28 July 2008

long travels deserve relaxing days

Don't try traveling overland to Greece from Croatia... it's loooong.

We went from Sarajevo to Belgrade, Serbia. That was overnight train #1. We arrived around 6 AM and spend all day in the city. Shopping, reading, eating, sleeping in the park, wandering, eating popcorn from street vendors. I was kinda of sick from something bad I ate in Sarajevo two days before. But we did buy an amazing amount of groceries with our remaining Serbian dinars for something around the price of 9€. It was just as many groceries as I normally bought in Italia for around 30€.

Overnight train #2 turned into all day train. We arrived in Skopje, Macedonia about 3 hours late... so instead of arriving in Thessaloniki at 1 in the afternoon, we arrived around 5 and also lost an hour due to the time change. Next, 5 hour train to Athens. Thankfully that one was only about a half hour late. Get into our room after midnight and find Gabe passed out.

The next few days the wandered the city and saw the sites. Too many tourists and a stifling hot city. The Acropolis was ridiculously crowded and I was still feeling sick from something I ate a few days before. Thought I was gonna puke on masses of tourists/ancient ruins. Made it out without doing that one. I dunno which would have been better in retrospect.

Finally the 3 of us got away on an overnight ferry to Santorini. Now it has been nothing but beaches and cruising around the island on 4-wheelers. The caldera is amazingly beautiful and last night we did what everyone told us we had to do... watch the sunset for Oia (Ia). I thought it was overrated and would've been happier all the way on the other side of the island without the masses of people clambering for the best view. Otherwise I took in a lot of sun, snorkeled and saw some cool fish, and ate some amazing foods... and drank a lot of Mythos.

Gabe left this morning. Now Ashly and I are onto Crete this evening and soon across the water to Asia... well actually just Turkey but technically everything on the east side of the Bosphorus in Istanbul is Asia.

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