On-the-Road Tales

Greece may be making a lot of money off tourism but they do not seem to be too well geared for it. Their tranportation system works but pity the traveller trying to plan by it. Our bus out of Oia was slightly late and majorally overcapacity. The driver would yell and shake his hands like an Italian at each stop because there was no more room as if it was their fault they needed to get somewhere. We all made it to the station just as the bus for the ferry port was pulling out and no, they did not wait. Many people took taxis but I had faith my public transport options would prevail. The next bus one hour later should squeeze me in time. I would realize this was a bad assumption when I saw the chaos at the port. Boats were coming and going, lorries were trying to get on and off and there were tons of minivans and busses fighting directions. We were stuck on the cliffside road for 20 minutes trying to get through. As luck would have it — our boat was way behind schedule and not even there yet. Stories from others warned me busses and boats even leave early when they feel like it. Great.

On the “high speed” ferry, we stopped at an island or two then got to the Pireaus port. I jumped on the subway to Athens glad to be back in familiar territory. The country finished off this subway system in order for the Olympics to function smoothly. While they were digging up the ground, they came across all sorts of ancient civilization so each station had exposed brick with a fence around it. Kinda like an mode museum.

I settled back into my hostel and the two guys in my room had just finished med school and were travelling before the next 5 yrs of residency work. This seems to be very common, I could not imagine knowing I would not be able to travel for the next 5 yrs. I found myself a used bookstore to sell off all my newly acquired lonely planet guidebooks. No point carrying dead weight, if I would return I needed new ones anyway. So Cambodia, Greece and Egypt now wait for some other lucky traveller.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 8:08 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.