Greece - Parting Shots

We are writing this on the ferry to Brindisi, Italy. It seems too soon to be leaving Greece. It is a wonderful country filled with honest, warm people. The topography is nothing short of amazing. If you like wildflowers (who doesn't!), Spring is the time to come. A little Spring rain is small price to pay for the spectacular beauty.






The camera does not do the flowers justice.



Like we said above, the Greeks are honest and warm people, but they have a few quirks to our American minds. In their cars the Greeks are a little bit anarchistic. Behind the wheel they do pretty much as they please. We've seen them stop in the middle of their lane on a mountain road to have a cell phone conversation, other traffic just has to adjust, and does. Parking is willy-nilly. They park with two wheels on the side walk, or completely on the side walk. Parking often blocks half the street, and we've seen them double park in front of the police station.


In the picture above the yellow line is a no parking zone. At least no one is on the side walk.

The Greek people love coffee! We calculate (actually, we speculate) that each adult Greek spends about four hours a day drinking coffee, unless they are retired men, then they spend the morning drinking coffee and the afternoon drinking ouzo!

There are some beautifully constructed houses in Greece, but often it seems that they just don't get around to finishing them.



One thing that impressed us was how progressive the Greeks are with regard to alternative energy. We passed many village size solar voltaic arrays and almost every house has solar hot water. Many of the round top mountains have wind turbines on top.



The recycling program is also impressive. Every small village has a recycling dumpster next to the garbage dumpster. In one of our campgrounds, the proprietor's wife went through the garbage cans and separated the recyclables if the campers had thrown them away.

We've made reference to the abundance of food served and we have concluded that the ubiquitous French fries are the best fries ever. They are cooked in olive oil and are great, hot or cold. The grilled food is the highest quality, while they over cook any sauteed meat. A must eat item is lamb in the oven, which is the slow cooked lamb mentioned in an earlier post.



The picture above really shows the average 35 euro room. What it doesn't show is the kind older couple in their 60's that run the business. Every one of the proprietor's tried to make us comfortable and satisfy what ever needs we communicated to them.

Greece is a wonderful place, and has claimed a spot near the top of our list of livable places. Efharisto, Hellas (thank you, Greece).

Last whole day in Greece

Sami has a cute little harbor and this morning during breakfast we observed several old Greek fishermen coming in with their catch. Over the next hour, we watched them separate their catch from the nets, sell some fish to a local housewife, and mend their nets.


We rode our bikes to see two natural local phenomena, one underground lake and one limestone cave. Lake Melissani is a deep pool of water (39 meters or 128 ft.) within a cave that is 160 m long and 40 m wide. An opening above the lake lets in sunlight which illuminates the lake. You get a little boat ride around the lake. The water is breathtaking clear and breathtaking cold (40 degrees F).








After visiting the lake, we took the long way (and scenic) through some hill towns to get to Drohgarda Cave. We rode through some ancient olive trees that were larger than any we had seen. We think they may be approaching some of the oldest recorded olive tree ages which are over 2400 years old. We read up on olives on Wikipedia and the article is fascinating (check it out, trivia and science geeks!).


We took a lunch break at the highest point of our ride. The view was classic Greece!



Drohgarda Cave is a 3,000,000 year old cave that was discovered by children sometime in the 1600's.








After touring the caves, it was beer o'clock!



It was all down hill back to Sami, and so we finished a great day, our last full day in Greece.

Kephalonia - redefining rugged

We started out with overcast skies and dark clouds to the north. As soon as we got of town we had a steep climb.



Soon there was drizzle and a headwind and on went the rain jackets. The landscape was so imposing that Belinda remarked that it seemed like we were heading toward Mt. Doom (we just couldn't see the eye of Sauron).


We climbed and climbed, the sun came out, and then we saw the shrine of the day, with an inscription that brought joy into our hearts, apple pie!



We paid double homage, one apple and one lemon, to the wisdom of our friends, Ray and Brenda. Their mantra is "never pass up the opportunity to have pie."



After pie, we still had 300 meters to climb in 3.5 km. The grade was steep and we passed buildings that we had looked up at.



We are definitely riding into shape. We didn't suffer on this climb the way we did on some of the big climbs earlier in this trip. It really was a beautiful day. Kefalonia is a great way to end our sojourn in Greece. Tomorrow we do some sightseeing around Sami, and then on Saturday it's on to Italia for us.

Island Hopping Again - Vartholomio to Kepholonia

Last night we checked into an inexpensive hotel (35 Euros) in Vartholomio cleaned up and set out to wander around town. We stopped in a food market looking for good cereal (hard to find) and bought some good ouzo instead (easy to find). The young woman at the market recommended a restaurant called Salt and Pepper. Well it turned out to be the most delicious meal we have had in Greece yet! The cook was Moroccan and the proprietor was an older Greek man. We had interesting conversations with them about 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden and WWII while we ate our meal. We ordered an appetizer of feta stuffed paprika peppers cooked in wine and it was delicious. We ordered two of the specials they had prepared that day, a lamb dish and pasticitio. The lamb had been braised in wine, lemon juice, olive oil and herbs, then wrapped in paper and slowly baked. The flavor was incredible! Pasticitio is layers of macaroni, ground meat (a pork and beef blend), cheese and a light fluffy moist crust on top. Dave declared it the best macaroni and cheese he had ever had.

On the way to Kilini, we passed this pasture with the biggest billy goat either of us has ever seen!








After an hour and a half ferry ride we disembarked in the town of Poros on Kefalonia.










Being hungry, we went immediately to the nearest taverna for lunch. We ordered Kefalonia meat pie. An island specialty, we were told, of which each village has it's own version. This version was delicious. It consisted of meat (no idea what sort), potatoes, and some sort of red pepper, a kind of hash in a wonderful pie shell.








After lunch, we rode over a short hill into town and stopped at the first place with rooms for let. The price was right and we unloaded. Here's the view from our balcony.









Then we walked the length of the beach and wandered back through the houses on the hill. Similar to other small Greek towns, livestock are plentiful and this group was grazing between houses. The chickens in Greece are not "free range", they're "free town".








When we had unloaded our bikes, we noticed this neighbor.









Tomorrow we face a considerable hill, 650 meters in 10 km. Tune in for more next time.

Olympia to Vartholomio

Our camping experience at Olympia turned out great. When we returned from seeing the sights, there was a young man setting up a tent in the site next to ours. He was Casey from Phoenix, AZ and had walked the pilgrim's trail to Santiago in Spain. He was seeing the historical highlights of Greece (Athens, Delphi, and Olympia) before returning to a friend's house in Spain. We had a great time discussing our travels at a taverna in town.



This morning as we were loading up, a couple from British Columbia wheeled their bikes up to the gate. They were heading south where we had come from and we assured them that the scenery was wonderful. They had been disappointed with the flat uninteresting scenery from Patra to Olympia. We had to agree with their assessment during the ride today. We had a nice sojourn on a small country road this morning.



Then we were heading north through farmlands and small depressed towns. The number of closed businesses was shocking. This area has no tourist attractions and the economic crisis in Greece has hit it hard. Our destination town had no hotel, but this wonderful tower and church.



We asked at the local cafe and they directed us to the next town, Vartholomio. All the better, we have 5 less kilometers to ride to Kilini, where we catch the ferry to the island of Kephallonia.

Learning all about the Ancient Olympics

The Ancient Olympics were held every four years for almost 1200 years (from approx. 700 B.C. To 400 A.D.). The site at Olympia changed a lot as the games grew. The first games were only a 600 ft. footrace run in the stadium. One of the interesting things about the ancient games was that in order to insure harmony for the games there was instituted the Sacred Truce to end the wars between the Greek tribes, in effect or a period of time before, during and after the games.


The site had many temples and had a renaissance during the Roman period (approx. 100 to 400 A.D.) during which a large hotel for visitors was built. The site was abandoned by order of Theodisus I, then destroyed by two earthquakes, then covered over by 18 ft. of silt from the adjacent river flooding. The following picture shows the columns from the Temple of Zeus as they lay.



Some of the areas have been resurrected and give you an idea about how beautiful the site was.



When the archaeologists excavated, they found many of the treasures well preserved including the famous Hermes by Praxilites.



Several other artifacts caught our eye as well.



The large bronze lion head below is a piece of hammered bronze from a single plate of bronze.


An other thing about the ancient games is that they had a problem with cheating, just like these days, enough so that they devised systematic method of dealing with it. The cheater was fined and the fines went to paying for a bronze bust of Zeus beneath which the cheater's name was inscribed. These busts with cheaters names lined the approach to the stadium, a walk of infamy if you will.

Tomorrow we approach the port to ferry to Kephallonia.

To Olympia - A Day Of Surprises

As we were loading our bikes in front of our hotel for the day's ride to Olympia, we heard a shout from the road and there were our friends, Michael, Ciska, Jesse, Sammy, and Eva. We had a nice but too brief visit, they had a boat to catch in a few days time and were trying to get all the distance they could this day. We may not be able to catch up to them again as they are on to Italy days before us, and are landing in a port considerably farther north than ours. Though our friendship has been brief, it has been warm and if we don't see them again we will miss them.

There was a nice tail wind blowing and our route was flat for the first 12 kilometers. After that we expected to climb for the rest of the route to Olympia, but to our surprise the hills were gently rolling. Only the last two kilometers were stiffly uphill. We got into Olympia early in the afternoon, had a leisurely lunch, and found our campground. After setting up camp we walked into town and cruised the tourist shops. Belinda bought a nice blue ball cap with the Greek flag on it.

Here are pictures of our campground headquarters, camp host ( who has been running the campground for 32 years), and the camp puppy.









Tomorrow we will visit the site of the Ancient Olympics, and the two museums, one for the Ancient Olympics and one for the Modern Olympics.

Shrine of the day:




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