Demetri's blog

A great day

Today was by far the best day in Greece.  So far, Greece has kind of been a bummer.  There have been multiple days in a row of pouring rain.  This leaves for many days stranded in the house with nothing to do but read and listen to music.  There are plenty of bugs to kill, and then there are the bees that look like they could kill a small elephant. 

Today was the first day that it hasn't rained in a while.  What is strange about that is that Ted and I were prepared for a lot of rain in Austria, Germany and Holland.  We didn't see a single raindrop there.  Greece was supposed to be a sunny paradise, and we got days of rain.  To celebrate the rainless day, Ted and I busted out the map of Lakonia and came up with a nice roadtrip.  We left at around 11 and started heading towards the ultimate goal of this mountain, whose name we cannot find on the map.  We do know that it's peak was 2000 meters high and that the road was dirt for most of the ride up the mountain.  This is all the map told us. 

We got in the Panda not knowing what to expect.  The ride was pretty nice.  We felt like we had gone incredibly high when we reached this monistary.  There wasn't anyone within miles of us and the air smelled great.  We reached the point where the road turned to dirt and that is when things got more interesting.  We kept going up the incline.  180 degree turns incredibly often.  10% grade inclines, too.  It was insane. 

We reached this point where the road looked like that scary path that Ewan McGregor chose to take in Big Fish.  Ted wanted nothing to do with it, but at this point, I just had to go up.  He had a valid argument: it was backtracking our trip and looked incredibly scary.  I don't know why, but I HAD to go.  I went up and was pretty scared driving.  The Panda is not meant for these kind of roads and the clouds were now below me.  The road was really narrow and the sides of the road were damaged from falling off.  There were rock slides everywhere.  Boulders, not just little rocks.  I turned around, got Ted and we realized that it was the right road that we needed.

Here is a picture of that moment:

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Here is the car that ascended and descending this scary mountain:

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To make a long story short, we took a very long time going down the mountain.  The road was very windy and dirt.  Super steep decline, too.  This wasn't even from the top of it:

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It was pretty cold on the mountain.  My ears and nose were frigid.  After reaching the bottom, it was pretty hot and I went to my favorite beach in the Mani region.  The best thing about going up the mountain was that there were olive trees and a desert climate in the beginning.  As we got higher and higher, there was a very lush pine forrest. 

 

Off with the beard

The beard comes off tonight.  That is all we have planned.  It looks like it will be a pretty boring evening.  I think we might take advantage of our new official Oktoberfest 2006 beer steins, too. 

We went to the Caves of Dirou today.  Stlagmites and such.  Thirty meter deep water, too.  Then we drove around Mani, trying to find this really small village that is super remote.  We failed, but got to drive through places that I couldn't believe exist in the developed world.

Pictures

Groundhog Day

I feel like Bill Murray somedays. 

We went for a swim yesterday, coincidentally at the same time as the previous day.  When we were finished, we dried off, got into the Fiat Panda and drove home.  The time was 5 PM, the station was 98.3 FM.

The playlist:

"Wild Thing" The Troggs

"Stay the Night" Chicago

"Jeanie" Falco

"Maniac" From Flashdance

"Take me Home" Phil Collins

"Relax" Frankie goes to Hollywood

Look familiar?  Apparantly they just replay the radio.  We will see what happens today at 5 PM. 

Ted and I saw what appeared to be a 12 year old gypsie driving a really old and beat up pickup truck.  It made my vacation that much more awesome. 

Radio, Radio

The playlist on the drive home from the beach yesterday:

"Jeanie"  Falco

"Maniac" From Flashdance

"Take me Home" Phil Collins

"Relax" Frankie goes to Hollywood

All in a row.  It ruled.

More pictures

More pictures to go along with my long blog post.

The motherland

Greetings from Sparta.  Not really THE Sparta, but close enough to call it "Sparta."  The ancient city of Sparta is now nothing but some rocks and an olive tree farm.  It's also buried underneath the new city.

It's been a while since I have posted, so my memory is not great.  Last I checked in, Ted and I may or may not have gone to a Turkish bath.  Why not?  It was only 1.50 to get in and incredibly close to the hotel that we stayed at.  Speaking of the hotel, that deserves some mention.  We found the place in "Let's Go Europe," our outdated and somewhat trusty guidebook.  It has served us pretty well, and this hotel was not to the contrary.  The room was 25 a night for a double, which is pretty cheap, and they mentioned how the owner of the hotel holds concerts every night.  That was pretty appealing to us.

We got to the hotel after our 27 hour marathon of travel and needed to sleep.  We met Mike, the owner.  He was waiting for us, especially since we were his only customers that night.  Before we paid for the room and got in, he insisted that we drink tea and eat a snack with him.  He talked, and talked and talked.  This guy reminded me of a hybrid between J. Peterman from Seinfeld and Zorba the Greek.  The Peterman comparison is because he looked a lot like him, looked off into space while talking, was very philisophical and gave unsolicited advice.  The Zorba comparison came for many of the same reasons, but also because he was Greek and was a lady's man.  He actually showed me a photobook of women he "made happy by making fuck with."  An entire photobook.

The day after we went to Symi, we took a bus to Lindos, which is on Rhodes.  That is the photogenic part of Rhodes, and also home to the acropolis on the island.  We rode donkeys up to the mountain to the acropolis, checked it out and then proceeded to relax in the shade.  We then went to the beach and had a beer, because they had Stella Artois.  The Greek beer situation is terrible, at best.  I miss good beer, especially after coming from central Europe, where good beer is plentiful.

That night we had dinner at Mike, the hotel owner's, restaurant.  He was excited that we were going to eat there and we were afraid that we would have to spend the whole entire night there, even though there were things that we wanted to do.  We did end up spending the whole night there, but it was pretty fun.  He had a helper that night, who was very amusing to Ted and I.  He couldn't have been more than 5 feet tall, looked like Anthony Kiedis and had homemade tattoos.  He was trying to talk me into getting one myself.  Mike kept making fun of him for being such a screwup.  To Mike's credit, the guy was, and to the other guy's credit, he laughed it off a la Knox Harrington style.  Apparantly the helper is married, but had been in a relationship with a prostitute for the past year.  He left his wife for the prostitute, moved in with her, yet insisted on wearing his wedding band.  After the prostitute had had enough of him, she kicked him out and he had nowhere to go.  His reaction?  Laughing it off.  He did seem upset about it, though.

Mike played music all night, and when it was time to have people pay, he had me add up the bills and collect the money.  The helper was apparantly uneducated.  He didn't know how to add four and two.  No joke.  So there I was, drunk out of my mind, trying to collect money and add bills. 

We left Rhodes and got into Athens.  Nothing too exciting to report about from there.  We had to wait a few days to get the car.  We saw the Acropolis, ancient agora, walked around a lot, got dinner with my uncle who I hadn't seen in probably eleven years and got out of town as soon as we got the car.  I rule at driving because I was able to navigate the Athens streets while eating pizza and drinking Amita juice. 

We got to Sparta last night and right now we are about to go to Stefania, the village where my dad grew up.  Its pretty close to Sparta.  The advantage to Stefania is that it is close to the beach, so there will be swimming today. 

More pictures

Blog post to be made soon.  I think it will be a good one.

Pictures

Damn, these take long to upload.

That was interesting

I normally don't post in the afternoon, but all I have to say is that I just got back from a Turkish bath.  All it was was a really old room that was very hot, a random bowl that was given to me that I didn't know what to do with, sinks without drains and an apparant resting place for said-bowl and a lot of marble.  There were pulleys somehow involved, too.  The Turkish bath was about a one minute walk from the hotel and it was only 1.50, so it was hard to resist. 

We go to the old part of town from here.  I think we will ride a donkey up a mountain.  More to come later.