Athens

We exited our bus to Athens at the bus terminal which we assumed would be somewhere in/near the city centre. Roaming around the station we soon realised we were not in Central Athens but wedged between a motorway and a footpath-less industrial wasteland. We asked the ladies at the desk labelled "Information" whether they had a map (contemptuous "no.") and later returned to ask for help getting to the city - contemptuous "bus 51" and when we asked where this was, a vague gesture toward about a hundred buses. Great. Athens was not winning us over. Greece has been really bad for tourist information (i.e. we have never seen a tourist info centre anywhere). A Greek Canadian we met in the mountains who has lived in Toronto for 40+ years mentioned that the recently shamed Greek politicians have been damaging to Greece's tourist industry through their neglect and underfunding, which he believes is driving tourists elsewhere e.g. Turkey. We can definitely see his point.

We eventually made our way  to the centre - largely thanks to the help of a generous Greek lady who took us under her wing - and walked the few kilometres to our hostel because the metro line we wanted was down (and has been for some time) and we couldn't find the bus we were told would take us there instead. Arriving at our comfortable hostel two hours after arriving at the bus station, we were relieved to be off Athens streets. So far Athens had given us the constant feeling you sometimes get in parts of a foreign city when you suspect you have wandered into the "wrong part of town". Graffiti absolutely everywhere (including parked cars), litter, restless people, bad driving, a generally bad vibe. We saw a group of three people being arrested and were asked for money by a self-confessed junkie just on the way to the hostel. We feel sad that things in Athens seem to be much worse than we had realised, and we are wondering how much recent economic events have caused this or whether Athens has been struggling unknown to us for some time. We are also wondering why people don't seem to be telling it like it is, everything about Athens we looked at online seemed to be in denial over the obvious problems we were seeing there, particularly the Greek tourism industry pages which made it sound like a utopian dreamland where you could "breathe the air of the Gods". We are not ones to be disturbed by a bit of grit in a city and often even prefer it to super squeaky clean places, but Athens was on another level to anywhere else we have been on this trip. It felt deflated, uncared for and often made us feel uncomfortable and on edge.

Heading out for a walk in the evening, we started to see some of Athens' charm. A beautiful mountain/sea setting with the majestic Acropolis and Temple of Zeus towering above the city, a really cool and lively area near the polytechnic filled with cafes, book shops and hip young people and ultimately, potential for a good city to live in. We really hope things get better in Athens soon, it should be a great city and from what we have heard, its politics of recent years have really let it down. I should note that the super touristy area near the Acropolis and Parliament is mostly clean and grand looking, and they seem to have herded most beggars from here too. We also saw some excellent busking! Maybe if you stick to the tourist track you see less of Athens' struggle, but then do you really see Athens?

We certainly don't want to kick a place when it's down and discourage people from travelling there, but we also feel that denying the problems will only make it worse. We wondered sometimes whether maybe we were overreacting or being sensitive, but it really did feel downtrodden and the extent of it took us by surprise. Have other people had similar experiences? Anyone's thoughts or experiences are welcome (and requested!!) We're quite curious to hear other opinions.

riot police, a common sight in Athens while we were there.

 

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We loved the nut shops! Cheap and delicious turkish delight, nuts etc

turtle power

Here's our slow and steady mascot  for riding in the greek mountains. It felt quite appropriate being in Aesop's turf. The tortoise wandered up to us as we were eating our lunch. We offered her a tomato but she seemed uninterested.  We pondered that tortoises would have made great food for our ancesterian hunters, as we ate our prepackaged food, in that they came with their own handy bowl.

greek sketches

           The first two sketches here are of rural Greece. Many older people, especially women, wore very traditional looking dress up in the mountains. We read somewhere that lots of older rural greek women still believe in the "evil eye". I don't know how true this is but they did feel like they were from another time. I tried to look especially sweetly at them as we passed so as not to give the impression I was concocting a hex.              The bottom two drawings are from Athens. Jenny reading her new book and a busker we came across near the Acropolis. He was playing the dulcimer with impressive dexterity, adding intricate flights of fancy to popular tunes and spontanous jams. We lingered for quite a while and caught a few tunes, including an amazing rendition of the chicken dance. I don't often find strange grown men adorable but this rotund turkish gentleman with a sleepy smile, white skivvy and old-wordly charm was something else! 

olive groves have been our staple wild camp for a while now. Note - olives direct off the tree are not very nice.

Nafplio and bye bikes

Our last wild camp in Greece {and for the trip!} was in an overgrown apple orchard still up high in the mountains. We thought it was ok to pick a few apples for our breakfast porridge because many were rotting on the ground and then we enjoyed a  view of the mist clearing in the valley as we ate.  After climbing steadily for the previous few days we had earned the coast downhill  to the Aegean Sea. The Pelopenese mountains was a great ride to finish up on.  We were initialy a bit climb shy when we started out the trip but we came to realised it dosn't take long to work up the fitness that stops climbs being a slog. The stimulating landscape really makes the climbs worth while and you are usually rewarded with a downhill coast at the end.

 Wild eucalypts in Greece gave us a sniff of home.

crab crossing road near Olympia (do Greece have mountain crabs!?)

flying fox for the monks lunch?

 We stopped in Nafplio for a few days to make the switch from self-sufficient cyclists to hostel-staying backpackers.  Its a really beautiful small city. Set on a bay and having a preserved old town below a looming castle it's also  a popular tourist spot. Unlike other old Mediterranian coastal towns however it didnt feel like the locals were ropped off from the pristine tourist part. The lovely old town felt lived in and not overly fussy with lots of restaraunts and cafes more on the homely than the ritzy side of things. A really good place to relax.
We left our bikes to George, an old Greek man who ran an economy hotel called "Hotel Economou". It turns out that Economou is his last name but we never figured out if he used it for its insinuation of budget. He had been running a hostel across the street for thirty years prior and now runs the current cheap but very comfortable hotel/hostel.  Hoping he could pass on the steads to some local or thrifty traveller we jumped on a bus for Athens.

The Peloponnese

Slightly green from our bumpy overnight ferry ride (Poseidon had whipped up a storm the previous night which had the Mediterranean unusually choppy), we rolled into Patras, Greece in torrential rain which started two minutes before we disembarked then stopped about five minutes after.
We turned up at our hotel disguised as two drowned rats - we seem to be making a habit of this. After a night in Patras recovering from the ferry ride (and feeling in awe of our ancestors who spent six weeks, or was it longer!!, on a boat to NZ/Australia) we pedalled off toward the mountains of the Peloponnese. The next few days were spent climbing steeply, passing ancient ruins and camping with spectacular views high up in the beautiful mountains. After a few weeks of feeling a bit "cycled out", the ride was stimulating and felt like a perfect last stretch before saying farewell to our steeds.

 

After a series of fine days, we woke up to a drizzly one and didn't pedal far before stopping for refuge in a tiny cafe in a tiny town. There we met the very sweet old lady who ran the cafe and two of its patrons, an outgoing Greek man from a nearby village and a gentle local originally from Albania. On our world map, he showed us with pride where he was from in Albania - Berat. We took note of this since we were planning to go to Albania after ditching the bikes. They were chomping away on walnuts and gave us a pile of them, explaining they were from the local trees. As we were getting ready to head back into the drizzle, the Greek man, George, announced he was going to Tripoli and we were to put our bikes on the back of his ute. We were not sure whether he was going there anyway or taking us specially, but he seemed to have made up his mind so there wasn't any room for argument. The sweet old lady running the cafe brought out a cup of ouzo for the journey amid the flurry of our departure, which I took a tentative sip of before passing the cup to Matthew. The distracted Matthew took a huge gulp thinking it was water and thus began a hilarious 20km ride filled with confused miming as we tried to converse, interrupted by lots of toots by George showing off his amusing cargo to locals. Once there, we wanted to buy lunch for George to say thanks and managed to explain this to him via an interpreter - a lovely English-speaking friend he had called on his cell phone.  After downing far too much souvlaki, feta, bread, chips, wine and who knows what else, George would not let us pay despite our insistence. We came to a mimed agreement that if his teenage sons come to Melbourne one day, we will return his hospitality! Then George whizzed off in his perpetual whirlwind of energy, back to his postman job. We wobbled slowly away to look around Tripoli and  to digest/sober up, wondering how on earth he could drive after all that wine and trying not to think too much about this. We didn't eat again until the following morning.