Traveling here and there, without a spare….

After we got back from Santorini, we went down to the Peloponnese. Driving around southern greece was great. It has more olive trees and groves than you could possibly imagine. To drive here, though, with the winding mountain roads, forbidding shear drop-offs, and lack of signage in some places made for some interesting moments. Every once in a while we would have to stop and look closely at the road signs to decide which little town was in the direction that we wanted to go on our map (the road signs didn’t mention ‘Route 66’… only ‘Nafplio’ or some other town). When we stopped, sometimes other slightly confused tourists would be stopped as well…. we would smile at each other, shrug shoulders and maybe swap a little info.  

We made Nafplio our home base and decided to day trips from there. This was good as we found a hotel with a room for three that included a full kitchen, en suite. We made some meals, packed some lunches, and had some fun outings to various sites. Then, in the evenings we’d return to Nafplio, get a treat and settle in for the night.

We arrived to Santorini early in the morning, still a little groggy from the trip. Since the ferry stops at various other islands along the way, Paula was rudely awakened by the safety message broadcast across the entire boat (for the newcomers)… half asleep, she was startled thinking it was an actual emergency.  

We rented a car at the port and drove up to the Thira which is the main town of Santorini. Some towns are sleepy… at 7:30am, this one is in more of a coma than anything else. Even the hotels aren’t answering our knocks. So, we drove up into the main area and waited with some of the other for straggly looking ferry people for 8am… when all things open.

Finally, a cafe opens and we grab a quick bite and then go find a hotel. Thira, once it wakes up, is actually very nice. It sits on cliffs and all the building are white…. and some have blue roofs (blue and white are the colors of the Greek flag). Very picturesque. We walked through some of the shops and tasted some fine greek wine. The next day we went down to Perissa and walked along the black sand beach (black from volcanic rock). Further around the island, we went to Oia (pronounced ‘EE-ah’, not ‘Oy-ah’) and immediately saw why so many people get married and honeymoon here. Everywhere you go is a postcard with amazing cliffs, fine Santorini architecture, the med sea, blue skies and lovely clouds hanging over scenic islands in the background. Very romantic island.

After a few days in the north, we took a train down to Athens. We had a few days until my mom was to show up so we relaxed in a nice little section of Athens called Plaka. Enjoying some nice pasta and other treats, we were able to hold off on the urge to go to the Acropolis until my mom arrived. We even did our first jog of the entire trip in the national garden (right next to the Temple of Olympian Zeus!)… that’s right, we were impressed with our get-up-and-go too.

Once my mom arrived, a bit weary from an overnight flight, we grabbed her obscenely well packed bags (we’re talking one small rolley bag, one small over-the-shoulder bag, and a hand bag…. well done!!) and jumped on the metro back to Athens from the airport. Then walked back to our hotel to drop off her bags for a bit. After walking around a bit and showing her just a glimpse of the city, we all went back to the hotel to grab all of our stuff, went back to the metro and zipped down to Piraeous. Piraeous is where you catch the over-night ferry to Santorini and is known to be confusing. Without too much trouble, we found our ship. Holy yowza, again…. The room was great and it even had a shower.

After we settled in, the cookies came out…. oh the cookies. After all this time, there’s nothing like home made, home cooked, chocolate chip cookies. Need I say more?

Later on, we went to the on-boat restaurant to get some dinner. After we were done, I noticed that Paula and my mom kept disappearing for pockets of time.. hmm… Well, it turns out that my mom had stashed a birthday cake in her bags… yes, the already obscenely well packed ones. So, after dinner, and the free raki that the nice waiter gave us (yum!), we enjoyed some excellant (and I mean phenomenally excellant) chocolate cake, with home-made white butter-cream icing (Dan’s fav!).  so good…. sooooo good.

So, after dinner, we settled in for the night. The rooms come as only female or only male, so we had to book one two-person room for p and my mom and then a single seat for me. Then I snuck into their room and slept (very comfortably) on the floor. When we wake…. beautiful Santorini.

Northern Greece is different from the rest of Greece. This is because it is not very touristy. Less people speak english and you get the feeling of really travelling somewhere exotic and relatively untouched by outside forces. Thessaloniki is Greece’s second city and is a very hip and happening place. It has a great walking promenade (why are these sooooo rare in the US?) like many cities and has little gyro (pronounced “hero”…. and don’t forget to give the R a gentle roll!) shops littered everywhere. When we ordered our gyros (did you say it right this time?), we were pretty impressed that they churned out these tasty little guys in about 2 seconds …. and that’s not an exaggeration! It was definately an adventure as many of the menus were written only in Greek (imagine that, right?). We struggled and mimed with our, well honed, informal sign language to say chicken or cow and try to indicate what we were hoping to eat. The Greek were good natured and smiled along with us. I’m pretty sure we always received something very similar to what we wanted to eat… Although, the younger folks seem to be learning english so were able to get bits of help for directions, etc, from a fair number of people under 35 years old.

After Pammukale, we went to ephesus, checked out the ruins and hopped on another over-night bus to Istanbul… We arrived fell right back in love with this tranquill old-europe style city. We walked along the promenades, finished uploading pictures from India to Turkey on the free internet our hostel provided (click the link on the right to see them!), and treated ourselvels to the great treats we found the first time around (ie chocolate cheesecake, chocolate brownies w/ice cream, and of course more apple tea!!).

After a few days, we hopped on an overnight train to Thessaloniki, Greece. Holy yowza… this ridin’ in style. The room we were given on the train was like a mini hotel room… complete with closet, sink, etc. No bathroom but it had comfortable beds, clean sheats, and comfy pillows! We set in for the night and were quickly sleeping peacefully. The only concern was how the border crossing to Greece would be handled. When we crossed from Cambodia to Vietnam by bus, we had to get out and walk across the border, get passports stamped, etc.. the whole thing took nearly two hours! Getting off the train at 3am and standing in line in our pj’s would not be fun…. No worries! They knocked on our door, took our passports and then they took care of everything while we stayed in bed. Then they knocked again, and gave us our passports back… off we go! Greece is especially exciting since my mom will be travelling with us when we get to Athens!

Reluctantly leaving another town, we hopped on another bus to Pammukale. Turkey is definately shaping up to be high on the list of places to go back to!

In Pammukale, they have ruins that you hike up to. While you hike up this small mountain, you walk over sandstone that has beautiful travertines from the water cascading down it. It is very white due to calcium deposits from the water. They make you take your shoes off when you walk on it. From a distance, it looks like a glacier or maybe a snow-capped mountain. Even though it is not the warmest day, the water coming down the mountain is from a hot spring so as you go higher, the water get warmer and is very nice to walk in near the top. At the top is an acropolis and a theatre that are very well preserved/maintained. They also have a hot spring pool that you can pay to swim in. The pool is interesting as it has stones and other items from the ruin that are in it as the people swim around.

So, it was time, once again, for a hair cut… not exactly the best cut I’ve gotten, not as impressive as the sure-handed Cambodian barber, and certainly not as cheap… but it got the job done! I think I might be a pro at hair cutting sign language now though…

After a few days in Cappadocia, we were sad to leave… so much more to explore! Oh well, off on another overnight bus to Olympos. We learned that when making reservations (for anyone going to Turkey) that since the buses are rarely full and they let you choose your seat, the back is the best since most people choose the front. This means less people directly around you, snoring, kids crying, etc, and you can sleep better (assuming you can sleep on a bus!).

In Olympos, the thing to do is to stay in a ‘tree’-house. Now, by ‘tree’ they mostly mean wood. Most of them look more like shanty-houses than anything, but a few of them are built up high and deserve the tree-house name. We found that Olympos is a rock climbing hub and has thousands of routes. We considered going but mother nature killed that plan with a bit of evening and morning rain… oh well. It was a bit wet for the day but nothing so bad as to stop us from other activities. We decided to go on a hike. In Turkey, it is not uncommon to stumble upon ruins in random areas as there is so many. There is no single place to go to ‘see the ruins’… they’re everywhere. It was fun, as we travelled through various cities, that we would look at a city center and then realize that we were actually also looking at massive columns that were built hundreds of years ago, and the current city just built around them. On our hike, there were numerous ruins but the cool thing was that they are perfectly overgrown and seemingly untouched. Together, with us hiking on our own while a bit of drizzling rain fell, we were able to get a bit of the feeling of discovery. These ruins, or at least the context in which we were able to view them, put them very high on our list of ruins we’ve seen. Phenomenal!

After Istanbul, we took an overnight bus to Cappadocia, specifically to the town of Goreme. Cappadocia is a region of central Turkey where people, many moons ago, dug into the limestone hills and mountains and made cave homes; even an entire underground cities! The entire area surrounding Goreme is littered with little holes in the sides a hills. When you peek inside, you’re amazed to see that the space opens up and is a proper home with sectioned off rooms and chimneys.

They offer tours for the two main loops to see the sights but Paula and I found that one loop was a good length for a bike tour and the other good for a moto-bike tour. So, we went down and talked to the bike rental guy and off we went on our bikes! The small loop was great for a bike tour. We had lunch in a small town named Ergup, and were able to bypass the tour company stops as there were so many places to stop and explore that you could probably spend a lifetime exploring! We even found one that was clearly where the local kids like to party… a few bottle caps and a bit of litter. Although, to be fair, we also saw a couple kids (maybe 10-12 years old) while we were on a hike that saw some graffiti on the ground and took it upon themselves to clean it up. They took pebbles and some sand and used it to grind down the graffiti. We smiled and gave them an approving nod as we passed by.

When we returned the bikes after a long day (25-30 miles), the bike rental guy told us to relax and offered us some apple tea….  so nice after being in the cold all day!

The following day we went back to the rental guy to rent a moto-bike. He wasn’t there yet, but his assistant was there and offered us more apple tea and a bit of conversation while we waited a few minutes. When we took the scooter out, it wasn’t as cold as we had feared so we were happy. Then it started hailing… we were surprised that we were more happy that we weren’t wet than upset that the hail was stinging us as we scooted along! It stopped after 10 minutes or so and then cleared up for the rest of the day. We saw the underground city. It goes 8 levels down and housed nearly 4 thousand people. It is amazingly complex and very impressive. When we returned the bike, we chatted and enjoyed more apple tea. It turns out that he was born in a cave, grew up and still lives in a cave. He is a ‘Cave man’ as he proudly says.

We stayed in a cave hotel.  After arriving from the overnight bus at 7:30am, we were happy that they came to pick us up from the bus station, gave us breakfast, and let us check in very early (8am), all at no charge. The internet had a price as well but people don’t seem to charge you. Turkey is not a country for nickel/diming people which we appreciate.

Ah, Istanbul… We arrived in the late morning and were immediately enamored with this old, europe style, city. We had heard that the ‘men were aggressive’ and the ‘touts were intense’ but we learned that these types of comments are extremely subjective. Yes, there are guys standing outside restaurants and shops and they want your business, but compared to Egypt, India, or even many in SE Asia, it was very mild. And between the mass transit being fantastic and the city very walkable, we were able to stay in Istanbul for a 3 days and never consider taking a taxi.

We stayed in Sultanahmet in a nice hostel that offered free internet and free breakfast. We were offered complimentary apple tea at the first restaurant we visited and immediately fell in love with the hospitality of the Turkish people. We went on long walks to see the Blue Mosque and the ‘beautiful people’ in the trendy Beyoglu area. We watched the hundred or so fisherman on the bridge catching thousands of sardines as the ‘call to prayer’ sounded in the background, strolled through the ‘largest covered market in the world’ and ate fabulous treats in a nearby promenade.

Now off to Cappadocia!

After we spent a day or so in Luxor, the plan was to travel by bus to Hurgada, take the ferry to Sharm El Shiek (in Sinai) and then travel to Dahab. Once in Dahab, we could hang on the beach, go snorkling, see supposed actual “Burning Bush”, climb Mt. Sinai, etc, etc… sounds fun, right? Wrong. Not meant to be I guess. We know that it’s not best to pay to far ahead when dealing with travel agents… the reason being that you may want to change your plan, or simply that you don’t want to pay too much up front before the quality of service has been proven. We generally don’t… ever. But the lure of this one was too much. The agent (which we highly DO NOT recommend) was Montasser. He was recommended in Lonely Planet so we decided to give it a try and let him plan our travels from Luxor to Dahab. The plan quickly started to go south when, after we fronted the money, we found out the ferry actually isn’t running. Weather was the reason. We checked the weather and it seemed fine so we were confused. When we arrived in Hurgada, we found out that the ferry had not been running for 2 weeks and would not run again for anther 3 weeks due to maintenance. We worked out an amount that we would refunded from Montasser. When contacting him, he was combative but eventually relented and said he would refund a certain amount. After more talk, he raised the amount he would refund to about 10% less than what we wanted. Better than nothing, though, so we agreed. The next problem was how to deliver the money as Montasser was in Aswan. In the end, after all was said and done, the money arrived via a friend of a friend and we had enough time to get to our flight to Turkey (that we booked ourselves 😉 ).

So… off to Istanbul!