So it's official: The group has officially broken up! Not foever of course, but you know how it goes, 4 females, everyone wants to do something different in this great big world....It was bound to happen eventually.
Anna and Aisha left for the island of Corfu last night while Trisha and I stayed behind one more night in Patras to enjoy Olympia this morning. Originally Trisha and I were going to take the ferry tonight to meet them up in Corfu, but Trish has had a change of heart and doesn't want to spend the 25 hours of ferry time to hang out at the "Pink Palace." So it looks like I'll be riding the ferry for 7 hours alone to Corfu, which is fine cuz really, nothing much happens on the ferry. I just hope that the girls let me know what room they're in, how to get from the port to the hotel, etc.
For the last 2 days we were in Athens, Greece, which was really fun. I have to highly recommend the hostel we stayed at there as well, in the older part of town called Plaka. The hostel was called the Student and Backpacker's Inn, and they were all very nice, accomodating, everyone spoke English, and they were very helpful in everything from internet to laundry to tours around Athens and even good bars in the area.
We did a walking tour yesterday morning and saw pretty much everything you can see in Athens, in the record time of 4 hours! We visited the Ancient Agora, the Roman Agora, the Acropolis with the Panthenon and the Athena Nike building, still being constructed as of yesterday. We also saw the Temple of Zeus, or what was left of it really, and the theatre dedicated to the God Dionysus. Ate all sorts of gyros and had my first greek salad, which was really good, except for the tomatoes (I don't do tomatoes) which made up about 65% of the salad. We also walked to the Parliament building and saw the changing of the guards, who wear little pompoms on their feet because they hide a small spike in them!!! It's from way back in the day when the Greeks were fighting the Turks for their indepedence and they didn't have many weapons, so the farmers would just wear these little things in their shoes in ever the case the revolution started and I guess they could start kicking and stabbing people down. The red hats the guards wear represent the blood spilled during the war, and the long black tassels represent the tears that were shed from the Greek people. Interesting, huh? Our guide informed us of a lot of Greek mythology, which I hadn't heard about since junior high-so much drama!
Went shopping a little bit, and then caught the next train back to Patras.
Oh, and just a side note for anyone who ever decides to visit Greece: nothing is ever on time. Shops open, close, shut down, strike, and harass you to eat at their restaurants whenever they want! On our way from Patras to Athens we had to stop at Corinth, but apparently there was a train strike now (now mind you this is different from the FERRY strike just last week) so we thought we could make it to Athens by the time it started at 1pm, but nope, they kicked us off the train at 11:15am and told us that the strike was now moved up from 11am to 3pm. Wow... So we had to find the bus station, buy a whole new ticket, and bus the rest of the way to Athens.
When we finally arrived in Athens, we were told to take the local bus to the metro and arrive at our hostel. We had done okay up until we found the metro station...all of them were closed. It was barely 1:30pm so we knew their 3-hour lunches hadn't started yet, so what was the deal? I had to ask a police officer who let me know that the Metro in Athens was also on strike until 3pm. Wow again...if only the bus station lady had informed us that when the trains were on strike, it included the metro and that maybe she shouldn't have suggested it to us.
AGain, no one knows if and when the trains will be on strike again. So far we're good, but I really do want to get out of Greece as soon as I can for the fear of getting stuck here and never knowing when the next train or ferry or metro or bus gets out.
Crazy huh? And the entire country works like this!!!! You know I could never live here....
So we're off to Olympia! More stories to come!
|  | 
|
