Pefka Hotel Panorama

... Byzantine museum to visit, and an archeological museum to gander. My favorite site was the White Tower. It’s a big cylinder-shaped tower made out of stone that used to be the end tower where the sea met the city walls. The White Tower used to be called the Bloody Tower because it held prisoners once upon a time and many were executed there. It is white-colored nowadays because a prisoner white-washed it in exchange for his freedom ...

... br>
Bin um kurz nach 20:00 gelandet, und um 23:50 dann mit dem Nachtzug weiter nach Sofia. 18,50Euro fuer die Strecke, habe aber noch fuer 10 Euro auf den Schlafwagen upgegraded, da der eine Waggon ziemlich voll war (und ich ausserdem doch recht muede war).

Gruss
Ralf

... galleries. Here we went to an art gallery whos exhibits which ranged from several hundred beer cans arranged in a spiral to a musical video about communism. Top fun!

We also went in to a photography gallery and a museum of cinema which was quite cool. A pretty awesome 3D film at the end as well!

This passed most of the time we needed to kill and we filled the rest with wondering the streets looking around.

... we were allowed on trains or not. We asked if we needed to make a booking at the station and they told us no but we then got thrown off the train in some backwater town because we didn't have reservations. A helpful Greek guy had come to translate between the conductor and ourselves and when we asked him why the conductor wanted us to get off he just shrugged and said "because he is an *******". We asked the woman in this station if we needxed reservations and she said we ...

... English, he did recognize the name of Ikea when we wrote it down on a piece of paper. So 15 min later we get there, split the amount of the fare which ended up being 7 euros, and started our shopping. The place was PACKED, and of course we were most likely the only Americans there. It was weird being a minority, but we ended up learning to use the phrase "signomi" a lot (which means excuse me) as we tried to weave in between people to get to the stuff we wanted. I hate to think ...

... this small little eatery that served flatbread pizza and these kiropitas (cheese pies) that were soooo good. We also bought a 1.5 liter of water to go with it and it was huuuuge! But it was great, and although not everyone speaks English here, its amazing what a bit of pointing and body language will do. Tommorrow were going to get some really good pictures of the ruins and stuff around town during the day, so they're not so dark. Blog ya'll tommorrow! -Jared and Megan

... a central, huge, agora. It had systems both for water supply and sewage. Afterwards, as I maneuvered my car through yet another crazy-angled corner or maze of tiny side-streets or higgledy-piggledy five or six road crossroads in a tiny Greek town, I thought, you people could built a city on a grid 2500 years ago. Why can't you do it now? But I digress. You may feel I've included too many shots of water and sewer system parts and ...

... but didn't want to take us and tried to tell us why in greek, the the taxi ordered for us arrived. Finally we got out of there and back to the room exhausted. Today we caught the train to Thesaloniki, and we leave for Sofiia, Bulgaria in 3 and half hours. This place is a dump, and it took us an hour to find this internet place, which is also a bar which can't find or pour a beam and coke then chage 8.50 EURO for it. Hopefully Bulgaria is better.

... leaving Greece. We arrived at the train station just in time to miss a quick but heavy rain storm. There was even hail. We are now tucked away in our cabins, with the walkie talkies on between the rooms. At 2:00 am we will be at the border and the customs agents will board the train and collect our passports and most likely money for visas into Turkey. We do not have to leave the train and we will continue on to reach Istanbul, hopefully by about 7:30 am.

... Great. This was the first organized community and we visited a small museum. In the museum there were jars that had been found with Drachmas in it, which is a visual for "Treasures in Jars of Clay." We then went to Berea and visited a new synagogue that was built in the same possible location as the one that used to be there. Until 1947 there was a scroll here that dated back to the 2nd century BC. In the margin of this scroll ...