We weren't sposed to come here!
Trip Start
Mar 25, 2007
1
45
72
Trip End
Feb 16, 2008
Athens,
Greece
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
We had found a train station with free parking so headed there in the morning to catch a train into Athens itself. The temperature in the middle of the day was getting up to 50 degrees so we were keen to get into town early to beat the heat. So we battled with rush hour commuters and headed straight to the actropolis. Now Greece has this wonderful thing where if you are a student studying in the EU you can get into all their sites for free, so with our fake student cards acquired in Egypt and telling them we were studying in England we got into most places for free! The acropolis is awesome, but they are currently working on putting it back together so there is a lot less there at the moment than you expect from the pictures you{ve seen. Still its an impressive site.
After ticking this big one off our list we headed to parliament to see the crazy changing of the guard (once again photos to follow later). those poor guys have to stand in the heat wearing wollen stockings and crazy dress things in that heat! must be crazy to volunteer for such a job! Then we ticked off a few of the other big roman sites in Athens, as well as the olympic stadium (the original) before ending up in the shopping area! All in all it was a good day and we managed to see everything all in one day!
We headed back to Marathon, and thought we would go try and see the Kayaking and canoeing centre from the last Olympics, but somehow Hamish and I managed to drive right past it without seeing it and ended up on another great sandy beach. We thought we'd check out the fare at the local Taverna and had some really really great pork chops (it was all they had other than fish, despite the extensive menu!) and some great hospitality from the family.
The next day we headed to the pelopenese peninsula where we knew had had lots of fires. We headed south, stopping off at the Korinth canal, a ship canal built in the 1800's to shorten the route between the Adriatic sea and the eastern Med. The Canal intersects the Isthmus of Corinth and has a lenght of 6,343m. The minimum width of the canal at sea level is 24.6m and bottom width of 21m at 8m depth. It is cut into the ground up to 52m deep.
Then we headed to Nafplio, an awesome little town with a big walled fort on top of a very steep hill, and some great free parking right next to a nice little beach. We just chilled out on the beach for the evening. The next day we headed to Sparta, where there is nothing left of the ancient civilisation, through Kalamata, famous for its olives, through a massive area that had been destroyed by fire. We jsut came around the corner and everything was burnt including cars and a water tanker. The fire fighters had done very well though and very few houses or buildings had been burnt.
We were heading to an area near Tholo where there is a sea turtle project who are there to help keep the nests safe once the eggs have been laid. They have a nice little area under the pine trees to camp, right next to the beach. Probably not the smartest idea though when we got up in the morning and drove 15 mins down the road and the fire had been through there overnight! Don't worry mums, lesson learnt!
We headed to Olympia, where once again they had worked very hard to save the area from fire. in the stadium area the grass was singed and the trees right up to the edge of the museum were burnt. Once again we got in for free (sorry Rach!) and had a nosy round, and once again it was oppressively hot, but the museum, which had a huge amount of weapons and armour as well as the freeze from the temple of Zeus, was air conditioned! The whole thing was very cool to see and the greeks were very clever in their building.
Then we headed to Kilini where we were going to get a ferry across to Zakynthos island. We dropped rachel off at the crack of dawn to catch her bus to Athens, then headed to the ferry terminal to catch the 8am ferry. At this stage it was just Hamish and I and astro and Suse, we decided to pack light, take just 2 sleeping bags, a tent, a towel each and some sunscreen . We got to the island and rented 2 little 50cc scooters between us, and headed to the campground. The campground was very steep but awesome with a big slope covered in olive trees leading down to the water. The guy laughed at us for not having any luggage, but we made a bed of pine needles to put under the tent and we were away laughing. Then we jumped back on our trusty scooters and after a bit of a struggle to get up the hill we headed off around the island. We just drove around, stopping off at points that looked interesting, or that we thought we could swim at, we did 140 km's on those things in 24 hours! It was an awesome little side trip, but was nice to get back to the comfort of the van!
Then we headed to Patras to catch our ferry to Italy! (an overnight ferry where we could stay in our vans - can{t ask for better than that!
