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the back roads

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

Itea, Greece

Main roads tend to get you places quickly. Time not being of the essence, we prefer the back roads. Then you get to see the Corinth Canal, and pull over and get out of the vans and take photos. We couldn’t have done that on the motorway.

You get to drive on a bit and stop at a beach for lunch on your way to Athens.
You get views like this:

On the final morning in Athens you drive round and round singing the praises of GPS-s who can lead you around one way streets. Our GPS cannot route us anywhere in Greece, and so we are left with treating it like a paper map, Rob trying to read it as we drive. You would not believe how many one-way-streets there are!

We leave Athens. By a back road, of course. 
The countryside is spectacular. Are mountains always magnificent?
A rocky face studded with a variety of shapes and shades of green beckons us on.
We have another crest-the-hill-and-see-an-agricultural-patchwork-quilt-spread-below-us experience. Driving down into it we find many dark brown fields tilled, the harvest complete. Hectares more sprout cotton.

Directly ahead even larger mountains loom. We wonder if we will be crossing them. We will. Up, up and up, with one eye permanently on the temperature gauge, having run the radiator dry in the morning and almost disastrously overheating (discovered a new blinking light on the dashboard, but ten litres of water extinguished it!)
Nowhere near the top, but high enough for spectacular views, we find ourselves squeezing through a character-filled ski resort town, that begs us to stop and visit. Being barely two lanes wide, parking is out of the question in the village itself, but beyond the houses a roadside spot is both wide enough and empty, so we fill it.

 

Warmly welcomed to the village by an old man full of bravo-s and congratulations, he calls across the street to his mates about the eight children, and the altitude-induced chilly temperatures are almost alleviated.
The town, Arachova, is full of furs and kilims and cheeses and beautifully painted ceramics and olives and shirts and pizza paddles and oversized bags of dried oregano and linens and aromas that draw Rob in to more than one shop – even from the confines of the vans we had smelt this not-so-little-piggy on a spit. Further on wafts of pastries had forced through our now-closed-coz-it’s-cold windows.

 

Rob emerges from his first shop with gingerbread and cheesecake. Any wander which includes such delicacies and culminates in consuming steaming hot pastries is sure to be remembered with fondness!

 

No wonder we like the back roads.

PS Dear Charles, Look! A tennis court for Rob and a monastery for you! Imagine if you missed the ball.

*most*

Saturday, September 19th, 2009

Athens, Greece

Most people spending only two days in Athens, the ancient classical centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, the home of Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum, birthplace of Socrates, Pericles, Sophocles and democracy, yea even the cradle of Western Civilization, would not spend the second day at a playground.

 

Most people visiting Athens would not zip over to the nearby Village Cinema complex to use their flash square toilets with automatic watering handbasins.
Most people on their European tour would probably not start the day with a cafe-proportioned (even if not cafe-style) array of Italian toast for breakfast either.


(each piece is about the size of a playing card)

But most people are not travelling with eight children and we are not most people.

Hoping we were not stretching our luck with staying in the same carparks for yet another day, we reverted to shanks’ pony to get along to the beach and accompanying playgrounds.

Leaving everyone else at the park, I headed straight in to suburbia, fairly confidant of being able to find a bakery lurking underneath an apartment block. A butcher, grocer and vege man were also right there within one block. And the bread was good. What it would be to live within walking distance of the services you need.

After a prolonged knitting session for me, fisherman watching and relaxing sitting for Rob, and running round for kids along with a few rounds of “Find The Relic” (in teams they searched for a relic – a stone tied in a eucalyptus leaf – hidden in various parts of the playground), we headed back to see if the vans had been towed, being magnetically drawn first of all, to the millions of euros sitting on the water at the 2004 Olympic Marina. Almost indecent opulence. And not one of them offered to take us for a sail! Most disappointing.

Paul woz here two/too

Friday, September 18th, 2009
Athens, Greece Is it plagiarism when you write an email to someone and then publish it on your blog? I think not, if it is your own work! Dear Dad (known on this blog as Grandpa), I'm sitting here struggling to find words ... [Continue reading this entry]

beggars can’t be choosers – or can they?

Thursday, September 17th, 2009
Athens, Greece

 

Before the ignition is even turned off, one little girl is forlornly looking into my open window. In Greek she asks for money, “ena” for drink, fingers clenched, thumb pointing to her ... [Continue reading this entry]

Paul woz here

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
Corinth, Greece

 

That the Bible is merely a myth or a collection of stories is a fallacy dispelled when you walk the streets of Ancient Corinth. Here the writings, given the due they deserve, ... [Continue reading this entry]

tolls, tunnels and tzatziki

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
Corinth, Greece Well you couldn’t come to Greece and not buy tzatziki, could you? So we did. We also did tunnels – six of them in a row through one stretch of hillside (and then back again a few days later), ... [Continue reading this entry]

Finally Killini

Monday, September 14th, 2009
Another beach just south of Patra, Greece Well, not Killini. We had a close look at the map. Our initial thoughts of going right around the Peloponnese were brought to an abrupt halt when we decided to walk in The Apostle ... [Continue reading this entry]

living on paper

Sunday, September 13th, 2009
Same beach south of Patra, Greece If we felt like we were in a fairy tale in Germany….and preparing for medieval battles with the kings and queens of England….and swimming round bowls of pasta in Italy with place names that ... [Continue reading this entry]

GREECE DISTINCTIVES

Saturday, September 12th, 2009
Beach south of Patra, Greece – waves breaking metres away from us (no, we didn’t get to Killini again today either – there are just too many nice beaches!!)

 

Even before breakfast, which we ate ... [Continue reading this entry]

island hopping in motorhomes? IMPOSSIBLE!

Friday, September 11th, 2009
Lefkada Island, Greece “Not sure you’ll make it to any Greek islands, not in campervans,” people have commented with a degree of un-hide-able remorse-for-us in their voices. Never easily deterred, we made investigations. Over one thousand euros to get us to ... [Continue reading this entry]