September 25, 2004

Final Country

We made it to Greece yesterday morning! The trip from Italy to Greece itself was pretty uneventful. We took a train to Bari (south-east corner of Italy) and from there a ferry to Patras, Greece. We had dinner, wandered around the boat, and slept. It was a little like I imagined a cruise ship to be like, except much smaller and toned down. There was a tiny dance floor and bar, a regular restaurant, a buffet restaurant, and several outdoor drink stands. There was a tiny pool and hottub on the top deck, and a duty-free shop and miniature casino. We mostly did not take advantage of these, but we did check them out. The trip from Bari to Patras, took about 15 hours, and that's about as long as I would have wanted to spend on board.

From Patras we took a bus to Athens, where we discovered that our hotel reservations had been changed for us! We were sent to another hotel with the explaination that our travel agent (which we don't have) had made reservations for us at another hotel because the original one was full. Apparently this is a common practice in Greece, or at least in Athens, because the new hotel seemed to understand it pretty well. We have still not gotten ahold of our mysterious travel agent (I made the reservations on the internet) but everything seems to be working out ok otherwise.

So instead of jumping into the Greek scene and going sightseeing, this morning we are doing laundry at a local laundromat and checking our email. I think the plan for the afternoon is the Acropolis, and tomorrow we'll go to the archaelogical museum that happens to be a few blocks from our hotel.

Posted by Jen at September 25, 2004 03:08 AM
Comments

Those up and down things are called crenellations. There is a church on the corner of Highland and Winton here, which you've passed quite often, built of nice stone in acceptable Gothic style but without a steeple. A couple of years ago they added some plastic crenellations to the square bell tower, such as it is, and the plastic is a sort of yellowish shiny color, quite distinctive compared to the grey stone of the rest of the building. I think they will install some ecru siding when they think the stone is too dirty. Episcopalians.

Greece is a rough and ready place. All the food there that we ever had was Greek food, including the inevitable Greek salad swimming in greenish olive oil. I hope you got to sit in a restaurant or cafe across the valley from the lit-up Acropolis. Nice view, makes up for foggy Schweitz. Sorry about that, but at leas the trains run on time.
I just now discovered you had a Registry (I hadn't explored the wedding blog before now. I would buy you a book if I could think of one. Do you have a sterling silver cigarette lighter, table style? Sonya and I got two of them when we were married.

Love, R

Posted by: Ralph A. Raimi at September 28, 2004 09:02 AM