Greek Train Wrecks, Ruins, and Islands
After Italy, we took a ferry from Bari, Italy to Patras, Greece. The ferry ride was fun, as we met up with a couple of Vancouverites the day before. We hung out with Devon and Tom playing card games on the boat. It was quite the luxurious ferry, swimming pool and all (unfortunately it was closed for the season). Except for sleeping in the tiny bunkettes on the boat (although Sarah didn’t mind them, since she’s smaller). But they were free with our rail pass, so we can’t complain.
We wandered around Patras for a couple of hours before hopping the train to Athens. The train was small, having only 3 cars, but that didn’t stop it from getting into a wreck. Well not too serious of a wreck, as a car crash on the freeway pushed a car over the guardrail and between a wall and the track. We were quietly sitting when we heard a couple of loud whacks, some guard rail smack the train windows, and the train coming to a sudden stop.
We spent the next hour sitting there waiting for news, as the conductors had to run a way down the track to see what had happened. Trains are big and take a long time to stop, so we couldn’t really see what had happened, and I was sternly yelled at when I hopped off the train. We found out that the driver of the car was okay but shaken up a bit after his car had been in two wrecks. We also had to wait an hour because the train had to wait for the police.
We did eventually make it to Athens, and went to our studio apartment at the foot of the Acropolis. There is a path around the Acropolis hill, which was lit up nicely at night, giving us some spectacular views of Athens. The next day was a national holiday, so we went and saw a parade that consisted of 3 bands and probably every school kid in Athens. All the archaeological sights were free that day so we went and examined them with the same scrutiny of an archaeologist. Sort of.
We took it easy the next day, made some guacamole, found an English bookstore, and checked out a few other sights as well. The hostel had a quite fun happy hour, where we hung out with some friendly western Aussies, and a Swiss girl from our studio. We then went out for tapas and drinks, before getting a measly 3 hours of sleep before getting up and going to the ferry to the island of Naxos early in the morning.
Naxos has been nice and warm, although cloudy. We have been staying in the town of Hora, at a nice place called Pension Sofi. It’s one of the nicer places we’ve stayed in. They keep feeding us homemade wine, cheese from Naxos (a mix between feta and cottage cheese, but milder than both), and olives. We rented a scooter to explore the island, as it is one of the biggest of the Cyclades. The first day we drove to a Citron (Kitpo in Greek) distillery where they make a citron liquor that is either fluorescent green yellow or clear, and fairly sweet. it is made from distilling the leaves of the citron tree with water and sugar. It’s quite good. We also hiked to Zeus’ cave on Mt. Zeus, which is apparently where he was born. We drove all over the island, seeing various churches, temple ruins, and statues. This is the island where the Greeks first started making giant marble statues way back in the 6-7 Century BC. We saw a few statues that weren’t completed that had been abandoned half way up the mountain since they broke while being dragged down from the marble quarries.
The next day we went to the beach down the eastern coast on the scooter. On the way back we had a little bit of a spill, when the scooter slid out from underneath us, while going around a sketchy intersection on a bend in the road. So we got some nice road rash as a souvenir. Nothing too serious, just some small scrapes and a couple bruises. The rest of the time on the island we’ve been loafing in town, relaxing and hanging out on the cloudy beaches.
We are now on Santorini Island staying at a place called Anny Studios in Perissa Beach. It’s pretty dead right now since it is the end of the season and most places are closed now or are closing in the next week or so. It is a very nice place though with long stretches of black volcanic sand beach. Yesterday we hiked up to Ancient Thira which is up on a costal mountain overlooking Perissa. It was a nice hike and the archeological site of large town of Ancient Thira was interesting to see. Otherwise we have been mostly relaxing here for the past 2 days sitting beside the pool and watching lots of movies.
Tomorrow we plan to go stay in the capital of Santorini, Fira for 2 nights before going back to Athens.
