Catching the midnight train

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Trip Start Mar 04, 2008 Previous
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  Athens, Greece
Sunday, April 13, 2008

Bari was good to us.  It left a good taste of Italy with us.  We enjoyed the big town comforts like watching an American movie (dubbed in Italian, I think I only understood three words out of the whole movie) and eating many meals at the multitude of McDonalds scatterred along our way to the port.  But getting out of Bari didn't go quite as planned.
On Monday, we were ready to Ferry out to Dubrovnik in Croatia.  All ready to conquor Croatia with our full vocabulary knowledge consisting of 'Bog' and 'Bog' alone (equivilant of ciao), we arrived at the ferry terminal just to find out there are no ferries to Croatia until Wednesday!  At first we assumed this must just be another Italian run around; maybe there is a boat from a different port or with another ferry company, we just need to find it.  Afterall, a nice fellow italian we met at the grocery store in Alberobello had looked up the ferry information for us and told us the company BlueStar FastFerries has ferries to Croatia every night at 8pm.  So we kept going back to the FastFerries counter but they only had boats to Greece, no one knew of any boats to Croatia

First meal at the McDonald's

.  Shortly after we realized the guy in Alberobello had actually looked up the ferries to Greece mistakenly and that was that... it changed our trip.  We joked about maybe having to go to Greece at first and within 5 minutes it became the new plan!  Maybe this was already decided when Matt (Robin's friend from Victoria) drew the greek flag on the going away card he gave to us.

This change gave us a chance to make a new friend.  On the boat we met another cycle tourist, Mathias, who is doing a 10,000km tour around Europe in 100 days (www.euro-flyer.ch).  We rode for 3 days into Athens and spent the day around the Acropolis together today. We are about to embark on a midnight train northward, us to Larissa and Mathias (Matt) to Alexandropolis in the northeast (next to Turkey). From there he is heading into Bulgaria (Tina Turner!), Romania, Croatia and beyond. It will be sad to say our farewells. We have gotten along well, and shared some exiting, relaxing and beautiful riding days together. Farewell Matt!

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Fountain at the Bari Piazza	I guess we're going to Greece!	Watching the sunrise on the Ferry	Scetchy but pretty hostel in Patras
Pulled over by the police in Greece	Looking for the road after lunch on the beach	A new friendship	Riding through the park
German cycle tourists we on our lunch break	Yes... it's 24 degrees!	Greek style church	Korinthos Channel
Pastry break	Mousaka... this one is for Randi	Alley scenery	Acropolis under construction!
At the Acropolis	Ainaz being a Tourist	Greek subway

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