Greece, Day 4: Athens

As you can see, at this point, I have run out of energy to produce creative titles to document this trip.  That is an accurate impression of how we were when we woke up that Monday morning.  After three days of near-continuous travel and sightseeing, we were both rather spent by the time we finally reached Greece's capital city.  I think I woke up at around 7:30, but just laid around for about an hour before I woke George up because I was hungry and wanted to take advantage of the free hotel breakfast.  In case anyone else is keeping score, this one was not even close to our first breakfast in Litochoro; in fact, it was quite similar to the offerings in Loutraki, aside from the fact that they did have Greek yogurt.  Which was obviously enough to make me happy.

After breakfast, we alternated between getting ready to go out and about and catnapping.  Because we did not have any driving planned for the day, and we didn't want to burn out already, we felt it was okay for us to move a bit more slowly on this day.  After all, it was a vacation; the point was to have fun and relax.

We made it out at around 11 am...we aren't great at the whole relaxing thing, and also, while we had two nights in Athens, we only really had one day.  We had gotten in so late the night (well, morning...) before and then Tuesday morning we would be checking out at around 5:00 am so that we could catch our 7:15 am ferry from Piraeus (the port in Athens) to Naxos.  Hence, we could not afford to bum around all day.  That is what Naxos and Mykonos were for.

And so we headed out into town.  For all the sketchiness of the area at 2 am, the hotel is actually well-situated for hitting the sights.  It only took us about ten minutes to walk into the center.  Our first stop of the day was the Acropolis; we figured we would get the climb and the most essential part of visiting Athens done first so that we wouldn't be under any pressure for the rest of the day.

As it turned out, there wasn't as much of a climb as George remembered, but it was good to see it early since it clouded up later in the day.  It is a spectacular and awe-inspiring sight. However, I will say that this is a case where George's tendency to read every sign kind of detracted from the experience, as we learned that nearly every piece of the Parthenon was a replica.  Very few original parts still exist.  We couldn't decide how we felt about that; is it really worth going all that way to see a replica?  In this case, I would still say yes.  Athens has an astounding number of other artifacts, and the view from the top of the city is spectacular.  However, I also think there was something to George's argument that it should be allowed to die in peace.  I don't really know how I feel about it though.  It's a subject that warrants further thoughts and discussion.

The next big site we went to was the Theatre of Dionysus.  It's just below the Acropolis and you would have to go out of your way not to see it.  We sat where who knows how many other people have sat for more years than I can comprehend.

This is, embarrassingly, the one and only picture of the two of us from this entire trip.

And then we walked across the street and to (another) Temple of Zeus.  This one was a bit bigger.

George, trying to redirect my camera angle.

With good reason.

By this point, we had again succeeded in avoiding food to the point where we were famished.  Rather than go to one of the touristy and expensive (for Greece...) restaurants near all the sites, we took the advice of my friend, Kate, who studied abroad for a semester in Athens, and walked about fifteen minutes out, to a more suburban-ish area.  We then went to a small café that she had recommended.

As with nearly every eating experience in Greece, there is a story to tell.  First of all, the menu was entirely in Greek, so, rather than take ages having everything translated, we just decided to put ourselves at the mercy of our waiter.  He looked surprised, but said he would to his best to pick something we would like.  He also brought us out some free cake while we were waiting for our food.

And we did not have to wait very long.  Within about ten minutes, he brought George a MASSIVE chicken salad.  No joke, there must have been nearly an entire chicken's worth of meat there.  Whilst I was brought some special bread with about a kilo of feta cheese and olives (think they were again stereotyping the tastes of Americans and Brits?).  Both were delicious, though I did struggle to eat mine and had to call George in for an assist.  It was just SOOO much cheese.  However, before leaving Greece, I did say, on multiple occasions, that I wanted to eat my body weight in feta cheese.  That was nearly accomplished in a single sitting.  

Another interesting moment came after we finished eating, but were still loitering around.  George went up to use the bathroom.  When he came back, I asked him where the toilets were located.  Without skipping a beat, George told me that you had to go next door as the ones in this restaurant were being renovated.  I, being the innocent and gullible human being that I am, believed him, and spent a couple of minutes trying to get into the apartment building next door before I realized that the Englishman was playing a trick on me.  Naturally, I charged back over to our table and started yelling and smacking him.  George, and our waiter, thought it was hilarious.  After that, we paid and started to walk away.  However, we heard someone calling us from in the restaurant.  We turned around, and saw the woman behind the bar beckoning us back in.  Our first thoughts were, "Shoot, did we not tip enough and offend them?"  So imagine our surprise when as we approached the bar, we saw her pour us two shots of a special homemade Greek liquor, the name of which escapes me at this time.  It was really, really nice though, and when we told her this, she poured us another shot apiece, and gave us chocolate before sending us back on our way.  Only in Greece.

It was now around 6:30 pm.  We had roughly 2.5 hours of daylight left, so we decided to stroll through the botanical gardens, hit one or two more sites, and then head back to the hotel as we had a VERY early start the next morning.

Cute dogs posing for us in the gardens

"Spanish" Fountain in the Athens' Botanical Garden

Hehehe...I couldn't resist.

It was around this point that I was saturated with "cultural stuff," so I started sneakily taking photos of George reading the signs so that I didn't have to.

After getting hustled out of the last sight, George and I headed back to the hotel and collapsed.  It had been a great day, but we were very excited to be spending a few days in one place.  And quite ready to lounge on a beach in a Greek island.  To be continued...

Greece, Day 3: A "Whistle Stop" Tour of the Pelopponese

13 April 2014

Our second morning in Greece, I woke up at the (slightly) more reasonable hour of 6:30, but without such a fantastic view to tempt me, I didn't start badgering George to wake up until around 7 am.  We had another very full day ahead and didn't quite have the luxury of sleeping in yet.  After showering and packing up the room again, we headed down to a rather disappointing breakfast.

Again, when I say the view wasn't great...it's all relative.

Now, to be fair, it wasn't awful.  It was toast and jam and butter with a few special muffins and pastries, some lunchmeat, cheese, and hard-boiled eggs.  Which, on reflection now, is actually fairly impressive for what we paid to stay there.  But at the time, I felt as if I were being asked to eat dog food.  Also, I already missed the Greek yogurt,  George, as ever the reasonable one, said that it wasn't bad and I was being dramatic.  Puhlease.  Anyway, the Plaza Hotel in Loutraki was a rather average experience, but a lot of that had to do with the fact that the Villa Pantheon was just that impressive.  Plus Loutraki was mostly just a tiny beach/resort town for Greeks.  Not much culture there for foreigners. Oh, the hazards of travel.

Pretty pleasant view from the breakfast room, admittedly.

Our first stop of the day was to see the Ancient Corinth canals.  It took us approximately seven minutes to get there from the hotel, and half of that time was just us trying to get out of our parking spot and on the road (did I mention the drivers here are a little nuts?).  They were impressive and we shoved our way through a crown of coach bus tour people to get our photos.

I don't even want to think about how many people died in the making of these canals.

After that, we drove another 15-20 minutes before arriving at the Ancient Corinth site.  This was the part of the sightseeing phase of our trip which George was most excited for, as it was the only place he hadn't been to when he came to Greece with his family as a kid.  And it was worth getting excited about.  There is an incredible number of ruins and artifacts concentrated in this one, fairly small area.  We probably spent a bit more time there than was necessary, but the weather was perfect, the sun was out, and there were almost no other people there besides us.  Also, we made friends with an adorable Border Collie mix.  That's probably the real reason that we spent so much time there.  

It's hard to see, but there's a castle at the top of that mountain.  You can go up to it, but we didn't have quite enough time to do so.

How cute is she?  She much preferred George to me though...

Speak of the devil..and he will get in my shot

We left Corinth at around noon, and timed it PERFECTLY.  We had spent most of the morning discussing how much we hate coach buses and tours, and as we pulled out of the parking lot, we counted approximately 29 coach buses.  Twenty-nine.  Multiply that by a minimum of 25 people per bus, and you can imagine what the place looked like as we were leaving.  By sheer luck (or, as I see it, brilliance on our parts), we had come and seen everything in peace.  We crossed our fingers that we would have similar luck in Olympia.

But first we had a four-ish hour drive to get there.  I don't know if I've yet mentioned the atrocious amount of tolls that you pay on the Greek highway system, but you stop continually, and pay a minimum of about three euros per stop. In an attempt to keep our spending money from literally being nickeled and dimed away, and in an attempt to jump off the beaten path, we chose to ignore our GPS and take a mountain route through.  This was absolutely the right decision.

Going through the mountains was breathtaking.  Everything was green, there were no tourists, and plenty of S-curves and hairpins to keep George (and me) happy.  Admittedly, the Chevy Spark was struggling a bit, but it made it through.  There were a few incidents where we were slowed down because we were behind more cautious drivers than ourselves, but all in all, we made excellent time (though our GPS was yelling at us continually in Greek to get back on the main road and slow down...).

I should have taken more photos while we were on this route because these do not even begin to do it justice.

Whilst on the road, we also stopped for our second Greek dining experience.  In case you were wondering, that breakfast at Litochoro actually kept us full the entire day, so we didn't have a chance to experience any of the local cuisine at either Delphi or Loutraki.  But on this day, the pitiful breakfast at the hotel was not going to tide us over.  Us being us, did not realize we were getting hungry until we were famished, so we took a gamble on a random restaurant in a small town in the middle of nowhere.  

Our luck held out, as the meal was delicious, if one of the strangest dining experiences either of us ever had.  We walked in and saw that, again, we would be the only patrons; the rest was a combination of staff and family (though there may not have been a distinction in that regard).  A woman, who I presume is the owner of the establishment/matriarch of the family came in and told us to sit wherever we wanted.  We asked for a menu; instead, she rattled off their specials.  We picked two; she said that we couldn't mix the those two entrees and proceeded to tell us what she was going to bring out.  She then asked if we wanted anything to drink; we both said coffee.  She told us no, we could have coffee after we finished our food.  So we contented ourselves with water for the meantime.  I proceeded to people-watch the familial interactions happening across the room; George immediately became invested in some random, awful Jackie Chan movie that was on and, for reasons I still do not understand, featured a dolphin as a main character.  

Thankfully, the food arrived quickly, and was delightful.  She brought us a fried whitefish with garlic potatoes, and some kind of Greek lasagna (not mousaka...this had meat), and a Greek bean salad.  It was all incredible and we devoured every last morsel.  One thing that I will say: the overriding theme of the meal was garlic.  Which, as a garlic lover, I was mostly okay with.  However, it was probably a good thing that George and I had only each other for company during the trip because I am fairly certain we were sweating out that garlic for days.

The coffee ordering experience was also interesting.  I do not think I have mentioned this yet, but very quickly into the trip I became obsessed with Greek coffee.  It's made a cup at a time, and the grounds are left in the water.  Any sugar you want has to be put in while the coffee is brewing.  Our host asked us how much sugar we each wanted.  We both said black.  She did not challenge George, the Englishman.  But I was a different story.  She said, "You want no sugar?  But you're American."  You just have to laugh at these situations.  I insisted I was fine without it, and she nodded, but as she walked away to go make them, she said over her shoulder, "I put a little in yours."

When we finally made it to Olympia, it was around 4:30.  We walked around the outside of the site a little bit, exploring the botanical gardens and looking for a bathroom (I am a constant travel liability).  We couldn't find a public one, so we found another café and, all was right with the world again.  

After yet another coffee, we headed into the site (7 euros a piece again), and strolled around.  This was bigger than Corinth, and had more vegetation.  It was lovely.  It felt like strolling through a big park that just happened to have the first ever Olympic Stadium and the Temple of Zeus in it.  We took lots and lots of photos, and I thoroughly embarrassed myself by flipping backwards over a rock as I was trying to take a photo of George coming out of the stadium.  I don't know how many witnesses there were, but I now have a scar from Ancient Greece on my calf, and George has yet another piece of material to mock me with.

The first Olympic Stadium

The photo for which I will forever bear a scar on my left leg.

The Temple of Zeus

Old Stuff (not the trees, in this case...)

After a few hours here (where, by the way, there are many toilets once you get into the site...), we trudged back into the Spark once again for our final LONG drive for awhile.  According to the GPS, it would take us 4.5 hours to get to Athens.  It was already 7:30pm.  We were not excited about this.  

I will say, it was probably the most interesting phase of the trip.  We spent about half the time on mountain roads (two-lane roads around a mountain in the dark...), were stuck behind slow people, and then when we finally were forced back on the main road, we were, for reasons we still do not understand, pulled over by the police.  They took our car rental information and George's license, but then just let it go.  We assumed it was a routine, random stop, but it was still strange.  

We arrived in Athens at about 1 am.  And then spent a nightmarish additional hour trying to find the hotel.  Our GPS was brain-fried at this point, and kept sending us in circles.  It also didn't seem to quite have a grip on which streets were one-ways and we (and by we, I mean George) had to improvise quite a bit.  Eventually, we ended up just using the GPS as a map.  And finally found the hotel.  

Once we found the hotel, checking-in took ages as the concierge insisted upon explaining and describing probably 50% of the sites in Athens (and there are A LOT).  I was nearly ready to punch him in the face; it was 2 am and I just wanted to curl up in bed.  George thinks he wanted a tip; I just think he was bored.  We also had to go and park the car in a parking garage a few blocks away.  Which was enough to wake us both up a bit; the area in which the Marina Hotel is located is not exactly nice.  We were given very specific directions on how to get back by the garage owner who told us "Not to go in any alleys".  We did not question his suggestion.

Once back at the hotel, we again were asleep almost instantaneously.  Another fabulous day; perhaps a touch over ambitious again, but when you have less than ten full days to work with, you do what is necessary.  It was still epic and fantastic and I would gladly do that all over again (cops and seedy hotel areas included).  

Greece, Day 2: An Exercise in Bladder Control

12 APRIL 2014

On the first full day of our Greek adventure, I woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at around 5:15 am.  what jolted me to full consciousness almost immediately was the unreal colors of the sky.  Naturally, I had to take a photo.  But I also didn't want to wake up George, who was being all reasonable and normal and still sleeping.  So I did my best to quietly grab my camera and then sneak onto the balcony.  I was under the impression that I behaved like a ninja until I came back in and heard George mumble something about "elephants stampeding through the room."  Oops.

I stand by the fact that that was worth sacrificing sleep for.  The colors pre-sunrise were, I think, more surreal than those of the actual sunrise.

Rather than go back to sleep like a normal human being, I decided we were going to wait for the sunrise (which, according to my handy weather app, was at 7:03).  I jabbered at George for that hour and a half while he attempted to ignore me and sleep (I won).  I also should mention that the great irony of this story is that I chose the wrong moment to use the bathroom and ended up missing the actual sunset.  Thankfully, George was able to figure out my camera, so the moment that I missed is forever preserved.  It was stunning; more so in person, obviously.  Hard to beat the sun rising over the sea with Mount Olympus just over your shoulder.

The next order of business was breakfast.  We heard someone come in and start preparing it at around 6:30, so as soon as I was done fawning over the sunrise and the view from our balcony, we packed up our luggage, and headed down for food.  And were promptly blown away by the spread: eggs, rolls, fruit, Greek yogurt, olives, coffee, juice, jam, marmalade, sausages, bacon....and I'm sure something else that has escaped me.  Pretty much just imagine a table full of every breakfast item you can think of.

Actually, you don't have to imagine it.  There it is, in all its delicious glory.

And the most absurd element of this situation was that the entire table of food was just for the two of us.  We had mentioned that the hotel seemed very quiet the night before, but it wasn't until this moment that we realized we were the only guests in the place.  It was unbelievable.  This was just the beginning of their season, but still...the massive room upgrade was now partially explained (I still think the owner liked us).  

George said we had to eat all the food.  So we did.  Minus a few of the olives...you can only have so much salt at 8:30 am.  We also then felt ill for a good portion of the morning on account of our gluttony.

And here is the "after" picture.  We made quite a dent.  There's George polishing off the last of the coffee.  

With our bellies full, and a (mostly...) refreshing night's sleep behind us, we said good-bye to Litochoro, and what would prove to be one of our favorite hotels of the trip.  Almost a shame we were only there a night, actually.  It also ruined me for a lot of the other places we stayed (George is not quite the snob I am, or at least he's not as vocal about it).

But that balcony....

Hotel Villa Pantheon....highly recommended.  Also, there's our little Chevy Spark.  Not so recommended.

Our first destination of the day was Meteora, the famous tabletop mountains (and World Heritage Site) that is home to several monasteries.  It was about 2.5 hours from Litochoro.  The drive was rather uneventful, aside from the few times that our GPS tried to send us onto roads that weren't really roads, and that one time we were overtaken by a police car (only in Greece...).  There also may have been an incident where I saw a Border Collie-ish looking dog walking on the side of the road and tried to convince George that we should adopt it (thankfully, he did not cave in to my demands).  It was a pleasant drive; the sun was out, we were surrounded by mountains, and we were on the first full day of our vacation.

The one key error that I made (repeatedly) was to drink copious amounts of water and coffee at breakfast.  For whatever reason, I did not take into consideration all of the driving we had ahead of us, and also the fact that most gas stations in Greece do not have bathrooms.  Hence, towards the end of the drive, and during our (rather brief, thanks to me) visit to Meteora itself, I couldn't think of much other than how much I had to pee.

That being said, Meteora is spectacular.  I would definitely go back, and I would allot enough time/not drink so much liquids to allow for going into one of the monasteries.  We had a pretty tight schedule to keep, so my lack of common sense didn't affect too much, but I'm sure I would have appreciated it a a bit more had I been less uncomfortable.  So, I will let some of the photos speak for themselves.

After we made our way back down out of the mountains, we almost immediately found a café, where I used their bathroom and then we had another coffee before heading back on the road.  Neither of us was even remotely interested in food at this point; so so so much food from breakfast.  But we are both coffee addicts.  Also, the lack of sleep may have started to hit a bit, and I was getting the occasional "I told you so" from George.  

However, my key error (AGAIN) was the coffee.  It ended up taking us about four hours to get from the Meteora area to Delphi, and I had to pee starting about one hour into the drive.  George was in a similar situation but made a "nature" stop and thus enjoyed the ride (partially because it was gorgeous and partially because I think he enjoyed seeing me in pain).  I, myself, did not particularly enjoy this leg of the trip.  In hindsight, I should have just squatted on the side of the road, but I had (or at least thought I had..) my dignity.  So I suffered instead and again made a mad dash from the car to the nearest café once we finally arrived.  And then drank another coffee.  I wonder where exactly the learning curve is for me?

The good part about me being a royal bitch during the car ride was that once we arrived and I relieved myself, it was as if I was a new person.  Delphi is incredible.  We first looked at the Oracle and Temple of Apollo before choking up all of seven euros apiece to see the stadium, amphitheatre, and assorted other Greek and Roman ruins.  This was also the moment in the trip where George I think finally fully realized that he was, indeed, stuck with an American for ten days straight when I referred to the ancient ruins as "old stuff".  I will never live that down.

The Oracle 

The Temple of Apollo

Roman Ruins (aka Old Stuff)

The Stadium at Delphi

After a lovely afternoon of wandering through the ruins at Delphi, we were back in the car at around 7:30pm, and set off on the 2.5 hour drive (I made sure to make use of the toilets just before we left) to our hotel in Loutraki, a small tourist town just outside of Corinth.  This may have been my favorite drive of the trip.  We were both in high spirits after an excellent day of sightseeing, and I was deejaying particularly excellent music (The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and Star Wars soundtracks...even better to listen when you have someone with a degree in music with you).  The drive was uneventful, and we found the hotel right away (this was the only time that happened...).  We also had a good laugh at the Easter lights they put up in Loutraki.

Unfortunately, this hotel was fairly generic and not blessed with the views of the Villa Pantheon back in Litochoro (admittedly, this was partially our fault for not splashing up to the "sea view room" but what can you expect for 30 euros/night?).  But, it was clean, and somewhere to sleep, and we were both exhausted and dropped off right away.

And this was still only the beginning of our adventure...