6/16: day 7

 Day 7: the Corinth Canal and back to Athens

Today was a travel day. After breakfast, we gathered in the hotel lobby and said goodbye to our guides.



And here's the requisite group photo.



Back row: Mary Kay (VA), Cecilia (FL), Jeffrey (VA), Mike, me, Judy, Loris, and Natalie (PA), Jane and Bobby (NYC)

Front row: Stu, Michalis, Fotis

Missing: Linda and Herb (NYC)


The bus ride was pretty uneventful. We picked up a VBT tour guide in Tripoli at a bathroom break and she accompanied us to Athens.


We stopped to see the Corinthian Canal, an engineering feat designed to eliminate a trip around the Pelopennisian peninsula. The canal is 24 meters wide, 90 meters deep and 6 kilometers long. There was a Bungy-jumping business but no takers today.



Our lunch stop was below the bridge. The restaurant was at one end of the canal and we got to see a couple of boats going through. What was interesting about the engineering of this bridge is that instead of going up to allow boats to go under the bridge, the roadway went down and into the water. Someone said the water in the canal is 43 meters deep. Apparently it is deep enough to accommodate a container ship, although someone pointed out that it was empty based on the waterline.



The first boat to go through was a tugboat.


A few minutes later it came through the other direction pulling a tanker. See the guy on the tanker waving to us?


And when it was through, you can see where the bridge used to be.


Here’s the crew at lunch.





We arrived in Athens around 3:30, about the time VBT said we would. 


After being in the country, Athens was totally unappealing. I was really glad we weren't driving a rental car.



And this was a more orderly traffic jam.

Having a VBT guide on the bus with us from Tripoli to Athens gave us a few tidbits about the canal, but more importantly, she took us from where the bus was able to park to the hotel a few blocks away. She had to refer to her phone a couple of times to give us facts about the canal and again to figure out how to get us from the bus to the hotel.



This hotel was owned by the same person(s) who owned the hotel where we stayed before the bike trip. It was serviceable. And I didn't have to separate the beds because Walter wasn't here. 😢


The view out the window was an alley, unimportant for one night. At least it wasn't an airport hotel. 

We didn’t really have enough time to visit the national archaeological museum, so we went shopping for bike jerseys instead.


We found the shop where Mary Kay and Jeffrey bought Greece jerseys but they didn't have our sizes and I wasn't thrilled with the design. They looked great on Mary Kay and Jeffrey when they wore them together.


We wandered some more and went to a gallery. OK, so it was a couple of pretty young females who figured we were easy marks and escorted us in. It turned out to be a very cool space for emerging artists.



The young woman who lured me into the gallery made soap. She kept saying something to me that made no sense. When she showed me her phone, she was using google translate to go from Greek to Chinese. We had a good laugh about that.


It was a cool space, so these must be cool guys.


About the guys in the background: Ireland was playing Greece in a qualifying game tonight. The riot police were out in force.

I ordered this, not knowing what it was. 



I got a pretty good buzz from this and I didn't even finish it.

After a week of terrific Greek food, we decided to try something different for dinner.



It was only passable even though all the other patrons were Chinese.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5/29 - things rarely go as planned

Image
This was the first year we planned two trips in one calendar year in large part because I was on sabbatical during the spring/2023 semester and available to travel. There's more about the sabbatical in another blog, but overall, it was a productive and enjoyable spring. The trip to a warm weather location was to Cuba in March. (Again, a separate blog about that trip.) Short summary: fabulous trip. My favorite trip to far. The summer 2023 trip is to Greece. Previous trips were to more heavily traveled locations such as Italy (twice), Spain, Portugal, France, and Croatia. We usually use VBT (vbt.com) and we know that we can handle their most challenging trips (labeled "moderate"). We're usually the fastest riders in the group. Compare that with our trip to France where we were the slowest. Besides Croatia, Greece is the only other VBT trip in their catalog labeled "moderate".  For a few weeks leading up to the departure, I was feeling pretty out of shape and I...
Read more

6/12: day 3

Image
Day 3: Gytheoi to Mystras Today we left the resort and headed to the coast. After two days of very short segments and abrupt turns on very rough roads. it was nice to be on some longer stretches and better pavement. My sense is that the route planners prioritized traffic safety over riding enjoyment. It is hard to get into a rhythm when you're constantly checking your devices to see if you missed a turn.  Here we are near the top of a climb. One of the sights on this route was an old ship that became unattached and started drifting. It ended up beached here. Here's another view although Mike is in the way. We ended up in a little fishing town before getting on a bus to the next hotel in Monemvasia.  The hotel sits on a rock and is nicknamed the Gibraltar of the East. There are ruins at the top of the rock (the upper castle) and a functioning village below (the lower castle). You'll see better pictures of the rock and the ruins in tomorrow's post. It is a quirky hotel (o...
Read more

6/14: day 5

Image
Day 5: Monemvasia to Elia We left our hotel today and rode across the finger to the east coast. Here's the stable of ebikes lined up before leaving the hotel.  This was a smaller tour than most VBT tours, 13 people instead of 20, and 9 of them were riding ebikes. A few of the riders were pretty new riders and one or two were regular riders but just wanted ebikes. There was only one woman from Florida who rode a road bike besides us. Having so many people on ebikes changed the complexion of the rides. Normally, we are among the fastest riders on VBT tours. VBT caters to recreational riders, unlike some other tour groups like Duvine and Trek that have rides that attract more competitive riders. But with ebikes, we were likely to be the ones at the back.  VBT utilizes two tour guides (Backroads uses three), one driving the support van and usually ahead of the riders to point out turns and to set up snack stops. The other guide rides sweep. We almost never see the guide riding swe...
Read more