But the sea was a lovely shade of blue
Well, here we are again, in another cozy, smokey internet cafe where I'm spending a third of what I'm making in order to get this stuff out. But, I thought I'd catch you up about the last few days while I'm waiting for my Fortran compiler to download. And so we begin.
After the "Ruined" day in Rome, we prepared for our trip to Greece. Which I was rather excited about since I love boats and I got to spend the night on one without much fear of dysenntary. So, in order to actually CATCH this ferry we had to leave Rome at 730. So 6:15 we were awake and ready for another exciting day of travel.
We got on the train to Bari, a rather dull port city, by 7:30 after a quick breakfast and we were sitting in the Bari train station by 12:30. At which point we went outside, in the rain, because this is me, and of course it was raining. And waited for the bus, where luckily we were only witness to ONE fight, that lasted the whole 40 minutes we were standing, in the rain don't forget at the bus stop. So, hopping the bus to the ferry port, we got there, got off the bus too early, since no one actually knew where we were SUPPOSED to be going, or at least they didn't feel the need to tell us when we asked, and proceeded to walk, in the rain mind you, the 500 meters to the port, where we checked in. we were the lucky ones, claiming dorm beds since we had a first class ticket for only 6 Euros. I was psyched.
.... and then we waited.. for 1, 2, 4, 5.5 hours... in the ferry port... in the barren, sterile ferry port. But I wrote some letters, and sent them. Oh that was fun. If you had a choice between stray... possibly rabid dog... and LAKE... which would you choose. On my way to the post office to send said letter, I was confronted with such a choice and I chose lake. Unfortunately my sneakers would have much prefered that I had chosen dog. So, I dried them as much as possible with a hand dryer and changed into my other shoes... stilletto boots. OH, yeah. So, finally ready to board the boat, in the rain. We picked up our luggage, in my boots, and headed over to check in. Oh the boat was nice and MAN were the people mean. I've never witnessed such contempt for young people before. I mean, we were staying in (what appeared at first glance) to be a 3 star hotel. But was merely a 1 star hotel, with a bright and shiney painted exterior. We weren't allowed to sit on some of the couches... because... well they didn't actually give us a reason other than we were landing somewhere in 3.5 hours. But, nevermind. That was fine. Seeing as I love boats, seasickness is never really a problem for if it were, we all know I would not love boats. But at about 2 in the morning. I was getting to feel the sloshing of the boat transferred to a very sickening sloshing in my stomach. And Maria, who is irrationally afraid of water the way I'm irrationally afraid of Vomit, was not particularly comfortable either. So we spent some time in the lounge which actually seemed to be falling apart at the very seams. Luckily we had bought a season of Alias to keep our minds occupied by something other than our impending doom.
About 15 and a half hours after getting on the ferry, we disembarked, very tired and even more aggrivated. This would make it somewhere around 27 hours from when we first left and we weren't close to being done. We found that the next train to Athens was not for another two and a half hours and so we settled into the train station, the sterile BARREN train station for another few hours of waiting.
At this point I must interject with the happiest thing that had happened to m in 27 hours. A little old greek women, saw me doing some cross stitch and promptly decided to help me. Which she did greatly by showing me a new technique to make it go faster. She didn't speak any english though, and the entire lesson was done through pantomime with her mouthing the words in Greek. Of all of the countries I've been in (Yes I know that is only two this trip, but counting the 4 or 5 others) the Greeks really do seem the friendliest. The men, perhaps a little TOO friendly especially where their eyes are looking. But, they are the friendliest none the less.
And so, after said little ray of happiness, we got on another smoke-filled train and headed to Athens, for another 3 and a half hours. We finally arriveded and we were greeted by a rather scarey looking guy... and nobody else. Since we REALLY had no idea where we were going we figured we'd hop a cab but he promptly refused to take us where we asked and told us to take the metro pointing in some general direction that... there didn't seem to be any metro. When reduced to almost clawing eachothers eyes out, we decided to ask the scarey man where we were going. Scarey man actually turned out to be very nice and lead us to the metro, and pointed us to the right station. After about an hour of wandering around the station, taking the metro and wandering around the streets of Athens, where, in case you had forgotten we can't actually READ anything, since it's all greek, we got to our hotel. Which is very nice, with ridiculously expensive internet, a cute little courtyard, we have a little balcony and our own seperate beds. A little sun burst through the clouds of our trip... we even had a REAL SHOWER... that I could bend over in as opposed to awkwardly sqwatting to pick up my shampoo.
Today has been filled with more ruins and some Excellent Gyros. We got to see the Parthenon which, having seen both I hope to no longer confuse with the Pantheon. We saw the Theatre of Dyonisus, and some other ruined things on the acropolis which, were really quite stunning. There is also an observatory on the acropolis which we headed to in hopes of some scientific discovery, by which I mean discovering something to do relating to science. Walking through the beautiful hillside of the acropolis, with a fabulous view of the sprawling urban countryside of what they call Athens. We happend accross some very LARGE very ANGRY dogs which no one seemed to own, they however seemed to own the 500 meter radius around the observatory and they were NOT happy that we were tresspassing. Grabbing onto eachother for dear life, and for hopefully some sanity, neither one which we really got. Maria and I walked quickly, quietly and calmly away from the dogs, chanting silently to ourselves "don't show fear don't show fear don't show fear" After reaching the gate, which was VERY luckily ajar, (the dogs must have forgotten to close it since they seemed to be the only ones upset that we were inside the fence.) we hooted and hollared and held back the bile of fear that had rissen in our throats. Hoping that the adreniline would go away without leaving so exhausted we couldn't climb down the giant mountain we had climbed.
We then headed to the tourist office, with not much hope in our hearts, to ask our usual science question where we usually get no answer at all. Walking in, we were greeted with the same blank look we always got when asking the question but was quickly changed into a flurry of activity. Wait.. you mean he's going to FIND OUT for us. And, he did. He gave use lots of information, lots being a relative term cause there isn't actually lots to do related to science in Athens. And so we have information of the physics foundation in Athens, that has attatched to it a planitarium. Some musical museums and possible shows to go to. And pretty much anything we could want.
Now, we are waiting for dinnertime, living meal to meal as it should be when surrounded by good food, and then perparing for another exciting day in this magical land called Greece.
posted at: 11:07 | path: | permanent link to this entry