10/11/04
First, I want to start off this journal with a huge HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my sister Kayla. I hope your day is full of laughter, life, and blessings.
WOW! What an amazing adventure I have had in Greece the past 10 days! So much happened within that 10 day period that I have broken my journal entry into two separate entries. One depicting the first 4 days, and the second telling of the final 6 days. I will post the first four days tonight (10/11) and then post the next six days tomorrow. Like always, I will try my best to go in chronological order.
My Greece adventure began on Friday October 1st at 5 am. The day before had been full of preparations for Greece. Once prepared, I walked down the well known Monchsberg stairs. We waited for the bus for about a half an hour. Once boarded at 5:30, we began our 10 hour bus ride to Ancona, Italy. Despite only getting 4 hours of sleep the night before, I was extremely excited for this trip and just could not bring myself to sleep. Southern Austria is stunning to drive through. Alps surrounding you from every angle, coated in mysterious morning fog and clouds. The sunrise was difficult to see, as the alps blocked it many times. Around 7:30 I had a nice view of the sunrise, and immediately after, I fell asleep.
As many of you probably want to hear about my actual time in Greece rather then the 32 hours of travel it took to get there, I will glaze over much of the travel time. We bused to around Bologna Italy and stopped for lunch. Once filled up with Italian pasta, we headed for Ancona. Ancona is a beautiful Italian town nestled on the eastern coast right beside the Adriatic sea. Before I knew it, we were boarding our cruise ship. The Superfast VI. This ship carries mainly truck drivers going from Italy to Greece. We were pretty much the only tourist kind of group on board. We watched the sunset (pics posted) and then went inside to explore the ship. The boat had a pool, sauna, store, casino, and a disco :-). So you can fathom where Kyle was most of the time in the evening. Not many people were dancing at this disco. Most of the truckers were sitting down just watching us Americans dance. Occassionally you would see several large truckers be inspired to dance and begin dancing together in original Greek style. It definitely was a cultural experience. I soon returned to my cabin and hit my bed.
I arose the next morning to view the islands of Greece. The first we spotted during breakfast was Ithaca. Once again, my heart raced faster and faster as we came closer to Greece. The 32 hours of travel soon ended as we docked in Patras, Greece in the afternoon. We quickly boarded our bus, and away we were to our first destination…Delphi.
Driving through Greece is breath taking. Tons of rolling hills and mountains covered in olive groves and palm trees. Many of the towns were found next to the Gulf of Corinth. Not only is driving breath taking, it is also extremely nauseating. The roads are so incredibly curvy and filled with sharp sharp turns. The views easily made up for a quiesy stomach.
The road up to Delphi was awesome. As we climbed higher and higher, I soon realized that we were going to have an incredible view of the Gulf of Corinth, the huge olive groves, and the surrounding mountains. Delphi had the most beautiful surroundings of all the Greek towns we visited (Nafplion was also just as stunning).
We arrived at Hotel Amalia around dinner time. Larry, Nika, Matt, Mirna, Alyssa and I headed out for some grub. We found an amazing little café which boasted the most astounding view of the sunset (pics posted). Kyle Kangaroo did another entry in my video journal. After this Greece trip I have amassed over 3 hours of video. Also, I have surpassed 2,000 pictures. So when I return home, I will have plenty of pics and video to share with everyone J. Once we finished our dinner (we each got different dishes and shared with each other), we headed out to town.
Now, Delphi consists of pretty much 2 streets, with little connector streets and walkways in the middle. So it was very easy to walk the entire town within half an hour. We stopped in at our very first genuine greek stores. The Greek business people are bargainers. The first one we entered, the owner started asking where we were from and stuff, and promptly said “For you, 40% off everything in the store”. We soon found that many Greek tourist shops did the same thing. Most of the evening was spent in town shopping. I grabbed some Greek chocolate milk ( or what I thought was chocolate milk) called “Milko”. It turned out to be a chocolate “drink”. IT WAS NASTY!! Don’t let the smile in the pic I posted fool you, it tasted awful. After shopping around some more, picking up tons of postcards and souvenirs, I headed back to the hotel with the gang. The Greek TV in the hotel had two English speaking channels. CNN and this cool movie channel. Every night in Greece the gang and I watched a movie on this channel. In Delphi we watched Analyze This. After the movie, I headed out to the lit up town and found 2 discos. Both were pretty much empty except for our group of Salzburg students. Didn’t spend too much time there, but did spend much of my night viewing the gulf of Corinth and the surrounding mountains. It was the perfect end to the perfect first day in Greece(despite the bad chocolate drink :-).
The next morning, I quickly packed up my stuff, took a last look at the Delphi landscape view from my hotel deck and got on the bus. After a 5 min. ride, we began exploring the ancient ruins in Delphi. It seemed like no matter where you went in this town, you were confronted with amazing views of the landscape. We first walked down to three standing pillars below the Temple of Apollo. Jim and Eva (our professors) told us of all the Greek mythology behind every site we visited. We then walked to the Castalion Spring, which is believed to have healing powers. Everyone in the group took a drink from the spring, and we continued onward to the ruins of the Temple of Apollo. After finishing up with the ruins, we headed to the archaeological museum. It was pretty awesome to see all these ancient artifacts which dated hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. Once finishing up in the museum, we boarded the bus en route to the monastery Ossias Loukas.
The Byzantine Monastery was pretty awesome. It dated to around 1000 AD and exploring this active monastery in Greece made for the perfect afternoon. It is hard to believe how much beauty and serenity was in this place. It seems that no matter where you travel in Greece, you are constantly surrounded by God’s amazing craftsmanship. I truly loved every part of my Greece adventures.
After departing Ossias Loukas, we stopped at this cool rest stop. They had a huge stand with pastries and desserts. I grabbed a couple things which looked good (each of which I could not pronounce the names to) and ate these delectable treats on the way to Athens. After a short nap, I awoke to the city of Athens. It is HUGE. Half of Greece’s population is in Athens. By early evening we settled into our Hotel (Hotel Arethusa). Jim and Eva took us out to the Plaka and let us loose for the night. The Plaka is a portion of town which has tons of Greek cafes, restaurants, and shops. We explored the Plaka for many hours during our stay in Athens. Viewing the Parthenon lit up at night was amazing (pic posted). After a lovely dinner on the streets of the Plaka, we headed back to the Hotel and listened to Greek music on the tv. When we got bored, we headed on out again and found some gelatos. Once again, a great ending to a great day.
October 4th was our most adventurous day in Athens. We arose around 8 am and ate breakfast at the hotel. Once filled up, we hiked to the archaeological museum. It was about a 30 minute walk from our hotel (about a mile and a half). We got to the museum to find that the hours of operation had changed. It was closed until noon. Jim and Eva then changed our plans and gave us free time until 3. So we hiked the whole way back to the hotel (another mile a half) to get ready to go out for the day. FYI – I roughly estimate that I walked a minimum of 10 miles during the course of the day. My excitement took much of the attention off of how sore my legs were…lol. Larry, Nika, Mirna, Matt and I went up to explore the Acropolis. Despite the fact that we knew the group would be visiting the site the next day (oct. 5th), we had a feeling that Jim and Eva would not give us enough free time there (and we were right…they ended up giving us 10 minutes of free time, which frustrated a lot of the group members). So I am very glad we made this adventure during our time in Athens. After paying the 6 euros to get in, we began our climb to the Parthenon. Started out by seeing a Roman theater, and then the Theater of Dionyscus. Once seeing those, and getting pictures of the amazing view of the city, we headed up to the Parthenon. It is very hard to describe how I was feeling when I stood at the foot of the Parthenon. It was just sooo amazing. We hiked around the ruins, and just had a great morning on top of the Acropolis. After our visiting was finished, we headed down towards the Theater of Dionyscus to explore. To be sitting in the same theater that Socrates sat in was a pretty awesome feeling. After the theater, Matt, Mirna, and I hiked to the ruins of the Temple of Zeus, and Hadrian’s Arch. After some more great pics, I took off for a museum. Athens was holding an exhibit of all of M.C. Escher’s art work. I was so pumped. I gave myself two hours to find the exhibit and look around. Little did I know that I would be searching around for 2 hours and not be able to find it. I asked about 7 people how to get there, and most of them had no idea, each pointing me in different directions. So I was kind of disappointed not to see the museum.
I then took the metro with the group to the Archaeological museum ( thank goodness I didn’t have to walk the 30 mins again). I LOVED this Museum!!! They had the statues of Zeus and the rest of the Greek gods and goddesses. Our tour guide was very happy to show us around. (sometimes a little too happy), but none the less, I really loved walking around this museum.
Once our museum trip was over, we walked back to the hotel (yes another 30 minute walk) and took a little foot break. Once rested, we headed out to the Plaka again for some great Greek shopping. I hit up the internet café for about 20 mins, and then went back to the hotel. For dinner, I had moussaka and this amazing frozen drink. Once the meal was over, we explored some more, saw the Parthenon lit up again, and then headed back to watch a little bit of tv. Larry and I decided to go to a disco. It was such a great time there. We didn’t know hardly any of the songs, and people would be going nuts when a certain song would come on, and me and larry would just try to fit in and go nuts with them. It was really really funny. We met up with some of the people in our group there, and danced the night away (well for 2 hours anyways…lol). And thus ends my first 4 days in Greece.
The next 6 days are my favorite days in Greece. The first four were INCREDIBLE, but the sites we visited in the next 6 ROCKED!! I can’t wait to re read my personal journal entries to make up the online on for tomorrow.
I hope you enjoyed reading about the beginnings of my Greece adventures. Writing them down in a journal for all of you to read has truly been an amazing part of my experience in Europe. While my daily journal entries help me focus the great things of a single day, these entries really help me realize the larger scope of what I am experiencing.
And now I am going to bring my labtop down to the internet café to load this story. I think of all you back home every single day, remembering you in my thoughts and prayers. You are with me on every adventure, in every sunset, and every laugh. Once again, I want to put a shout out to my amazing sister Kayla. Happy Birthday!!
Your Greece traveling buddy,
Kyle Kekai
Ephesians 4:14-16
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