Vacation Blog #4

We took the train into Athens, then a bus to Litochoro to prepare to hike Mt. Olympus the next day.  Litochoro was a scenic little mountainside town, and we stayed by the beach at a place about 5km outside the town.  We woke up early the next morning and our hostel host was nice enough to drive us to the starting point for the trail on Mt. Olympus at 6am for our all-day hike.  We started out in the dark and my headlamp stopped working so we wandered around in the dark for about an hour until the sun finally came up.  It was easy going for the first few hours until we got to the first stopping point, “Refuge A”, which lies about halfway up the trail.  From there it was really steep and slippery (the trail near the top is covered with loose rock), but we huffed and puffed and finally made it to the “top” by noon.  We ate our victory Snickers and headed down, were lucky enough to get a ride back down to Litochoro by a couple at the parking lot at the bottom, and dinner in town and got ready for our next day of travel, to Thessaloniki.

We took the early train to Thessaloniki (the ride is only an hour) and headed straight to the White Tower, its most famous landmark.  Once it was used as a prison for political prisoners but now it is a museum for the culture and history of the city.  We also saw the Agia Sofia, a 7^th-century church (but didn’t go in because it closes for 6 hours in the middle of the day), and other landmarks.  We couchsurfed and went out with our host later that night to a bar then a movie.  When we were waiting to get into the movie theater, our host mentioned that the Minister of Justice was right behind us and we thought nothing of it until intermission, when 20-odd protesters barged into the theatre, chanting and throwing yogurt on the minister, who was sitting in the back row.  There was a lot of pushing and shoving and a big racket until the movie was back on for a good 5 minutes.  We had a great time with our host and sadly left the next day to fly to Milan.

We flew to Milan in the afternoon and, because of a delayed plane, arrived just in time to make it to our reservation to see The Last Supper.  Later on, we met up with one of Heather’s good friends, Massimiliano, who she knows from her “Paris days”.  We had a short, good time in Milan; it is a very pretty city but we unfortunately arrived late and were scheduled to leave the next day for Cinque Terre.

We left early in the morning to take the train to Cinque Terre, where we spent 4 days.  It was one of the highlights of our trip and we took full advantage of it, waking up early to walk to the castle at the top of Riomaggiore and spend the day eating gelato and walking the meandering paths that connect to the 4 other principal cities in the area.  We tried some freshly made limoncello from a local farmer and ate the local speciality, trofie, a pasta made from chick-pea flour and smothered in delicious pesto sauce.  We also met a nice Quebecois couple and were able to brush up on our French that had become rusty since we left Africa.  When we left Cinque Terre we took a train through the Tuscany region and visited Lucca and Pisa en route to Florence.

Florence is a beautiful city and has amazing food.  We took a lot of pictures in front of the Ponte Vecchio, a famous bridge that is covered in houses (now converted to high-end jewelry stores), saw the statue of David, visited the Uffizi museum, and took a daylong side trip to a little town in the Chianti region for some wine tasting.  The Tuscany region is spectacular and everywhere you turn, it looks like you just walked into a painting.  It is probably the most beautiful place I have ever visited, and the food is fantastic, too!

After a few days in Florence we took off to Rome again to stay for two days until our flight left to come back home.  Unbeknownst to us, Rome suffered massive riots that day that we arrived back and we missed the festivities by about 2 hours or so.  We stayed with our good friend Paolo who we had stayed with before, and this time we were able to see the Pope and enjoy a last-minute cappuccino and gelato.  We spent our last night shopping and filling up our bags with wine and pasta to take back and enjoy in Bohicon. 

We arrived safely and refreshed and were excited to get home and get to work.  We are really busy and our schedules are fairly packed until February or so.  Heather is hard at work with her projects at work and I just started teaching our favorite zem a business course because he wants to start his own business.  We also have our English Club and Football Club that just started (because school started at the beginning of October), I’m still looking for a group of guys to regularly play football with, and are always trying to schedule other stuff to do.  To top it all off, twinsy and Dustin are coming out to visit for a few weeks at the end of November!

Lots of stuff coming up soon. 

Cheers.