Olympia to Athens to Crete

Getting out of Olympia was hell. Transportation in Greece is just a total free for all and it's been taking us full days to get from any one place to another.

We finally got to Athens for the second time in a week and ended up in Aphrodite Hostel aka our hell. Fyi to anyone visiting Athens- dont stay here. We spent the next day in the pouring rain wandering around looking for a camera shop our hostel guy had told us about to see if Meghan's broken camera could be fixed. It couldnt, so I ended up spending the money I dont have on a new digital camera (photos will be posted soon, I promise). We decided that getting out of Athens was necessary, so we bought tickets on a high speed ferry that took us to Crete in 4 1/2 hours. The ferry was pretty amazing...there are airplane style seats, but the ferry itself is lavishly decorated, there are mini cafes, people are drinking and smoking in the restaurant area....we were impressed.

We got to Chania in Crete at about 9pm last night and walked down the ramp with our bags and were faced with complete chaos. Luckily we spied the taxi line and got into a cab with the most hilarious cab driver I've yet to encounter. Not only did Meghan and I get into the cab, but at the last minute so did the cabbie's "friend", whom we dropped off at some obscure location, only to pick up someone else and drive to her destination before Meghan and I were at last dumped off at some busy street corner with instructions to "walk down about 100 meters and take a right to your hotel" (it ended up being way more than 100 meters and was actually a left, not a right, but we'll let that slide). Our cabbie's driving skills were impressive to say the least...all the windows were rolled down and he shouted to other cab drivers as he sidled up to them something that must have been along the lines of "im going to cut you off now" and would immediately step on the gas, leaving the fellow cab driver little choice than to oblige. He also had a skill involving creating yield lanes when they actually did not exist. I sat in the passenger seat and observed in silent admiration, taking mental notes. Definitely going to test out some new driving skills when I get back home.

But we are now in Crete, in a little town called Chania, and we have a cute room on the second story right on the water of the harbor. We hiked the Samaria gorge today, taking a bus up the mountains and hiking down through the gorge for about 5 hours until we reached the Sea of Crete. Hiking through the gorge was breathtaking. At first we were fairly unimpressed, talking about how we felt like we were hiking in Mt Tam (can we say jaded?), but eventually we were walking through the boulders, surrounded by cliffs on either side that were mile high. I especially loved the sign "Extremely Dangerous; Walk Quickly." At one point I looked over to see Meghan looking around pensively, and when I raised my eyebrows in question, she responded with, "Now I can relate to how Simba felt in the Lion King, you know, when there was that stampede and he couldnt escape? Damn Scar, what an asshole." Not exactly the comment I was expecting, but okay, I could see where she was coming from. When we finally reached the water it was a clear, turquoise color, unlike any water we had seen. We jumped in soon after and spent the rest of the afternoon swimming and in my case getting very sunburned (and yes mom, i WAS wearing the SPF 50).

Tomorrow we head for Santorini. It's been a week now we have been in Greece, and a happy one, although we both agree it's felt like a month. Our prized possessions at this point have become the two little silver spoons we "borrowed" from a hotel in Napflio, which we use to eat the yogurt we get from the market everyday, along with some fruit and turkey (we are trying to save some money, but its not going so well). I knew we had reached a low point yesterday, though, when Meghan looked at me after eating some fruit salad and asked if I thought we should save the plastic cups it came in "just in case we may need them sometime." Wow. I definitely made sure we threw those out. But all in all things are good, and we are anxious to arrive in Ios and check out the job situation. We'll keep you posted. Miss you all.

Deep in the Peloponese...

We find ourselves sitting in an internet cafe, with crazy techno music blasting so loud I can barely even think to write, and the greek owner, Taffos, keeps coming up to us and touching our arms to stammer something in english that we dont understand.

Right now, we are in Olympia...home of where the olympics were created. it is pretty crazy to wander amongst the ruins, on the same dirt that people walked on in the 4th century BC. To see the track where runners actually ran (Laura and I are pretty sure we could beat them), the different temples, the actual statues that sat in the ornate buildings leaves us speechless.

We are hoping to get out of the Peloponese area soon and out to the islands as life is pretty slow in most of these towns. Laura and i go out for wine at about 9 each night, drink a mini jug, then go home and are in bed by 1030 and back up the next morning at like 7...haha, its a nice change from our shannanigans in Athens.

Getting to Olympia was pretty much hell...due in part to poor planning (suprise suprise) and the greek bus system. We rode on this bus through all these little greek towns, built on the hillsides of the mountains. but the bus would stop at the most random places to let people on or drop people off. we haven't quite figured out if there is a system to the madness, or if the bus driver just does whatever it is he wants. At one point, the bus came to a crossroads, about 10 people got off, then the bus drove up this tiny narrow mountain pass for about 20 mintues and arrived at a town that had about 10 houses. one woman got off the bus, then we turned around and went back to the crossroads, where we re-picked up the 10 people who got off and were just chillin, and continued on our way.

Speaking of madness, Laura and I are perplexed by greeks. Everywhere we go, streets are lined with cafes. And most of the time, the cafes are full of greeks...all day, any day. do they work? or do they just hang out, smoke, and drink frappes? we dont get it.

So this is a bit of a random blog post, but we dont know when we will have access again. The world continues to fascinate us, as we can be so far away from home and experience such a different culture, yet some things are the same anywhere you go. as we don't speak greek, a smile turns out to help a lot. yet riding on the bus, through tiny greek towns, where ancient wars were fought, Laura and I couldn't help but wonder what these people would think if they knew the world we came from...full of cars, big houses, constant technology, health obsessions, and being born into an area where every opportunity is given to us. It's pretty unbelievable how different life is here. not good different, not bad different. just different.

yo, we are going to try and post pictures soon, but we are having issues with the digital camera. oh technology...

Athens

First things first, HAPPY (belated) BIRTHDAY KENNA! we miss you.

So here we are. where to start? our flight was easy. laura spent her time trying to watch 5 different movies on the personal tv (british airways is sweet) and i spent my time scheming about how to steal as many FREE mini bottles of wine/alcohol as possible...

eventually, we found ourselves with our luggage, driving into athens with a cute little greek man named babbos (who sounded like borat). everywhere we looked were crazy soccer fans. our flight from london to athens was full of liverpool diehards because, it turns out, there is a giant soccer championship being hosted in athens. great timing by us. all the hotels are booked, and everyone is in the streets either

a. wearing their team's jersey

b. drinking and wearing their team's jersey

c. drunk and naked and painted in their teams jersey colors

its been fun, the excitement was contagious and who doesn't love a bunch of british guys with cute accents walking around?

Athens is amazing, sprawling in all directions, and right in the center is the acropolis. it is completely humbling to see something SO ancient. the cool thing about the city is that you will be walking down the street and then all of a sudden walk past some random building from 14 B.C. you just have to be careful where you lean and sit, otherwise these people (we have no idea who they are or with whom they are affiliated with) start blowing their whistle at you and yelling in greek.

Anyways, so yah, we got to athens and chilled the first night. we have been completely confused with time and have had to incorporate some ambien to help us sleep. the first morning, laura and i woke up at 630 and started to hunt for coffee. they don't really do coffee it turns out, and when they do, its in a mini cup. no giant venti starbucks sizes. bummer. we then started our super toursity day bright and early. we hiked up to the acropolis/parthenon and spent a long time taking it all in. i can't really think of words to describe it, other than you feel completely dwarfed and insignificant. to see these massive, stunning creations made by an ancient civilization that was the most advanced in the world, left us in complete awe. it was completely amazing.

from the acropolis we headed to the national archeological museum. it was cool, lots of huge statues from different eras of civilization. its so hard to even try and conceptualize how old the things we were seeing were. crazy.

after the museum we needed a nap, obviously. so we had big plans to head back to the hotel, shower and just hang out. well, it turns out, laura and i wandered around athens for 5 hours completely lost. its so hard not speaking greek, not being able to read signs, not really being able to communicate at all. we just kept walking in circles, including through the middle of a meat market filled with slabs of just about every animal and where we were the only females in sight looking completely out of place. it turned out okay because we got to see the whole city and work up an apptite to eat the amazing feta cheese they have here. got home and rested up for our night out.

Laura:

The night started with the mini wine bottles saved from the plane ride out on our room balcony. Cheap white wine, warm weather (although there was a thunderstorm that lasted about 20 minutes), view of the Acropolis- we decided then and there Greece was a good call. Once we downed the mini bottles we headed out for our first official night, beginning with a mini jug of wine at a little outdoor cafe (I guess it's pretty obvious the theme of the night was alcohol). Eventually we were approached by some Greek guy to come sit with him and his friend for a drink, which sounded great until it turned out that he barely spoke English and his friend didn't speak any. Needless to say, the conversation was limited and after about 5 minutes we were all staring at eachother awkwardly, waiting for our shots of ouzo. The awkwardness only grew when Meg spilled one of the dude's water all over his lap, and we made a hasty exit soon after before our drinks even came.

We then proceeded on to the little square of the Platka district and sat ourselves down at another outdoor cafe and ordered two ouzos and two Amstels. The waiter looked at us and for clarification said, one ouzo? to which we were quick to correct him, no no, two. He just stared at us for a second and then walked away laughing, and when he brought our drinks set them down and said, "Arrivaderci." We sat there talking and trying to force down the ouzo (not a huge fan) and after looking around realized the entire outdoor seating area of the cafe was filled with guys from the UK who were in Athens for the champions game between Liverpool and Milan. We were literally the only females. Everyone around us was wearing a red jersey and occasionally someone would break out into a Liverpool song and the entire cafe would join in. Meghan and I got really into it, mostly because if we didn't start join in someone would yell at us to start singing. We hung out with a group of guys from Ireland the rest of the night and definitely had our share of drinks (but its cool cuz they were free). while visiting with our new friends, we learned a few things:

- "what the crack?" (a new saying for "whats up"; definitely bringing that one home)

- they kept talking about some dude named jimmy, but it turns out it wasn't his friend, but their equivalent of dude

- mixing white wine, ouzo, beer, vodka lemonades and coke and amarettos equals the worse hangover we've ever experienced

All in all a great first night out. Made some friends, had some drinks, accumulated 4 roses between the two of us (all from different men), and sang our hearts out. maybe next time we just won't drink quite so much. it would be nice to actually remember the experiences we have here.

Meghan:

Waking up was extremely painful, but we somehow managed to pack our crap up in about 15 minutes, ignore our terrible hangovers (everyone warned us about ouzo but we didn't listen, but now we are never drinking again...i swear), and got our butts to a bus station. we hopped on and got out of athens to travel over to peloponese, trying to make our way to Olympia and Sparta. Right now, we have stopped in a small town called Napflio which is gorgeous. its nestled on the coast in the shadow of an ancient fortress...

Meghan and Laura:
So we actually wrote this blog last night, but the internet sucks and we had to come back today to post it. This morning we climbed 898 stairs up to this giant fortress. It was pretty amazing, and the fact that you can wander around at your leisure is cool. We could climb into the "rooms", saw where they kept prisoners, and pretty much decided we could live there. We were thinking it would be sweet to play in it all day and pretend we were from the middle ages...but we didn't, dont worry.

We are going to spend the rest of the day down at the beach, swimming in the mediterranean. crazy!

we are safe and well. and extremely happy. its feels right to be here. hope this finds you all well.

who ever would have thought we would have a blog

this is a test entry to see if we have done this right.

As of the 20th of May, the two of us will be "moving" (for lack of a better word) to Greece. Don't ask us what our plan is. Don't ask us where we are going. Don't ask where we are staying. Don't ask anything involving any sort of details because you will get the same answer; we don't know. We do, however, hope to keep in contact with this blog. This way, we won't bother you with mass emails and those of you who would like to check in on us can read this at your leisure. All we have to do is hope that we actually take the time to write in it...and have things to write about.

Take care, have a shot of ouzo in honor of greece next time you are at the bar (mom,dad- that means you). Cheers.