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| A misty view from Firostefani at the active volcanic island near Santorini |
| Glenn's Santorini Journals 5-13-02 Monday morning and we had a few travel days ahead of us. We were not sure at this point how many days it would take to get back to Italy, more specifically the Amalfi coast, but that is where we were heading. The day starts at 6:00 am where we had to be ready to leave for the port by 7:15 am. We showered and repacked realizing that we didn't know when our next shower or decent sleep would be. We were out of the room at 7:15 am and in the van with another couple to take the journey back to the port. The trip to the port was uneventful but it is an amazing sight to see from the top of Fira down to the port. (You could walk the 600+ steps if you so desire or they do provide mules that you can ride to get to the top.) We stopped in the ticket office to purchase tickets where a horse joined us at the door, I assume to make sure everything was going o.k.. The horse actually stood on the doorstep peering in the ticket office and was even nice enough to lick my hand as I departed. (Erin got to pet him but I got a lick!!!) After obtaining tickets we quickly grabbed our stuff and headed on to the boat. The boat trip was planned for an 8:00 am departure and an approximately 5:00 pm arrival into Athens. We did have a few stops planned including Ios, Naxos, and Paxos before heading into Athens. The day included Erin working on journals for most of the day while I enjoyed soaking in the sun and checking out every port that we stopped in to. The day was long and arduous. We finally arrived into Athens at 6:15 pm with the intentions to make our way to Patras where we could hopefully catch another boat to Bari or Brindisi, along the eastern coast of Italy. Upon our arrival into Athens we quickly departed the boat and headed for information to get to the main bus terminal. We received a few different ideas on how to accomplish this but ended up going with the more common theme. (Quite a few of the locals suggested the taxi but that would have definitely cost a significant amount more than by metro and bus.) We quickly grabbed the metro into town where we could then walk a few blocks and grab a bus that would take us directly to the bus terminal. This whole event took about an hour where we arrived at the bus terminal around 7:30 pm. We went into the ticket office to find a bus that left at 8:00 pm for Patras. (They left every half hour from Athens to Patras and this was the recommendation over the train that went to Patras, as the bus took 3 hours and the train took over 5 hours and was more uncomfortable.) At the train station, with time permitting, we grabbed a quick bite to eat and scarfed it down before our 8:00 pm bus. The bus ride was uneventful even though it did provide a view of the suburbs of Athens before getting too dark to really see much. Erin even slept a little on this section of our journey. (I remind you that Erin is someone that has trouble sleeping unless it is in a bed. She is learning quickly on this trip how to sleep sitting up on planes and trains.) We arrived in Patras around 11:00 pm. Out first task was to check on the availablity of boats to Bari or Brindisi for tonight. We quickly grabbed our packs (remembering that we awoke at 6:00 am to start the day) and went in search of a ticket agent. We checked out a few before determining that the next boat to Bari left at 6:00 pm tomorrow night. Now it was 11:45 pm and we were in search of a place to sleep. We had heard of a hostel just down the road from the port in Patras so we headed that way. One person said that it was only 1 kilometer down the road. The next place we stopped in, about 1 km down the road said it was only another 500 meters down the road. At last we finally came upon the local hostel. Now the only concern was that the lights seemed to be mostly out and would they still be open?? Lucky for us there was a phone at the reception area that you could use for information. We rang, a nice lady answered the phone, and we inquired about beds for the night. Again, lucky for us, there were beds available on the top floor where there was only 1 room. This made it easy to locate but we had to wake up the young lady already asleep in the room to have her unlock the door. We ran up the stairs (not really!!), knocked on the door, and she let us in. We quickly chatted and then off to sleep we went. What a long day!!! |