bay?"
"Yes! We were supposed to arrive last night."
"Ah, yes. Go straight on this road. It will curve. Keep going. And there to the right it is the hotel." And with that he was off, clattering towards town on some errand.
We shrugged and continued in our current direction, and the road soon wound around a hillside and we found ourselves looking out across the bay at our adorable little white and blue building. "That's it." 80 said.
Our hearts and footsteps lighter now, we toiled through the roads curves with our absurd adopted dog by our side. As we approached the hotel, we spied our new host, possibly the oldest Greek man ever, at work tinkering on a small vehicle in the driveway of the hotel. The owner's tiny black dog (who we later discovered they called 'Blackie' for their English speaking guests) began to bark. Our adoptee didn't slow, and I shouted apologetically "It isn't ours!" I looked sidelong at our lanky third wheel "Scram, will you? We found where we're staying. You can go." But he seemed determined that something up ahead was probably interesting and therefore worth peeing on and that was an opportunity he didn't intend to miss.
Blackie, however, was a bit more adamant than I was, and as we walked up to our host, he suddenly accelerated like a miniature black missile and we witnessed the entertaining sight of our large adoptee sprinting tail-tucked down the hill with a tiny yapping mass of fury at his heels.
Our owner laughed as we watched this show, and then turned to us. "You are here for hotel?" he said, in very thickly accented and broken English.
"Yes." I began to explain, "We were supposed to arrive yesterday, but we missed . . .the. . .ferry."
My words became more drawn out as the face of our ancient host lit up with joy and he clasped his hands and shook them as if saying a fervent prayer of thanks to the heavens for saving his two guests. I think he feared we had been swallowed by the ocean and now, Poseidon, in his kindness, was restoring us to him. He hugged us both and appeared to nearly quiver with happiness that we had survived the journey to his hotel.
It was a bit surprising but very sweet and we couldn't help but smile. He gestured towards the open doors of the screened-in veranda. "You English? Come. He speak English. My son!"
We followed our animated and wrinkled host into the shady veranda and where there met with another greeting as enthusiastic as the first. Our new friend's son was in his late 40s and covered in dust and paint from the renovations they were preparing on the back of the hotel. He was hurrying in just as we walked through the door and his eyes lit up with a smile and he exclaimed "Where have you been?!" with a level of feeling that we normally associate with overly-worried aunts when it is extremely stormy and you're late to dinner and don't call.
"We missed the ferry!" we explained, again. By now feeling that we should feel as guilty for not being here as they were relieved that we had arrived. "We tried to call but there was no answer."
The son nodded. "Hmm. I am working outside and so sometimes I do not hear the phone."
At this point our ancient host hopped into the conversation. "You want Cafe?" He asked, with a twinkle in his eye, offering us the traditional Greek breakfast of coffee so thick you can grow plants in it. We blinked, owl like, at him and his son, still exhausted from the previous two days travels, and said "Actually, may we just see the room now? We need to sleep."
The son bobbed his head and said. "Ah, yes. My mother has prepared one of the rooms for you.
He bid us follow him and led us back out the other side of the veranda and across a perfectly beautiful terrace full of stone and marble and under a few trees to the other side of the line of hotel rooms. There he found our room and gave us the key. "If you need anything, more blankets, or anything, come and find me." he told us, and left.
We collapsed into bed, and slept until mid-day.
The next morning, we awoke early (as had become, by this time, our custom) and on the way to the port we stopped and acquired 15 tiny baklava-esque honey pastries and two large cheese-filled something-or-others.
Then we dashed to the port and purchased tickets on a Hellas Flying Dolphin Hydrofoil scheduled to depart at 7AM for the island of Aegina.
We were the last two people to board the craft, and quickly found seats in the back of the main compartment. There we enjoyed our honey pastries and cheese-thing while accelerating to the point where the entire vehicle rose out of the water. The rising effect starts with the front foils, giving one the deceptive feeling of an angle commonly associated with takeoff in a plane, and making the ride feel that much more like a trip through the air, rather than across the water.
When we arrived at Aegina, it was barely 7:45, and the sleepy seaside finishing village which shares the islands name was just waking up. Fisherman tended to nets in the multi-colored boats along the shore, and bakers were still in the throes of their daily routine, heat billowing from the ovens as they pulled forth the day's allotments of breads.
We asked directions to the bus stop in a local shop, and soon found ourselves joining the last few middle-school children boarding the islands only bus. It seems that the regular commuter bus doubles as the children's transportation each morning, and we stood out sharply with our packs among the pre-teen children eyeing us with inquisitive stares.
On the other side of the town of Aegina, the children all left the bus together, making it transition from so-full-I-was-forced-to-stand, to completely empty sans three people, in one stop. By 8:15 we were rumbling our way up the hillsides of Aegina, cutting a sharp line across the island for its opposite side, the tiny village of Agia Marina, where we hoped to locate our hotel, Kavos Bay.
When the bus finally stopped in the three-street downtown, we got out and immediately headed for the water. We have a photograph of the hotel which showed it's location from the coast, and with the curve of the bay we knew we should be able to estimate it's location then head back up and find it on the roads of the town.
Within one block we had been adopted by a large local dog (apparently we looked pathetic enough for him), who cheerfully followed us for the next two miles of our wanderings, peeing on each new interesting landmark we encountered. 80 began to express doubts as to his ability to maintain this lifestyle, but I countered with the knowledge born of years of dog ownership: male dog bladders are liquid containment facilities the likes of which have never been duplicated elsewhere. They can carry enough liquid to mark every important (or even moderately interesting) item for several square miles.
After a few false starts and wrong turns, we found ourselves on a long, unmarked road that looked like, at our best estimation, it had to head directly to our hotel. We passed Dancing Club Leo, a completely quiet building that wouldn't even begin to see activity until the following month, when tourist season actually began.
We began to doubt our choice just as we were passing the Hotel Apollo, the only sign of life for 300 meters, when a small and dusty red hatchback with a striking resemblance to a Yugo puttered up next to us and the driver leaned his head out. "You are going to Kavos bay?"
"Yes! We were supposed to arrive last night."
"Ah, yes. Go straight on this road. It will curve. Keep going. And there to the right it is the hotel." And with that he was off, clattering towards town on some errand.
We shrugged and continued in our current direction, and the road soon wound around a hillside and we found ourselves looking out across the bay at our adorable little white and blue building. "That's it." 80 said.
Our hearts and footsteps lighter now, we toiled through the roads curves with our absurd adopted dog by our side. As we approached the hotel, we spied our new host, possibly the oldest Greek man ever, at work tinkering on a small vehicle in the driveway of the hotel. The owner's tiny black dog (who we later discovered they called 'Blackie' for their English speaking guests) began to bark. Our adoptee didn't slow, and I shouted apologetically "It isn't ours!" I looked sidelong at our lanky third wheel "Scram, will you? We found where we're staying. You can go." But he seemed determined that something up ahead was probably interesting and therefore worth peeing on and that was an opportunity he didn't intend to miss.
Blackie, however, was a bit more adamant than I was, and as we walked up to our host, he suddenly accelerated like a miniature black missile and we witnessed the entertaining sight of our large adoptee sprinting tail-tucked down the hill with a tiny yapping mass of fury at his heels.
Our owner laughed as we watched this show, and then turned to us. "You are here for hotel?" he said, in very thickly accented and broken English.
"Yes." I began to explain, "We were supposed to arrive yesterday, but we missed . . .the. . .ferry."
My words became more drawn out as the face of our ancient host lit up with joy and he clasped his hands and shook them as if saying a fervent prayer of thanks to the heavens for saving his two guests. I think he feared we had been swallowed by the ocean and now, Poseidon, in his kindness, was restoring us to him. He hugged us both and appeared to nearly quiver with happiness that we had survived the journey to his hotel.
It was a bit surprising but very sweet and we couldn't help but smile. He gestured towards the open doors of the screened-in veranda. "You English? Come. He speak English. My son!"
We followed our animated and wrinkled host into the shady veranda and where there met with another greeting as enthusiastic as the first. Our new friend's son was in his late 40s and covered in dust and paint from the renovations they were preparing on the back of the hotel. He was hurrying in just as we walked through the door and his eyes lit up with a smile and he exclaimed "Where have you been?!" with a level of feeling that we normally associate with overly-worried aunts when it is extremely stormy and you're late to dinner and don't call.
"We missed the ferry!" we explained, again. By now feeling that we should feel as guilty for not being here as they were relieved that we had arrived. "We tried to call but there was no answer."
The son nodded. "Hmm. I am working outside and so sometimes I do not hear the phone."
At this point our ancient host hopped into the conversation. "You want Cafe?" He asked, with a twinkle in his eye, offering us the traditional Greek breakfast of coffee so thick you can grow plants in it. We blinked, owl like, at him and his son, still exhausted from the previous two days travels, and said "Actually, may we just see the room now? We need to sleep."
The son bobbed his head and said. "Ah, yes. My mother has prepared one of the rooms for you.
He bid us follow him and led us back out the other side of the veranda and across a perfectly beautiful terrace full of stone and marble and under a few trees to the other side of the line of hotel rooms. There he found our room and gave us the key. "If you need anything, more blankets, or anything, come and find me." he told us, and left.
We collapsed into bed, and slept until mid-day.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Patras, Piraeus, and Our Very First Greek Dog.
We climbed on the ferry in the port of Bari, Italy, at 18:00, on the evening of the 6th. The ferry, which was scheduled to depart at 20:00, wisely decided to depart a full hour and a half later, close to 21:45.
Thus we experienced our first real taste of the Italian concept of time. By which I mean the lack of any word for "late" anywhere in their language.
(No, really, they don't have one; their word is rooted in a Latin word for 'slow' or 'held back').
We paid for meals on the ferry, because my throat was killing me, which were very good, for transportation food. I had some sort of Greek meatball with French fries, and 80 had some sort of pork thing, I think. In any case, it was tasty.
Via the convenient bending of space-time, we arrived at 12:30, a mere 30 minutes behind 'schedule' (such as it is--they don't have a word for that either, the one they use correlates to our word for program, which is to say the order in which things occur, not the times at which they should occur) in Patras, Greece.
I should point out three things at this point.
1) Neither of us speak Greek.
2) Both of us have just spent the last 18 hours on a Ferry, cat napping whenever possible.
3) Neither of us has had breakfast.
We were not exactly the most brilliant and intrepid explorers at this point, or even the most conscious.
Therefore when we declined a taxi to Athens and instead asked the location of the train station, we were pointed in the complete wrong direction by a taxi driver (I will never trust a Greek taxi driver again) and wandered almost a mile in the wrong direction in our search for a train station.
During this time two important things happened: we met a couple of fellow backpackers, also on vacation from study-abroad programs (one in London and one in Edinburgh) and we acquired a dog.
The fellow backpackers were named Zuzannah and Alanna which I will look up later, because I forgot my notebook (it is in my other backpack). The dog, we nicknamed Lassie.
For those of you unfamiliar with Greek dogs: here is an overview. Some Greeks own dogs as pets, however, much like in the states we have public parks which welcome visitors, stray Greek dogs adopt people for absolutely no reason. You'll be walking along and find a dog walking with you, and this dog will follow you (pausing perhaps to smell something or being distracted by food, but mostly just at your side) sometimes for miles.
The strays are friendly, almost never bark at anything (in fact, I can't remember any stray Greek dog barking during our entire trip) and apparently have nothing better to do than keep pathetic looking tourists company. If only they knew how to direct us to the train station, all would be well with the world.
In any case, after we received fresh directions, we walked back to where the five of us had started, then just around the corner of the terminal, and tada! Less than 100 meters from the ferry terminal was our train station.
Lassie left us before we arrived at the train station, which is probably just as well, since we had decided we were adopting her if she was quick-witted enough to sneak herself onto the train without getting caught.
It was at this time that we discovered that the Greek train system draws it's inspiration from the Italian concept of schedule, and wound up boarding the next train for Athens which arrived at a truly random time and took over 6 HOURS to get us to the port town of Piraeus just south of Athens (bearing in mind that Athens is a 2.5 hour drive from Patras, and the Metro ride from downtown Athens to Piraeus is another 25 minutes).
So it was that we stumbled out of the train in Piraeus at 19:01 and made our way to the nearest Ferry ticket counter (there are dozens of these all along the waterfront). Unfortunately this counter, and every other one in Piraeus, told us the same thing -- the very last ferry to Aegina, our destination, leaves at 19:00, and there is no other way to reach the island that night.
After an hour of searching, we finally gave up and acquired a hotel room for ourselves, planning to leave for Aegina as early as possible the following morning. Our hotel room was nice (though tiny) and we went to sleep early so that we would be up early enough to reach Aegina before 8AM the next day).
Thus we experienced our first real taste of the Italian concept of time. By which I mean the lack of any word for "late" anywhere in their language.
(No, really, they don't have one; their word is rooted in a Latin word for 'slow' or 'held back').
We paid for meals on the ferry, because my throat was killing me, which were very good, for transportation food. I had some sort of Greek meatball with French fries, and 80 had some sort of pork thing, I think. In any case, it was tasty.
Via the convenient bending of space-time, we arrived at 12:30, a mere 30 minutes behind 'schedule' (such as it is--they don't have a word for that either, the one they use correlates to our word for program, which is to say the order in which things occur, not the times at which they should occur) in Patras, Greece.
I should point out three things at this point.
1) Neither of us speak Greek.
2) Both of us have just spent the last 18 hours on a Ferry, cat napping whenever possible.
3) Neither of us has had breakfast.
We were not exactly the most brilliant and intrepid explorers at this point, or even the most conscious.
Therefore when we declined a taxi to Athens and instead asked the location of the train station, we were pointed in the complete wrong direction by a taxi driver (I will never trust a Greek taxi driver again) and wandered almost a mile in the wrong direction in our search for a train station.
During this time two important things happened: we met a couple of fellow backpackers, also on vacation from study-abroad programs (one in London and one in Edinburgh) and we acquired a dog.
The fellow backpackers were named Zuzannah and Alanna which I will look up later, because I forgot my notebook (it is in my other backpack). The dog, we nicknamed Lassie.
For those of you unfamiliar with Greek dogs: here is an overview. Some Greeks own dogs as pets, however, much like in the states we have public parks which welcome visitors, stray Greek dogs adopt people for absolutely no reason. You'll be walking along and find a dog walking with you, and this dog will follow you (pausing perhaps to smell something or being distracted by food, but mostly just at your side) sometimes for miles.
The strays are friendly, almost never bark at anything (in fact, I can't remember any stray Greek dog barking during our entire trip) and apparently have nothing better to do than keep pathetic looking tourists company. If only they knew how to direct us to the train station, all would be well with the world.
In any case, after we received fresh directions, we walked back to where the five of us had started, then just around the corner of the terminal, and tada! Less than 100 meters from the ferry terminal was our train station.
Lassie left us before we arrived at the train station, which is probably just as well, since we had decided we were adopting her if she was quick-witted enough to sneak herself onto the train without getting caught.
It was at this time that we discovered that the Greek train system draws it's inspiration from the Italian concept of schedule, and wound up boarding the next train for Athens which arrived at a truly random time and took over 6 HOURS to get us to the port town of Piraeus just south of Athens (bearing in mind that Athens is a 2.5 hour drive from Patras, and the Metro ride from downtown Athens to Piraeus is another 25 minutes).
So it was that we stumbled out of the train in Piraeus at 19:01 and made our way to the nearest Ferry ticket counter (there are dozens of these all along the waterfront). Unfortunately this counter, and every other one in Piraeus, told us the same thing -- the very last ferry to Aegina, our destination, leaves at 19:00, and there is no other way to reach the island that night.
After an hour of searching, we finally gave up and acquired a hotel room for ourselves, planning to leave for Aegina as early as possible the following morning. Our hotel room was nice (though tiny) and we went to sleep early so that we would be up early enough to reach Aegina before 8AM the next day).
Confusion Ferry.
Prologue:
Somebody died in a sinister yet intriguing manner.
Excerpt from Chapter 4:
The rocking of the superfast ferry cutting its way across the cold Aegean Sea from Italy to Greece woke Adrienne Roth from her brief sleep. Her blue-gray eyes and fabulous hair both quivered as she looked across the lounge and realized that something was desperately out of place.
"What's wrong?" a gruff voice asked her, causing her to drop her expensive Dolce and Gabana bag into the seat next to her and turn towards the voice.
Patrick Geffin was a bear of a man, with a gruff, scratchy voice brought on by years of work as a shouter, a top-secret job in an unknown government agency that the author of this book just invented because all the real ones are too boring.
"Nothing serious. Or at least I plan on thinking it isn't serious for the next 3/4ths of the book." Adrienne replied. "It's just that everyone on this ferry, and the past 18 trains we've taken through exotic locations like Southern Spain and the Black Forest, has been reading the same books. The Dan Brown Novels."
Patrick's eyes flashed, and Adrienne immediately suspected he might be the villain behind some sinister plot--this was stupid of her, since the villain is always the one that seems most helpful at the beginning of the book. "What do you mean?" he said.
"Well, we were sent on this amazing voyage by a secret government spy-cell that works with lasers bounced off the rim of the atmosphere to determine the location of underwater submarine refueling stations (a job which requires no field-work, yet inexplicably places us in the field), but obviously this mystery of the popularity of Dan Brown novels is a far more pressing concern and we should investigate it in detail."
Patrick shook his head wearily. "I think you're getting off topic. Why don't we continue to try and determine why that mysterious person died in the prologue without so much as one hint of resistance?"
With a sigh, Adrienne nodded. Mysteries were mysteries after all, and that unimportant dead man had sparked off another one. Just once Adrienne wanted a nice, easy mission that involved actually doing the job that her character's three-paragraph description invoked--something about submarines, she thought--but apparently it was not to be.
She turned back towards the task at hand--unraveling a series of clues and riddles that would take a reader of Brian Jacque's Redwall series less than 15 minutes to solve, and tossed her hair in annoyance. "Patrick, do you ever wonder why we get sent on these missions?"
"I think it is because we are the only two attractive people in the agency, and if we sit in the cubicle farm too long, they get jealous." Patrick said, inserting a sad attempt at humour into their thrill-filled lives. Adrienne found this charming, though no-one was quite sure why.
Excerpt from chapter 1,112:
The villain died in a gruesome and dramatic manner.
Excerpt from Chapter 1,459:
Somebody got laid.
12-34-13-51-16-14-12-09-14-03-11-19
Explanation: Go read some Dan Brown. We recommend starting with Da Vinci Code, because that is the one everyone talks about, and then Digital Fortress, because around the edges are bits that are almost palatable, as long as you have no formal computer training. Then, if you want the literary equivalent of food poisoning, we recommend Deception Point.
Somebody died in a sinister yet intriguing manner.
Excerpt from Chapter 4:
The rocking of the superfast ferry cutting its way across the cold Aegean Sea from Italy to Greece woke Adrienne Roth from her brief sleep. Her blue-gray eyes and fabulous hair both quivered as she looked across the lounge and realized that something was desperately out of place.
"What's wrong?" a gruff voice asked her, causing her to drop her expensive Dolce and Gabana bag into the seat next to her and turn towards the voice.
Patrick Geffin was a bear of a man, with a gruff, scratchy voice brought on by years of work as a shouter, a top-secret job in an unknown government agency that the author of this book just invented because all the real ones are too boring.
"Nothing serious. Or at least I plan on thinking it isn't serious for the next 3/4ths of the book." Adrienne replied. "It's just that everyone on this ferry, and the past 18 trains we've taken through exotic locations like Southern Spain and the Black Forest, has been reading the same books. The Dan Brown Novels."
Patrick's eyes flashed, and Adrienne immediately suspected he might be the villain behind some sinister plot--this was stupid of her, since the villain is always the one that seems most helpful at the beginning of the book. "What do you mean?" he said.
"Well, we were sent on this amazing voyage by a secret government spy-cell that works with lasers bounced off the rim of the atmosphere to determine the location of underwater submarine refueling stations (a job which requires no field-work, yet inexplicably places us in the field), but obviously this mystery of the popularity of Dan Brown novels is a far more pressing concern and we should investigate it in detail."
Patrick shook his head wearily. "I think you're getting off topic. Why don't we continue to try and determine why that mysterious person died in the prologue without so much as one hint of resistance?"
With a sigh, Adrienne nodded. Mysteries were mysteries after all, and that unimportant dead man had sparked off another one. Just once Adrienne wanted a nice, easy mission that involved actually doing the job that her character's three-paragraph description invoked--something about submarines, she thought--but apparently it was not to be.
She turned back towards the task at hand--unraveling a series of clues and riddles that would take a reader of Brian Jacque's Redwall series less than 15 minutes to solve, and tossed her hair in annoyance. "Patrick, do you ever wonder why we get sent on these missions?"
"I think it is because we are the only two attractive people in the agency, and if we sit in the cubicle farm too long, they get jealous." Patrick said, inserting a sad attempt at humour into their thrill-filled lives. Adrienne found this charming, though no-one was quite sure why.
Excerpt from chapter 1,112:
The villain died in a gruesome and dramatic manner.
Excerpt from Chapter 1,459:
Somebody got laid.
12-34-13-51-16-14-12-09-14-03-11-19
Explanation: Go read some Dan Brown. We recommend starting with Da Vinci Code, because that is the one everyone talks about, and then Digital Fortress, because around the edges are bits that are almost palatable, as long as you have no formal computer training. Then, if you want the literary equivalent of food poisoning, we recommend Deception Point.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Lecce and Morizzo the Miracle Worker.
We had originally planned travel down to Bari on the southeastern tip of the Italian boot via Rome, leaving earlier in the morning and spending the afternoon seeing just a couple of the most important sites, Trestevere Fountain and the Coliseum, before re-entering the train system and heading for Bari.
However, the Pope's death made travel around Rome difficult, and we didn't want to find ourselves stuck in the Rome area and unable to get transportation where and when we needed it. In addition, when searching for hostels we'd found nothing ideal in Bari, but we had located one very nice sounding place in Brindisi, just an hour and a half further south by train.
So instead we used the train system to work our way to a town due west of Firenze named Ancona on the coast of Eastern Italy. From there we took a regional train all the way down the 'shin' to Bari, and then, at 11:20PM we hopped the last train out of Bari to Brindisi. We arrived there at 0:40 on the morning of the 6th and an enterprising taxi driver picked us up. "Hostel?" he queried. We looked at him and at each other. "Sure. Yes. Great!"
When we reached the Hostel and had handed the driver €5, our burly, bald, kindhearted and welcoming host Morizzo led us inside with a slight chastisement "You should have called me!" He said in perfect English, gesturing to the bright blue and yellow hostel van parked by the doorway "I would have come and gotten you for free!"
We thanked him and explained that we had forgotten to write down his number, and in any case we appreciated the kindness. He introduced us to the hostels two very sweet dogs, Duke and Orsa, and led us inside.
"We haven't got any more girls dorm beds, and we won't put you in with the guys. Is a private with two twins ok? It's €19 instead of €14."
80 and I nodded emphatically, the length of the day finally catching up with us. "It sounds lovely. Thanks."
We left our passports with Morizzo and the girl at the desk showed us to our huge and spacious room. We dropped our bags, climbed into our beds, and collapsed, exhausted.
The next morning we awoke and showered, then repacked our things and headed downstairs. The girl from the previous evening offered us what little was available for breakfast, snack cakes and coffee, and queried us on our plans for the day. After learning we where going to try and day trip to Lecce before heading north to Bari and the ferry she explained "Oh, Morizzo is taking a bunch of people into the port soon, so you can catch a ride to the train station."
We welcomed this and collected our passports then jumped in the bus with 8 or so other travelers headed for the ports and the trains. We toured Lecce for the rest of the morning until early afternoon, stopped to acquire pastries, shoe-shop, and enjoy the eclectic architecture of the small city. It was a pleasant place and we even made a few purchases that sweetened the visit nicely. While there I snapped this photo of a local produce truck.
Fresh Produce.
We caught a train out of Lecce that landed us back in Brindisi at 14:15, and we hoped to catch one of two trains to Bari. The first was at 14:45 and the second was at 15:12. We knew that it had been tough to get everyone out the door that morning (it had delayed us so much we'd considered walking what we thought to be the short distance to the train station) and so we hoped to arrive with plenty of time to walk to the hostel, grab our bags and ask for a ride back to the station. Since our ferry left at 20:00, that would give us plenty of time, but delay of over an hour between the 15:12 and the next train for Bari meant that if we missed that train we'd be in trouble.
At 14:45, when we finally arrived back at the Hostel we were slightly more concerned about the time, and quickly snatched our bags and filled our water bottles.
I approached Morizzo, sitting at the long table in the common room and watching the European equivalent of a Discovery Channel special on bridges. "Hey Morizzo. Do you think you could work a miracle for me?"
Morizzo looked up and his eyes clouded with a mixture of curiosity and hesitation "What is it?"
"We've got a train we're trying to catch that leaves at 15:12 and we need a ride to the station. Do you think it can be done?"
His eyes snapped to his watch, and he looked back at me. "I think so. Are your bags ready?"
"We're going to put them in the van right now." I responded.
One of his assistants jumped in the passenger seat and less than 90 seconds later we were out the front gate and rumbling towards what passes for downtown in the sleepy port of Brindisi.
When we arrived at the station at 15:02, Morizzo glanced at his watch again and smiled. "There you go. Only a 12 minute drive." His eyes said "How is that for a miracle?"
I grinned and shook his hand. "Thank you, Morizzo. Two more like that and I will nominate you for sainthood."
We grabbed our bags and 10 minutes later we were being whisked back up the Italian coast, towards Bari, and soon Greece.
However, the Pope's death made travel around Rome difficult, and we didn't want to find ourselves stuck in the Rome area and unable to get transportation where and when we needed it. In addition, when searching for hostels we'd found nothing ideal in Bari, but we had located one very nice sounding place in Brindisi, just an hour and a half further south by train.
So instead we used the train system to work our way to a town due west of Firenze named Ancona on the coast of Eastern Italy. From there we took a regional train all the way down the 'shin' to Bari, and then, at 11:20PM we hopped the last train out of Bari to Brindisi. We arrived there at 0:40 on the morning of the 6th and an enterprising taxi driver picked us up. "Hostel?" he queried. We looked at him and at each other. "Sure. Yes. Great!"
When we reached the Hostel and had handed the driver €5, our burly, bald, kindhearted and welcoming host Morizzo led us inside with a slight chastisement "You should have called me!" He said in perfect English, gesturing to the bright blue and yellow hostel van parked by the doorway "I would have come and gotten you for free!"
We thanked him and explained that we had forgotten to write down his number, and in any case we appreciated the kindness. He introduced us to the hostels two very sweet dogs, Duke and Orsa, and led us inside.
"We haven't got any more girls dorm beds, and we won't put you in with the guys. Is a private with two twins ok? It's €19 instead of €14."
80 and I nodded emphatically, the length of the day finally catching up with us. "It sounds lovely. Thanks."
We left our passports with Morizzo and the girl at the desk showed us to our huge and spacious room. We dropped our bags, climbed into our beds, and collapsed, exhausted.
The next morning we awoke and showered, then repacked our things and headed downstairs. The girl from the previous evening offered us what little was available for breakfast, snack cakes and coffee, and queried us on our plans for the day. After learning we where going to try and day trip to Lecce before heading north to Bari and the ferry she explained "Oh, Morizzo is taking a bunch of people into the port soon, so you can catch a ride to the train station."
We welcomed this and collected our passports then jumped in the bus with 8 or so other travelers headed for the ports and the trains. We toured Lecce for the rest of the morning until early afternoon, stopped to acquire pastries, shoe-shop, and enjoy the eclectic architecture of the small city. It was a pleasant place and we even made a few purchases that sweetened the visit nicely. While there I snapped this photo of a local produce truck.
Fresh Produce.
We caught a train out of Lecce that landed us back in Brindisi at 14:15, and we hoped to catch one of two trains to Bari. The first was at 14:45 and the second was at 15:12. We knew that it had been tough to get everyone out the door that morning (it had delayed us so much we'd considered walking what we thought to be the short distance to the train station) and so we hoped to arrive with plenty of time to walk to the hostel, grab our bags and ask for a ride back to the station. Since our ferry left at 20:00, that would give us plenty of time, but delay of over an hour between the 15:12 and the next train for Bari meant that if we missed that train we'd be in trouble.
At 14:45, when we finally arrived back at the Hostel we were slightly more concerned about the time, and quickly snatched our bags and filled our water bottles.
I approached Morizzo, sitting at the long table in the common room and watching the European equivalent of a Discovery Channel special on bridges. "Hey Morizzo. Do you think you could work a miracle for me?"
Morizzo looked up and his eyes clouded with a mixture of curiosity and hesitation "What is it?"
"We've got a train we're trying to catch that leaves at 15:12 and we need a ride to the station. Do you think it can be done?"
His eyes snapped to his watch, and he looked back at me. "I think so. Are your bags ready?"
"We're going to put them in the van right now." I responded.
One of his assistants jumped in the passenger seat and less than 90 seconds later we were out the front gate and rumbling towards what passes for downtown in the sleepy port of Brindisi.
When we arrived at the station at 15:02, Morizzo glanced at his watch again and smiled. "There you go. Only a 12 minute drive." His eyes said "How is that for a miracle?"
I grinned and shook his hand. "Thank you, Morizzo. Two more like that and I will nominate you for sainthood."
We grabbed our bags and 10 minutes later we were being whisked back up the Italian coast, towards Bari, and soon Greece.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
David.
The next morning, Adrienne woke me up. "Patrick, both of our alarms have gone off. It's time to get up."
"Oh, Ok."
I scrambled out of bed. The previous night we had set our alarms for 7:45, and one of our room-mates (I forget her name. I nicknamed her "Texas" within 30 seconds of meeting her [Adrienne says her name was Erin]) had asked that we wake her at the same time since her alarm clock was deafening. "It sounds like a fire alarm. I'm afraid I'll wake up the whole building." We had assured her that was no problem.
So I went over and nudged her shin. "Hey, it's 7:45."
Murmurs came from under her blanketed form. "Huh? Oh. Ok."
I then returned to find my alarm clock. It normally wakes me almost instantly and I was surprised it hadn't. Besides I had to turn it off so it wouldn't continue to go off while I was in the shower.
I glanced at the time as I reached for the alarm function's on-off switch. 6:53 stared at me in the darkness.
"What the . . . Hey 80, what time did you say it was?"
"7:45. Why?"
"80. It isn't even seven o'clock yet. I could have slept for another 40 minutes."
"What? Both our alarms went off?"
"No, they didn't. They couldn't have. Mine is still over 50 minutes from it's set time."
"Oh. Sorry."
Fully awake (and feeling a little guilty about Texas) I grabbed my shower stuff and headed for the shower.
When I returned from the shower and had repacked my gear, I went back over at the correct time and shook her leg again. I figure she had looked at a clock and figured out my error. "Hey, it's 7:45 again." I said.
I heard laughter from under the sheet and a muffled "Ok. Thanks."
A few minutes later we sat in the common room and checked e-mail, and Texas came out as we grabbed a quick breakfast. "Thanks for the wakeup."
"No problem. Sorry about the early mix-up. 80 here told me that our alarms had both gone off an hour before they really did."
After Allejandro made a laughing entrance and put his autograph on Texas' hip (teaching us a valuable lesson: exposed midriffs will get you extra unsolicited attention at Firenze Inn!) we set our gear in a corner and hit the streets of Florence with only two objectives: See David, and do a little shopping.
After visiting the magnificent sculpture, which is a lot more powerful in person than I expected (it has the opposite effect the Mona Lisa has when you first see it) we toured the museum in which it is housed, and then hit the streets of Florence.
An hour of window shopping and wandering left us with slightly lighter wallets and a few memorable purchases that will serve as pleasant reminders of our short visit to the city. Within another two hours we had grabbed our bags and were back in the train system. It was time to see the Italian coast and head for Bari and Brindisi. In just 36 hours we intended to be on a Ferry for Greece.
"Oh, Ok."
I scrambled out of bed. The previous night we had set our alarms for 7:45, and one of our room-mates (I forget her name. I nicknamed her "Texas" within 30 seconds of meeting her [Adrienne says her name was Erin]) had asked that we wake her at the same time since her alarm clock was deafening. "It sounds like a fire alarm. I'm afraid I'll wake up the whole building." We had assured her that was no problem.
So I went over and nudged her shin. "Hey, it's 7:45."
Murmurs came from under her blanketed form. "Huh? Oh. Ok."
I then returned to find my alarm clock. It normally wakes me almost instantly and I was surprised it hadn't. Besides I had to turn it off so it wouldn't continue to go off while I was in the shower.
I glanced at the time as I reached for the alarm function's on-off switch. 6:53 stared at me in the darkness.
"What the . . . Hey 80, what time did you say it was?"
"7:45. Why?"
"80. It isn't even seven o'clock yet. I could have slept for another 40 minutes."
"What? Both our alarms went off?"
"No, they didn't. They couldn't have. Mine is still over 50 minutes from it's set time."
"Oh. Sorry."
Fully awake (and feeling a little guilty about Texas) I grabbed my shower stuff and headed for the shower.
When I returned from the shower and had repacked my gear, I went back over at the correct time and shook her leg again. I figure she had looked at a clock and figured out my error. "Hey, it's 7:45 again." I said.
I heard laughter from under the sheet and a muffled "Ok. Thanks."
A few minutes later we sat in the common room and checked e-mail, and Texas came out as we grabbed a quick breakfast. "Thanks for the wakeup."
"No problem. Sorry about the early mix-up. 80 here told me that our alarms had both gone off an hour before they really did."
After Allejandro made a laughing entrance and put his autograph on Texas' hip (teaching us a valuable lesson: exposed midriffs will get you extra unsolicited attention at Firenze Inn!) we set our gear in a corner and hit the streets of Florence with only two objectives: See David, and do a little shopping.
After visiting the magnificent sculpture, which is a lot more powerful in person than I expected (it has the opposite effect the Mona Lisa has when you first see it) we toured the museum in which it is housed, and then hit the streets of Florence.
An hour of window shopping and wandering left us with slightly lighter wallets and a few memorable purchases that will serve as pleasant reminders of our short visit to the city. Within another two hours we had grabbed our bags and were back in the train system. It was time to see the Italian coast and head for Bari and Brindisi. In just 36 hours we intended to be on a Ferry for Greece.
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