After winding our way through Greece for the last month we’re now about to board a ferry from Igoumenitsa, Greece to Brindisi, Italy. We have loved almost everything about Greece with the exception of a few observations mentioned in my last blog post. Greece has it all, amazing historical sites, breath taking landscapes, warm water sunset beaches and wonderful people, we’ll definitely miss the laid back lifestyle of Greece. Our only regret on leaving is missing the islands of Mykonos and Santorini. We planned on seeing them both but became concerned about where we could safely leave our motorhome for a few days. When we checked into the last minute peak season overnight trips available to us, it was the extreme cost that replaced our first concern. We finally decided that a relaxing cruise through the Greek islands and into Turkey someday would be a much better option, and value, for us.
Since the last blog we have spent most of our time on the impressive Peloponnese Peninsula, home of the Spartans and the birthplace of modern Greece. After crossing over the grand canal built near the end of the 19th century, you enter the neighbourhood of civilizations that date back over 3500 years. Our first stop was the very strategic and important ancient city of Corinth that at one time had a population of 750,000. Conquered by the Romans and reconstructed by Julius Caesar himself, these fabulous ruins are the largest Roman township ruins in Greece today. Corinth, under Roman rule, also had a reputation for licentious living and St Paul was put on trial here in AD52 for challenging this promiscuous lifestyle. As impressive, if not more, was Olympia the site of the first Olympic Games. These ruins (still being excavated) are also massive in scope and they include the ultra important Temple of Zeus, God of the sky, lightning, thunder, law, order, justice, and “The father of Gods and men”. What a feeling of awe one gets just walking around this ancient sacred site. The 1700BC (Bronze Age) Mycenae ruins and tombs were also amazing and were only discovered in 1874. What a splendid view from it’s mountain top location. On the more lively side, was the really fantastic traditional town we visited called Nafplio with it’s massive fortress Palamidi looming above it. This was the first capital of liberated Greece in 1829 and through the ages was a major battle zone between the Turks and the Venetians to control it’s critical trading port. Another very cool and traditional town we visited was the small coastal town of Lefkada which happens to be a major windsurfing and sailboating recreational area, and a great place for Margot to shop for souvenirs. We pre-booked our ferry crossing for August 28th and because we moved up the coast a bit faster than expected, we found ourselves with a few days of unplanned down time to suffer through. We managed to find a beautiful campground located on an impressive sandy beach bay near the wonderful old Greek town of Parga that could easily be accessed by a fishing boat water taxi for an evening out. After five days of relaxing, we’re now looking forward to sailing West and exploring the southern boot of Italy, but saying “good-by” to Greece is not easy.

Road Ramble: “Food”

This trip was never intended to be emphasize by food. Sure, we want to experience as much of the local traditional cuisine as possible but the real focus has been on exploring the many treasures of Europe and historical places you find them in. Having said that, over the last seven months, we have truly enjoyed many great specialty meals in some wonderful local establishments. But, the majority of our meals have been motorhome based and they range from a “sandwich-to-go” to chicken and ribs on the BBQ. Lots of stir fries and pasta dishes served with a salad, beer and wine. Our breakfasts are simple, like toast and peanut-butter, or a banana and yogurt with a spot of tea to wash it all down. Without an oven or a microwave to work with, Margot has done a fantastic job of cooking up a storm and producing some very interesting meals with just a 3 burner stove to work on. I try to help out when I can by firing up our very impressive little break-down gas barbecue that you actually wash-up after every use.
Grocery shopping can be a bit of a challenge considering the ever present language gap and the fact that every store has a slightly different selection presented in a slightly different configuration. We like to patronize the small local grocers but have also found a few larger chain outlets that do make life a bit easier when we can find them, but it still amazes me as to how much time we can spend in one store looking for refried beans for Margot’s burritos. As far as selection and price are concerned, we have been pleasantly surprised and on average would compare them to prices in Victoria. The big exception to this is alcohol where a decent bottle of wine can be had for 5-6 dollars, and a half litre of good beer will set you back about a buck fifty. Lucky for us, this one has the potential of dramatically helping in bringing us in on budget:-) All-in-all we’ve had a great food experience so far, we’ve had no related health issues, we’ve eaten some very fine meals, and we’ve enjoying a varied selection of the “commoners” food like gyros, pizza, breads and pastries. Going out for dinner is still a treat for us and as we continue this wild adventure we’re looking forward to sampling many more traditional foods along the way… bon appetite!

We drove inland from Mt. Olympia some distance to pay a visit to the famous 13th century Monasteries of Meteora. Like everyone that comes to admire these treasures perched atop sky -high rocky outcroppings we were duly impressed. Some of the dozen or so ancient monasteries and convents are still in use and inaccessible to the general public but we managed to tour three that were open for viewing. From Meteora we drove to the “Centre of the Earth”, Delphi. This ancient sanctuary dates back to the 6th century BC and is located in a strikingly beautiful location high on the side of a mountain overlooking a carpet of olive trees to the distant ocean. From our campsite on a cliff we sat back with a glass in hand and enjoyed the view and the stars until midnight. Delphi is the home of Apollo and for much of it’s colourful history has played a significant religious, social, and political role in the Greek and Roman worlds. The ruins are in great condition and you can almost imagine yourself dressed in a toga and strolling along the “Sacred Way” past thousands of statues and treasures on your way to the amphitheatre or Athletic Stadium. But, with all the hot weather we needed to treat ourselves to some beach time, so we headed for the famous beach area south of Volos. Good decision as the campground we found was one of the best sites so far with great facilities, great restaurant on a sandy beach and really warm water. We planned on spending two nights and pushed ourselves away after four. Since entering Greece the weather has been very hot and on most days the thermometer approaches the forties range so walking about and exploring things during the day has been a thermo challenge. Luckily we’ve had a few great campgrounds with good beach access to the warm Mediterranean to help us bring the body temperatures back to normal. Not that we’re complaining, it cools at night for a good sleep and I don’t think I’ve had a tan like this since I was 12 years old. After driving south (on some pricy tollroads) and checking out the Temple of Poseidon at Sounio, we drove on into Athens. How does one describe Athens?… Historical treasures like the spectacular Acropolis with it’s Parthenon as a crown and the Temple of Zeus with Hadrian’s Gate nearby are truly outstanding in every possible way and combined provide enough reason for making Athens a must see.
But, unfortunately Athens has two sides and outside of the main tourist areas the extreme beauty of the city is tarnished by signs of poverty and urban decay. In fact, in many parts of Greece we were surprised at the amount of unsightly garbage just thrown about and left at the side of roads and highways. Compounding this problem is the vast amounts of unsightly graffiti on just about everything, even in the most remote areas. All of this left us with the impression that Greece could do a much better job in presenting itself and is desperately in need of a national cleanup campaign. In parts of Athens this problem is even more exaggerated and combined with a few other social factors, it can actually become concerning and uncomfortable for a couple of wayward tourists. Certainly we have met many, many wonderful people in Greece and have visited some strikingly beautiful places along the way but overall I would say that Greece has a serious social environmental issue that needs to be addressed and when it does, this country will be even more amazing. Perhaps the person in charge of the Metro in Athens could assume a leadership position for this national task. If the few Metro stations that we used were typical, they could act as a perfect starting point for a positive cleanup campaign as they were completely graffiti clear, were the cleanest we’ve seen in all of Europe, and felt very safe to be in… Go figure!

Note: I was just reviewing the blog and discovered that the chronological order of the photos has been somewhat scrambled during the downloading process. This has happened before and can make things be a bit confusing to follow. I don’t know why this is happening but I’d bet it has something to do with slow and questionable wifi. Sorry!

Our original plan was to zip around the corner from Venice and slide down the Adriatic coastline towards amazing Dubrovnik while taking our time along the way to enjoy the seaside. From Dubrovnik we planned to cross over the mountains through Kosovo and into northern Greece. Scrap that plan!… Kosovo it seems is still considered to be somewhat of a hot spot and after being warned off by a number of very reliable sources we decided to completely avoid the area and altered our malleable plan accordingly. So, from Venice we did zip around the corner slightly, but only as far down as the northern coast of Croatia for a night, and then turned north east for a speedy autobahn drive to Budapest, Hungary for a quick visit. We were quite impressed with Budapest and spent the better part of two days exploring the sights on both sides of the Danube. I never knew that on the west side of the Danube is the city of Buda looking east across the river at the city of Pest. The two are linked by a number of impressive bridges and now collectively make up what is known as Budapest. We did the Big Red Bus tour as things are a bit spread out and really got a good feel for this still merging tourist Mecca. Despite the thirty plus degree heat, we were determined to try the local Goulash soup and we weren’t disappointed at all, who would guess that cold Hungarian beer goes so well with it. From Budapest we turned south for another autobahn slide through Serbia and Macedonia to Thessaloniki, Greece. We did however encounter a few unexpected twists in this quick slide south. Along the way we drove through Hungary, Serbia, Macedonia and into Greece each with long wait border crossings (going in and out). We drove through 10 highway toll booths with significant wait times as well (costing a total of about sixty dollars Canadian). One autobahn accident with a 30km traffic back-up and a little construction to boot. All-in-all, I would guess that we spent about 6 hours in lineups. Because of the added time we couldn’t complete the drive in one day and ended up on a dark rainy mountain road very late in the evening and too close to the border of Kosovo. We decided it best to stay the rest of this night in an isolated but busy hotel parking lot with designated area for motorhomes along with a few other tired RV travellers.
After the turmoil of Yugoslavia breaking up with the years of unrest that followed, much of this part of the world is still considered “Emerging” and the depressed economic conditions of some towns and villages that we saw, can attest to that. We thought we might stop for a night in Belgrade, Serbia but the feeling we got driving in on the freeway through many rundown buildings and endless graffiti unfortunately turned us off wanting to stop. I know you’ve heard this before but… It’s times like this that you’re reminded of how fortunate we are to be living in a country like Canada. Crossing into Northern Greece we were also surprised at the number of closed businesses and slightly run-down areas. Hopefully Greece’s damaged economy will completely bounce back soon and when we drive south towards Athens we’re hoping to see some evidence of that happening. Greece is beautiful and fascinating in every way possible and we’re really looking forward to exploring as much of this amazing country as we can. For now we’re sitting in a slightly over cramped and lively oceanside campground just below Mt. Olympus. Warm water, colourful lights, great restaurants, shops and people activity to entertain us until we decide to move along.

Road Ramble:

It’s surprising how many pictures we’ve taken so far and how quickly they all add up. We are now in the neighbourhood of about 4000 saved pictures and someday I’m sure we’ll look at each one of them at least one more time, unless the kids want to see them a few extra times… (I hear what you just said Cameron!). Our basic Nikon camera has been working great and other than burning up the battery charges rather quickly we haven’t had any real photo technical issues, until recently when trying to download photos for this Blog. Lucky for us I don’t think it’s a camera problem, it seems it has more to do with a bad SD memory card instead. Unlucky for us, I think we’ve lost a number of pictures including some from Budapest and our drive south to Greece. Can you hear the crocodile tears hit the motorhome floor. I do plan on bringing the SD chip home with me though and hopefully our good friend Dave, who is the master of all things computer, can magically retrieve some of the lost and locked up photos inside (Yes, that was a “heads-up” Dave). Unfortunately however, this Post is therefore minus a few interesting photos that Margot was quite excited about of Budapest and the drive through Serbia and Macedonia. Just incase you are interested, At some point I will talk about the details of our basic camera and photo management in the Nuts & Bolts section.