Greece, Greece, Greece.

To sum it up, this place is overrated. I don't want to dwell on the bad (fortunately the mind is great at remembering the good), but the cities were dirty, the ruins were in ruins, the countryside was full of trash, and the weather shat on us too.

That said, we explored some great little islands, went into an awesome cave with delicate terraced lakes, and biked around the craziest rock formations (think Castle Hill, NZ, enlarged 100 times, and then add a couple of monasteries stuck on top of them!).

Xios

This island is famous for Maestic gums. The trees can be grown all over the world, but for some reason, they only produce gum on this island. They can't work out why. Anyway, the island is also famous for the geometric shapes on all the buildings in some of the towns. The photo doesn't do justice: you have to imagine an entire village looking like that!

Athens

This place is the ancestral home of the Olympics, and the birth place of modern democracy. And in my opinion, if the Olympic Games are held there this year, then that proves beyond a doubt that there is a God, and that (s)he likes sport. As far as democracy goes, they may have thought it up a few thousand years ago, but they haven't gone very far from there.
Do you get the idea that we didn't like Athens? Have a look at Athens (taken from the Acropolis).

From there, we biked for a week around the Peleponnese, before returning to Athens. Why did we go back?? Good old Romania said that we had to get a visa before we went there, and Athens has the embassy. The Peleponesse was really cool though. There were lots of ruins all over the show. It would be fair to say that by the time we got to Greece though, we had had enough of ruins.

From Athens, we went to Evia, and popped over to see the island of Skyros. Then it was down to see Doris in Tsangarada on the Pelion Peninsula. Thank you so much Doris. We had a fabulous time in Serpintine Garden. Tsangarada is a village that goes from sealevel up to over 300m, and the area hasn't been used as a rubbish tip quite as much as the rest of Greece, so it retains some of the natural beauty. Add in the history, and it is no surprise that it is a popular holiday spot.

Meteora was the next on our list of things to see in Greece, but we had difficulties with the weather. It didn't snow. It didn't rain. And there was hardly any wind. The problem was that summer arrived. More than 30 C, and man, did we sweat like pigs!!! It was at this time that we truely understood why southern europeans have siestas. But Meteora is a crazy place. It is too hard to describe, so I'll let the pictures do the talking....

Now, that's all the photos of Greece I've decided to put on this site.

For anyone that is intending to come to Greece, I would still say don't worry about it. Not compared to Turkey, or Romania or Turkey.

Vital Statistics:
Local language; Greek
Days spent here; 37
Kilometres biked; 1147
Days with no biking; 10
km/day: 42.5
Cost (euro/day); 40.35
This figure isn’t true though..... We spent a week working for our keep, so the real figure should take that into account. Which makes Greece more like 50 euro/day.

On to the battlefields of Gallipoli.

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