ok, a little corny. but come on, did you really think i was gonna put something else as the title? really??? don't you know me better than that??? anyway. snap back to reality. the pseudo-impromptu trip to greece began last tuesday when i met up with tanya (another friend from school) and mom d in athens. keep in mind that this was kinda thrown together hap-hazardly and we didn't really have ALL the details figured out. we knew we were gonna hit a 2-day tour of delphi and the monasteries at meteora (tanya was kind enough to book that ahead of time). from there, we figured that we'd spend a day checking out athens the city and then the rest of the days checkin out some greek isles (which ones you ask??? yea, we didn't know either). WARNING: THIS IS KINDA LONGso we jump on the bus tour early wednesday morn to get up to delphi. long trip filled with random stories from tour guide (mostly aesop's fables type stuff and some mythological stories). these were stories that sometimes provided useful background for the objects we were going to see (i.e. the story of apollo and the titans and/or apollo slaying the python) and sometimes were just time filler on the 4 hour journey (the story of oedipus). anyway, we finally reached the base of where all the artifacts were so we got out. i'm guessing that back in the day, this would have been an imposing structure to look at. all built up, many statues around, but now it's all crumpled. but there are still some pretty good indications of what might have been. so as tradition goes, delphi was neutral ground for all the greek city states. none of them owned it, but all of them were allowed equal access to ask the oracles questions. since it was a place of common ground for everyone, they used this area to commemorate their military conquests. they did this by adding monuments or buildings. pretty much antiquity's version of "my xmas lights are better than your xmas lights - a la clark griswald". so we went up there and saw the various temples, statue locations and whatnot left from the different city states. as part of tradition, the oracle only gave predictions once a year (apollo's day, if you will) so people would line up a few days in advance in hopes to be able to hear the oracle's advice. turns out that the order people stood in didn't necessarily have to do with when they got there. it had more relation to where your city-state ranked in the order of panhellenic importance at the time. i think that's a pretty fair way to figure this out. but there was a trump card (i believe this to be the first trump card ever played, the right bauer, the big winner, the godfather of all trumps), the main altar used by the "priests" was built by the chians around 500BC and they wisely inscripted on the base of it "this altar was built by the people of chios, the line to meet the oracle starts after them." how do you say "dibs" in greek? cause i think they just called it.
so after our time at the delphi site, we jumped back on the bus and headed up to meteora - but first, we would make a stop off near the thermopylae pass. yep, you heard me. the place where king leonidas defied the odds and battled the millions of persian soldiers with just over
a thousand total greeks (the 300 refers to the 300 spartans that were there, he had about 1000 from other city-states at that battle). when asked by xerxes to give the persians their weapons and they wouldn't be harmed; leonidas only had one response "COME AND GET THEM!"... pretty bold if you ask me. well, we've all seen the movie (or can wiki it), so i won't bore you with the details. but the statue of leonidas is pretty cool.
from there we made out way up to the mountain dwellings of the ancient monks. the monasteries of meteora. pretty much these started off as hermit dwellings on top of weird shaped mountains that just jutted out from the ground without much bulid-up around them. back in the day there were about 20, due to seismic activity only about 7 remain. so we climbed up there and checked out their buildings, the views from outside and the inside of their churches. i'm gonna say this, greek orthodox churches are pretty ornate. i'll post a couple pics here to show you what it was like, but won't waste too many more words on it.
the next day brought us to the unknown. but before we get to that, let me tell you about what happened wednesday night. so when the bus dropped us off at the hotel our guide told us to write the name of our hotels in athens on our bags. this way the driver could figure out the best route to drop people off at and also it was a better marker for each piece of luggage. when she said this, the three of us looked at each other and were like "ummm... what hotel??" soooo, we spent a fair amount of our "leisure time" before dinner huntin down a decent hotel to stay in for the weekend. but since we didn't know exactly what we'd be doin, we didn't really know which area we wanted to stay in. so after a bunch of confusion and worryin, tanya found us a place near the port (this way we were close for any day trips we wanted to do). keep in mind that we haven't quite figured out what we actually wanted to do. we even spent most of the 5hrs on the bus askin around to see what other people had done and what seemed worthwhile. so we wake up friday mornin to see if we can grab a ferry out to a nearby island for a day-trip. mom d was leavin saturday mornin and wanted to see an island. we tried our mightiest, but were unable to come up with a trip for friday as all the ferries had either left already or were full for the day. stupid procrastinating!!!!! tanya and i promptly booked tix for a weekender to santorini (with all that everyone was sayin, this seemed to be one of those "if you miss it you'll regret it" places).
all wasn't lost, we decided to use that day for our tour of athens. we did your standard "hop-on, hop-off" tour around the city. we stopped at the acropolis (which has the parthenon) and the temple of zeus. after a while, it just all looks the same. so when we finished we decided to pull the trigger on the one remainin day we had: monday. we decided on Hydra. it was a close 1hr ferry (compared to the 6hr "fast" ferry and 7hr "slow" ferry to santorini - which is why it's a weekender and not a day trip , but i digress), didn't allow cars on the island and seemed to have a pretty decent history. more on that trip later, on to SANNNNNNNNNNTORINI!
here's my advice on this island, if you wanna go to a place that's undisturbed by mainstream tourism and you can just hang out for a week on the beaches and not really do anything big, then go here. it's mainly a 2day attraction for most people, cause there's only one or two things to do: 1) check out the hot springs/volcanic craters just off the shore, b) watch the sunset from the northwestern city of ia. after that, it's all about being lazy on the beach and maybe walkin up and down the streets that are lined with store vendors selling a whole bunch of artisan craftwork, clothes and jewelry. the place also has some historical significance too. this is one of the prime candidates for the location of the real atlantis. they have a museum over there about it, but it has been under construction for the past 2 years so we didn't get to see it. which means that you'll have to deal with my version of the story. so the grouping of islands called the cyclades (yep, as in cycle) look as if they could have been all the same island at some point. there's a huge basin in the middle of them with volcanic craters coming up to form a small island.
as you stand on this crater and look around you, the edges of all the islands are not smooth,
planed out beaches but sheer cliffs. looks almost as if someone just took a knife and cut out the middle of the island... well, the main working theory is that the volcano erupted around 8000BC and along with a well timed earthquake caused the inner part of the island to sink to the bottom of the sea. in some of the remaining cities they have found traces of advanced sewage and water transport systems that date back to 9000BC. i don't know about you, but that seems like it'd be a lost civilization if i ever heard of one.
anyone, less of atlantis and more of santorini (means st. irene in greek). so we did the touristy thing and jumped on a boat to head out to both the hot springs and the volcanic crater in the middle of the cyclades. don't worry, they've been inactive since 1956 and they have seismic readers on them to notify people in advance if anything's gonna happen. (editor's note: after they let us off at the docks, i passed on using the cable cars to get back up the cliffs to the city and took the really long path up the hill.
they told me it was 628 steps, what they didn't say that the parts between the steps were on a 35 degree incline) later that nig
ht (our only one on the island) tanya and i jumped on a bus and headed 20min north of the main city of fira (or thira, depending on whom you ask) to watch the sunset in the city of ia. we walked around for a bit and found a rooftop restaurant that had a great view. so we pulled up there and asked for some menus.
to be honest, it was pretty cool watchin the sun set into the horizon on the water. pretty darn cool. the next morning we got up and took a bus down to the "black beaches" on the south shore of the island. it was pretty cool. from what we can tell, the beaches are made up of volcanic ash that, over the years, has smoothed out somewhat. very interesting feeling between your toes. not quite sand, not quite pebbles. anyway, we jumped on the ferry that evening and caught most of the 2nd half of USA-Brazil. we docked with 23min left (and up 2-1), so i figured we won until the next morning. d'oh!
final day in greece, mission: hydra. so hydra is a tiny little thing just off the pelaponessian coast and about an hour south of athens. this island is just a large ROCK and almost impossible to grow anything on that terrain. so based on this, the inhabitants turned to the waters for their living. becoming some of the most respected and well-renowned seafarers of the middle ages. they would hire themselves out to outrun pirates and blockades (english blockade of france, turkish blockade of russians). this gave most of the citizens a fair amount of $$ which they in turn used to make beautiful mansions overlooking the sea. because of their love of seafaring vessels, and their limited land, they have not allowed any motorized vehicles on the island (basically, this is how you say mackinac island in greek). so we get there at 9.30am and immediately think "what are we gonna do here for 10hrs???" anywho, we walk around the waterfront for a bit (pretty much densely populated with restaurants' waterview seating. so we go to the maritime museum (turns out hydriots were big in the war of independence from the turks), checked out one of the mansions (this dude lazarus gave his mansion so it could be a national museum), and then looked for the big church in the middle of the town. unfortunately, when we got there it was closed to visitors.
looked pretty cool from the windows outside, but we couldn't see inside it. after a 2hr lunch spent learning backgammon, we decided that we wanted to go see the next major attraction (and only remainin one) the monastery for the prophet elias (i think this may mean elijah, but i'm not sure - who knows, maybe this is where they invented big boy??). we look on the map, doesn't look too far. tanya had said that the research we did said that it was about an hr walk from the city, so we set off. one thing leads to another and it turns out that the monastery is actually at the summit of the highest peak on that island. and we spent a solid 65min climbing up it at steep angles and poor roads. talk about tiring. so we got up there and spent about 20min inside of the thing (which was pretty cool, silver lined paintings and whatnot) and then tried not to kill ourselves on the descent.
with the final ferry back to the port of pireaus that night, we marked our final night in athens. not a bad week for somethin that was thrown together about 3days before it was completed. next on the agenda for joseph p is to head back to zurich with the 'rents for a relaxing july 4th weekend and then hopefully make my way back to zaragoza to visit some old school friends. yup, that's another last minute excursion. we'll see how that one works out. good night to all and to all a good night.
let's say that you have an open weekend coming up and aren't sure what to do. what should you do??? well, mom d and i answered that question by booking a hotel room in interlaken, a few hours drive from zurich. so as we're researching things to do up there, we notice that there is a Harley Owners Group festival that weekend. ahhhhhhh........... bikes, burgers and... brats (what?!?! did you think i was gonna say somethin else???) what an american weekend. to be honest, it was kinda refreshing seein as how we were up there for the weekend of the 4th (well, friday night at least). we embark on our expedition shortly after lunch on friday afternoon, with a plan to stop off at luzern on the way up (it's about halfway there and only has a few things to look at). so we jump in the car and make our way outta the city. after goin all over the mountainside (apparently sally - the GPS - wanted us to avoid some alleged traffic back up) we finally end up on a country highway in the correct direction. sooooo, we get to luzern and it's beautiful out. we find an underground parking structure, by the time we get to street level it's pouring rain. well, we didn't really have much invested in this city, so we jumped back in the car and took off to interlaken.
