back to athens

so we rented a car for five days on crete, allowing us to zig-zag our way all across the island. we started in chania, a venetian port-town on the northwest coast, initially heading almost due south towards the town of paleochora. this first drive was something of an adventure, as it introduced us to the insanity that is greek driving. first off, apparently the system in greece for acquiring a driver's license is incredibly corrupt, meaning that (according to our tour guide in athens) nearly 1/3 of the people on the road paid for their licenses without a hint of former road experience. we got to see such drivers in action, forcing me to overcome some fears and allowing alex to embrace his inner love of no-rules, no-road-lines, just-get-there-however-it-seems-even-remotely-possible style of driving. on the first day driving down to the libyan sea (that side of the island faces africa) we encountered another fun driving challenge, which is that when the cretans do construction on their already more or less one lane, windy mountain highways, they seem to have no qualms about forcing you to drive through their active worksite on a thin strip of unpaved, uneven road between moving machinery. yipee, how exciting! actually though, it was. after managing to navigate that mess we came upon a perhaps less dangerous, but equally exciting obstacle in the road - the cretan mountain crab. really, there were large crabs making their way across the highway, easily 30 km from the ocean and quite high up in elevation. wtf, right? over the next few days we crossed back and forth across the island a total of three times, having to stop or slow down rather routinely for roadwork, a few more crabs, and, on a number of occasions for sheep or goats lazily making their way to the other side of the road. our trusty little hyundai made it through though, and took us to sites we almost certainly would have missed otherwise. on thanksgiving we got up early, went to an ancient minoan site called gortyn (which was also later the capital city of roman crete/north africa), meandered there for a bit, then headed up back to the north side of the island, stopping off at an orthadox monastary along the way. a presiding monk graciously welcomed us, showed us their collection of byzantine relics and let us wander around the intensely peaceful courtyard that only a few hundred years ago was under heavy attack by the ottoman turks. from there we headed to cafe that offered us what we decided was our thanksgiving feast. in a tiny little hilltop town (quite different from the italian hilltop towns we encountered... greek towns are full of sad little houses and lots of olive picking equipment, rather than picturesque castle-like villages) we came upon a restaurant that was actually open - quite an achievement for the off season. after parking we walked up and were greeted by the softly swinging carcass of a freshly-slaughtered lamb. i uttered a few "jesus christ"-style remarks, we went in, and alex ordered the lamb. we were the only customers, and seemed to be interrupting the large family meal. after a few exchanged remarks though, such as "you american - obama good, yes? bush no good." we were like old friends and the patriarch of the family ordered alex an extra plate of all of the fanciest innards available from the poor little lamb outside, which he graciously ingested. all in all it was a nice meal, and yet again reinforced what everyone says about greeks being a friendly folk. the rest of the week was spent swimming, viewing ancient sites, getting lost and unlost amongst dozens of tiny little villages, and slowly making our way back to crete, where we left this morning to come back to athens. crete was a lovely place, but clearly has been aversely affected by intense tourism. in a way i'm happy that we went on the off-season, as prices were lower and there were hardly any tourists, but it also just underscored the utter dependence the place now has on that industry. beautiful place, but sad.
tomorrow we board the orient express to istanbul... another place full of beauty but marked by sadness. i'm very excited though, so we'll let you know how our journey progresses soon!

right now alex and i are sitting in an internet cafe in hania, crete, that doubles as a bar, poolhall, and hang-out for greek men who want to sit around and play backgammon, which is apparently abundantly popular over here. also they're all smoking. everywhere. all the time.
so we haven't really updated much about greece as of yet, mostly because the few days after athens were simply a whirlwind of multi-hour buses around the peloponnese (one day of travel took us NINE hours to get from delphi to olympia, towns less than 100 miles apart...). now we're on the very relaxed island of crete, where we'll be spending the next six days. our plans have changed rather drastically in the past week, as it turns out that greece more or less shuts down as of november 1st, not getting up and running again until the spring. so, instead of doing some island hopping over to the turkish coast, we're spending a full week on crete, taking a cheap flight back to athens, then boarding a train all the way to istanbul. it's an 18-hour adventure, apparently including a 3am passport check to look forward to when we arrive at the turkish border. i think it will be exciting though, and luckily they force you to pay for a bed, so it shouldn't be too brutal. well, we only have three minutes left online, so i'd best be off. crete is beautiful so far (we took a quick swim yesterday at the beach just beneath our hotel window) and i'm quite excited to see more of the island... happy thanksgiving! eat some pie for me!

more pictures!

well, it turns out we have a bit of extra time before heading to our bus to olympia, so here are a few pictures from the past week! they're mostly of me, since they're all off of alex's camera. here goes:

me at the propalaea, on the akropolis in athens
alex in front of the parthenon, which is apparently always undergoing some form of restoration

strange athenian graffiti

and on to delphi....

catphone! (we've seen approximately 9,000 street cats thus far on our journey, but this was still so cute as to be photo-worthy)

the valley below delphi - pilgrams' trail through the olive groves &

me with kouroi

virgins' blood or rust?

pictures!!

our hotel here in delphi has wireless internet, which means alex can send pics from his iphone to my email, and i can upload them! hooray! so, here are a few fairly recent ones, starting with the olive harvest in sardinia:

carl with what seem to be apple-sized olivesliz, june, and me sorting branches out of freshly raked olivesthe fruits of our labor (two days' labor, that is)
on to sicily - here i am overlooking the roman amphitheater in syracuse, where we went on the day-trip from catania

me with another theater, this one greek, and even more impressive (still in syracuse)

this was a huge quarry dug into the cliffside, which created a great echo chamber and was thus dubbed "dionysus' ear." just outside of this massive rock hall was where the athenians were imprisoned by the syracusans at the end of the peloponnesian war.

here we're on to agrigento, on the southern coast of sicily

finally, alex captured the amazing sky over the greek ruins, though we both agreed this sillouette of an olive tree was the most striking.

that's all for now, but hopefully more will come soon!

another guest post from Alex

So, we've moved on from Italy and are now in Athens, Greece. But our last day on Sicily/in Italy was memorable; we got up in Catania, midway down the east coast of the island and immediately set off on a bus, with our bags, for the Temple Valley at Agrigento on the southern coast. The trip was nice, but long and was punctuated with some really tremendous rain storms. About three hours in all to reach Agrigento but luckily by the time we got there the weather was clearing so we got to see the ruins of the myriad temples without having too many tourists around since it seemed many had left the ruins for the day on account of the rain. We had stored our luggage at the train station and we returned to get it after the temples and hopped on a train which took us back up to Palermo. That was another long ride through almost pitch black night the entire way. We saw a man get on the train with a big bag as it was pulling away, and then realize it was the wrong train. He started to get off at the first stop, got his bag out and then fopr some unknown reason decided to jump back on to grab something else. Just then, the doors shut and we sped off for another station. Now he was on the wrong train, and his bag was sitting on a platform unattended in the middle of Sicily. He eventually got off. Noisy italian teenagers were on the train too and we both decided that we had never heard a group of people talk so loud and with so much vim and vigor for so long.
In palermo we took a bus from the train station to get Chinese food at a resturaunt we had eaten at when we were in Palermo the first time. Everything was fried in olive oil so it was a little strange, but still good. Then we got on another bus and sped back to the trainstation to catch the airport bus. That was a 50 minute ride and we got to the airport around 11pm and settled in there to a lovely nights rest on the benches. It was quite miserable, actually.
We awoke sore and stiff and ate an abbreviated breakfast in the airport before having to deal with the fact that our flight to Milan had been delayed so badly we would miss our flight to Athens. Luckily, the ticket agent was super-helpful and got us a quicker flight to Naples instead AND a flight to Athens from there. It all worked like clockwork and we got to our highly-rated hostel in good time to walk around and take in the sites. Yesterday we took a tour of the city and went to a museum of traditional Greek tools and labour and also a museum of Greek music with a focus on folk music and its role in Greek traditional life. Today, since every state-managed site was free to enter, we saw the Acropolis and the archeological museum until they booted us out (closing at 3???). Tomorrow I am going back. We also went to a flea market today and saw tons of really cool stuff that we would both love to have been able to buy to furnish our houses (well, my house and Ursula's imaginary house) but couldnt for the obvious transport issues. Lots of stuff though... Lunch was Greek pastries and a coke/coffee smoothie.
Tomorrow, if the Greek students dont shut down the whole city with their communist protesting, we'll head off to Corinth and begin making our descent into the Peloponnese. Oh, so much to do. Finally, today is exactly one month before we fly out of Istanbul. We've both been reflecting on that a lot. This trip has really played games with our perceptions of time. I think we'll both be sorry to leave Europe, happy to go home and really perplexed as to where all the time went simultaneously. Oh, and freaking exhausted. Ok, I am having trouble with this keyboard (better than a Croatian one, however!) and this chair is really wretched. I hope everyone is well. Ursula hopes the same and thats all for now. Cheers!
-Alex

catania and syracuse

tonight will be our third night spent in a lively hostel in catania, on the eastern coast of sicily. we came here of course for the history and to see the sights, but also largely because alex's friend sean is studying in the "centro" program. it's a semester-long program focusing on greece and rome, run by nigel nicholson, a reed classics professor. we met up with sean and some of his friends the first night we got in, getting another taste of the relaxed island atmosphere which seems to be much more prone to late-night food and drink than what we experienced on the mainland. our hostel, much to our surprise, has a bar/restaurant attached to it, and on monday nights they host what can once again only be described as a street party, with something like 200-300 people talking, smoking, and drinking in the square below our window until god knows when. it was entertaining for a while, and with ear plugs it was luckily not too hard to sleep through. on our way here we had our first experience with the italian proclivity towards striking - after sitting in the palermo train station for three hours not quite sure about why our train was never arriving we were told about the strike, refunded our money, and sent out on a bus eastwards. it turns out the buses are generally faster on sicily, so after a day of exploring catania yesterday we caught another bus this morning to syracuse, which was once one of the most powerful cities in the world under greek rule. there we saw our first glimpse of greek ruins, including one of the largest mainly intact amphitheaters, directly next to the humongous quarry, which also served as a prison camp for rival athenians who made the mistake of trying to conquer the syracusans. pretty amazing stuff - perhaps alex will post more about it later. in any case, i have to say i've quite enjoyed sicily. we've seen no trace of the mafia, but instead mostly fish markets, museums, ruins, and lots of happy-seeming young people. tomorrow we head to agrigento for a look at greek temples, then back to palermo for an early morning flight to athens! ciao italia!

last stop in italy

well, things are looking pretty good, as you all know. i found out about obama from carl, our isle of wight host who i ran into early morning november 5th while he was riding his bicycle (with little evelina in tow) through the streets of bosa. later alex, liz, and i huddled around a computer and checked out all of the stats for our individual states, learning that all of them went blue. and go new mexico for going dem all the way! good-bye heather wilson and co.

alex and i took another overnight ferry two nights ago, arriving in palermo, sicily early in the morning. this ferry was not quite so nice as the last one, with one of the major problems being absolutely no signs or people helping with the whole exiting process, meaning we wandered around the various decks, hauling our luggage up and down stairs and elevators many times, often winding up in these creepy little dead-end places with only italian signs telling us we were wrong. gah. eventually we got out though, and entered the craziness that is palermo. after checking into our hostel (which feels more like a 19th century boarding house with long dark hallways and a hand-kept ledger book...) we headed for the capo market, which i read about in the book "on persephone's island." the multi-block market offers everything from live snails to marzipan olives to knock-off dolce and gabana jeans. after winding our way through many different sections we headed to the archeology museum, where alex once again was astounded by the breadth of their collection. the ticket offered us access to the palazzo mirto as well, where we decided to go after a little rest at the hostel. the palace stays open until 7, though by the time we got there at 5 it was completely dark outside. we started walking in and were stopped by an elderly italian man, who asked us if we understood the language, and upon hearing our answer (an apologetic "no") led us into the first room and proceeded to give us a detailed guided tour of the entire castle, completely in italian. we got bits and pieces, as he was speaking slowly and repeating parts for emphasis, but i'd have to say it was one of the stranger tours i've been on. we were also the only people in the entire place, so as he lead us through the 30-odd rooms he seemed to be taking extra liberties, such as opening the 300-year-old cabinets and drawers to show us how they worked, taking down the ropes to certain rooms and insisting we walk around, demanding i take pictures of particular things though there were clear signs telling me not to, and letting us take turns sitting in some of the royal family's plethora of carriages. it sort of felt like we were the visiting royalty examining the property to see if it was up to our standards. very strange, but quite entertaining. unfortunately, i could not even tell you who lived in the palace, as he either skipped over that part or said it too quickly. oops.
after that experience we headed back to our neighborhood, discovering that our street turns into sort of an alley party where all these little restaurant/bars bring out plastic chairs and tables and sell food and drinks to people hanging out. we brought out our mini dominoes and enjoyed our saturday night. it felt very un-italian, perhaps preparing us for what is to come when we arrive in greece next week! unfortunately today is sunday, which apparently means all the museums and everything ever is closed. but off we go to find something to do!

olive it

we've taken to making all sorts of "olive" puns... raking olives for hours at a time can make you sort of crazy. in any case, not too much news here. june left yesterday and we were sad to see her go. she's an incredibly strange old woman - very well traveled (spent 12 years in southeast asia, many in greece, etc.) and intelligent, but kind of crazy. she, liz, alex, and i sort of became a little pseudo travel family in our tower house, taking turns making a collective dinner every night and spending all day and evening together just talking and getting to know one another. liz spent the past nine years working for a nonprofit in ohio and has oodles of advice and fun stories to tell, so i feel like i'm just sponging up life lessons from these two amazing solo-travelling women. the great thing is also that they're both funny and friendly, and all four of us somehow click really well. the dynamic is different with june gone, but certainly not bad. we only see carl for a few hours per day, including lunchtime, which usually is such a relief after four - five straight hours of harvesting. we gorge on lovely sardinian food then go back to the grove for another few hours. it's dark here by about 5:15, so we haven't been doing much once we head back to town. except today, since it started raining during lunch, so we helped make some pomegranite juice, alex went to the oil press, then we headed down the hill. ah, the oil... so delicious! we've been using a bottle from our first batch, and it's absolutely amazing! tastes nothing like storebought, but instead is this tangy, peppery, bright green stuff that is just divine. hopefully i'll get to bring a bit home.
well, no news yet on the election, as it's still morning over there. all i can do is send my best thoughts over the pond. go vote, and i'll check back tomorrow to see what happened!