It is my last few hours in Greece. Some of the highligts and memories of Greece are as follows:
The food is wonderful. You can get a Gyro (Souvlaki with Pita) for about 1.50 Euros that are always really good. If you go to a restaurant, the Greek Salads, the chicken, the pasta, and pretty much everything is good. If you go to greece, and Grilled Feta is on the menu, order it. It is SO good. The fish and chicken and produce are also always quite fresh. You can taste the difference.
The showers, like most of Europe are kinda "eh". Most of the time there is no upper shower head. you have to just hold it as you shower. It's a bit of a pain, but oh well. While we're on the subject, for some reason here, the toilets never seem to flush right. They are all 'low flow', and there always seems to be a bit of paper left in the toilet from the last use...that is, if you're allowed to even throw the toilet paper into the toilet to begin with.
The sunsets here are beautiful. On the islands, especially, people come from all over right at sunset just to watch it and enjoy it.
Reading greek has gotten easier. It's good that I know most greek letters from the combination of fraternity/sorority names with the fact that I've taken a million engineering classes, and every variable is labled with some greek letter. Greek is read just as it looks - as opposed to English, there are no silent letters, etc.
In general, everything is a bit more expensive than I remember it from last time I was in Europe three years ago. The prices have all gone up a bit, and the exchange rates are also horrible for the US dollar right now. with one American dollar, you get about 75 Euro cents.
For the days since I last posted, we left Athens on a 6am train (yes, we got up before sunrise to catch that) for Patra, which is the port city. We stayed in a hotel in Patra and planned to take a few day trips. the 28th, the day we arrived, we arrived in Patra around 10:30, and located a hotel, had lunch and then left for the two hour ride to Olympia. The train left at 12:30, and arrived at 2:30. The plan was to spend the day in Olympia, look at all the ruins from the original Greek olympics, and then see the Olympic museum, and the historical museum, and whatever else Olympia had to offer. Our guide book said that the sites would stay open until 7:00, so we weren't worried. Upon arrival in Olympia, we got a map, and began heading to Ancient Olympia. We arrived at about 2:40, and noticed that at 3:00 they close. we freaked out, and convinced us to let us enter, and that we'd hurry. The site was huge. We sprinted, taking as many pictures of the ruins as we could, and attempted to take pictures of their descriptive signs along the way so we could read them later. We made it through about 2/3 of the site at with our sprinting, and we were out at 2:55 when they were locking the gate. It was quite frustrating when we then found out that it wasn't just the archeological site, but also the museums, etc. that ALL closed at 3. So, at this point, in our frazzed state, we missed the 3:00 bus back, and had to wait for the 4:00. It was frustrating to take a 2 hour ride each way to just be there for 10 minutes.
On Sunday, we'd hoped to go to Delphi, which is another site that our book said was good to see. Unfortunately, there was only ONE bus going, at 8:30 AM, which would've been fine, except that there was also only one returning bus, also coming back in the morning, and since it was a 3 hour ride, we decided there was no way humanly possible to get there and back, so we decided against it. Instead, we went to the Clauss vinyard, a bit south of Patra, and took a quick tour and tasted some wine. Not too bad.
Today again we didn't have much to do, but we did get our laundry done, and hit up this internet cafe now. We'll get on the ferry in a bit, and while Greece was Jacob's job to plan, Italy was mine. So upon arrival in Italy, we will begin in Naples, and I will keep you posted of course.
GOOD NEWS!! Though I can't seem to upload from any internet cafes almost ever. my pictures from day One of my trip are finally up. I'll keep you posted if I upload more.
They are located here: http://www.jacobbrand.com/gallery/bela
I miss you all, and would love to hear from you - either by email or comments to my posts =)
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