It’s just a short walk.

 This morning we got up on an island.  We have now been to 5 islands on this trip.  Crete, unnamed island in Ioanninna, Corfu, Lefkada and Meganisi.  Tomorrow we’re going to Aegina, bringing the island count to 6.

We we got up in Lefkada, Nydri to be exact, in our giant room built for a family of 4 that we paid nothing a night for.  We packed up, this routine now routine, and i ran to get the car from the parking lot.  JW went down the street for coffee while i waited for the manager to show up so i could pay.  I still haven’t heard from the boat company.

The manger dude showed up and i paid, 170 for 2 nights in our luxurious suite, and drove down the main drag to pick up JW.

We hopped on the road off the island and before we knew it were on the highway headed southish towards Athens.  We were about 1/2 an hour behind schedule, and i had a few things i wanted to stop at along the way, but I chose one that looked like it was close to the highway and would just be a short walk from the parking lot.

This has been a theme of this trip.  Many ancient sites or waterfalls or whatever look like they are just a short walk from the parking lot and wind up being an hour of clamoring over rocks and going up all the stairs and hiking up the side of a mountain.

When we reached the entrance to the site, there was a gate over the road.  The hours clearly stated 8-4.  Why was there a fucking gate in the way???  I was about to drive away when JW noticed a sign that said open gate and close behind you.  She jumped out and opened the gate and i drove through, and she closed the gate and up the parking lot we went.

I had no idea what this site was, only that there was supposed to be a theater somewhere.  The google map entry said Ancient Theater of New Pleuron.  But what we found was an entire city, sprawling across the top of a mountain, and we were the only ones there.  Well, not counting the two guys weed whacking all the 5 foot tall grass all over the site.

We entered the gate, got the diorama picture for Heather, and went up this huge hill towards this enormous city.  We wondered, how many people even knew this was here?  Never heard about it.

The theater was smallish and in repair, but fine nonetheless.  There was a giant wall around the entire hill that even went up the side of the mountain.  Apparently there was more stuff up there, but like previous ancient sites we’d been to on this adventure, it was closed.

We wandered around the rest of the site, snapping shots of things that were older than the native Americans exploration of the americas BC kids, it was old, and when we finished, we were sweating and tired and ready for the drive back to Athens.

Drove down this tiny road which connected to the highway and god, do i suck at highway driving in Greece.  When you get on the express roads, the speed limit is 130KMH and i just have the hardest time driving that fast.  It really doesn’t matter that much, but i do pride myself on the driving.  I do the best on the tiny roads.  I suck on the superhighway.

At one point I realized it was lunch time so we pulled off the highway at the town called AIGIA, we have no idea how pronounce it, and our exit seemed to be an industrial part of it, so we headed through the town towards the gulf of corinith and found a wonderful little taverna and had yet again a fanstastic lunch.

Hopped back on the highway and before long, cut off the highway and headed towards downtown Athens.  4 o’clock on a Saturday and this road really gets backed up at red lights.  It took a while.  But perseverance and my awesome driving eventually had us pulling up to the Hotel Attalos, our home away from home in Athens. Our old friend Kostas was even inside, though I’m sure he barely remembers us, since it’s been 4 years since we’ve been here.  We checked in, took our stuff up to the room and got back downstairs and into the car to take it to the rental place.

Now i must confess, we did have another accident.  Our second incident with a rental car if you will.  This one was not as innocent as the first, but involved the drive to Ioanninna the week before.  You see, at one point JW told me to look at something and i just barely veered a bit to the right, and hit a orange cone in the road which knocked the fog light out on the right front side of the car.  It seemed silly at the time, and once we arrived in Ioanninna, i actually got the thing pushed back in place.

So some time between Lefkada and Athens, it popped back out and we didn’t notice it until we got the Attalos and i really didn’t feel like fucking with it, plus we have travel insurance which covers everything so i just said fuck it.  350 dollars total in damage, and we paid it and walked back towards the hotel.

We took the side route and wound up in our neighborhood of Psiri, and it was cram packed, lots of new places including an Indian place that was in the spot of one of our old favorites.  We stopped into the Rooster to say high to John our old friend and told him about our adventures before heading back to the hotel before dinner.