Summer Trip 2008

A lazy day. We slept long due to the previous almost sleepless night, and went to the same beach we were yesterday when we woke up. Some swimming and drinking the Greek cold coffee Frappe, having fast food in the city and just not doing anything special. It´s funny how even the fast food in Greece is really great. In the restaurants you could actually randomly order anything even without understanding the Greek alphabets, and know that what you will get will be good :)

We made up our mind about Istanbul also, and yes, we are going there after all. It would be a shame not to go, because we are already this close and our friends in Istanbul are waiting for us to visit them.

Tomorrow we will drive to Athens taking a few swimming breaks on the way, it´s only 200km from here. We were planning of just quickly checking out some places in Athens, and continuing to Istanbul at friday morning. It will be a long long way from Athens, but being there at friday evening would be handy as I guess the people in there have the weekend free of work.

We were walking around the city a bit with Yannis when he got off work. Patras looks pretty much like any Greek city, so not much to say about it except that we got some nice stories of the history of the city etc from Yannis.

There´s an ancient Roman odeum in the city, one of the few still existing ones, and they were having a concert in there tonight. We visited the concert quickly, just taking a look at the odeum.

The weather conditions in here are quite crazy. The problem is not the heat, even if it reaches 40C at daytime. Our bodies are already adapted to that, and it doesn´t bother us much. But, the humidity is a problem. The air humidity in the city at night is incredible, probably almost 100%. You can see some of it on the street lights in the last picture, although it´s hard to get a proper photo of it. Anyway, the city looks like it would be raining hard, but it is not. The air is just totally filled with humidity.

We met Yannis while we were driving out of the ferry, he was waiting on the ramp. It was a bit warm in Greece today as you can see from the first picture, so immediatly after arriving we drove to a beach just a bit outside the city. The water was just as crystal clear as we remembered, but surprisingly cold. That was not a bad thing at all though, and neither were the big waves and strong currents that made swimming really fun.

We spent a few hours at the beach and drove to Yannis´ apartment. On the way we were passing some sights of Patra, like the worlds longest hanging bridge connecting the two parts of Greece. Some local fast food, and now we are just relaxing and waiting for Yannis to get off work.

Its really nice to be back in Greece again, its one of the best countries in Europe in my opinion. Not least because of the great food, sea, mountains.. There are only two thing I dont like so much about Greece: the traffic and the Greek alphabets. The alphabets just make understanding signs etc harder.. The traffic is not so scary and fast as in many other places, but its mainly annoying. Very narrow roads, all the scooters and motorbikes, a bit strange traffic rules and culture and the constant lack of parking space dont make it a pleasant experience.

Although the ship is probably among the fastest this size ( 204m, 1850 passangers, 1100 vehicles ) of cruise ships in the world, driving at 35 knots, the journey to Greece still took over 20 hours. Now we have just arrived to Patra harbour, and our local contact Yannis should be waiting us somewhere around the harbour with his motorbike, and after finding him I would love swimming. Been watching the sea from the ship, and it looks so beatiful. The water is totally chrystal clear and deep blue, and the rock beaches of Greece full of sealife are so much nicer than the muddy tourist-packed sand beaches of Italian Adriatic Sea coast.

We spent the evening watching the rest of House M.D season 3 DVDs, eating and just hanging around. Late at night we were just too exhausted to stay up anymore, and slept a few hours somewhere on a floor. When the ship stopped in Igoumenitsa at early morning I had a chance to visit the car deck and finally get our inflatable mattress. All the people seemed to be sleeping on those all around the ship and we were so much regretting we didnt take it from the car before.

We set up the mattress outside on the deck, and enjoyed early morning warmness and the refreshing sea wind while sleeping for a few hours. At night it was crazy feeling to go outside. Inside the ship there was air conditioning and the air was cool and dry, outside was like a greenhouse, 30C and very very humid. When you go in you can feel the coldness. Totally opposite from what we have been used to.

We arrived to Ancona harbour, and are slowly boarding our greek chip F/B Olympic Champion that will take us to Patra, Greece. We should be there around midday tomorrow, so it will be a long ferry trip with only deck tickets.. I guess we will have a sleepless night. On the other hand, the nights are so warm that sleeping on the deck is probably not a problem.

We had lot of fun in Italy and especially in San Marino, but I guess greece wont be any worse. Seems like our bodies are getting adapted to the temperature, 37C doesnt feel so bad anymore. Returning to the 20C of Finland will be a freezing experience :p

Having a quick sightseeing tour in San Marino was how we spent the rest of the day. Some pictures below:

Once again the weather was really hot, so today we have been swimming all day in a lake. Local young people go to that lake maybe half an hour from San Marino, in Italy. At this time of year its much more peaceful and clean than the sea and the beaches crowded by tourists.

Traveling to foreign countries is much easier when you live in a miniature state like San Marino, you can walk whatever direction and after 5km you are in some other country ;)

Now some food, and then we will probably to go walk around San Marino city a bit more.

We headed to San Marino after swimming for a while. We just had one little problem. Elisa, our host in there was not expecting us until tomorrow, and for some reason we could not contact her phone. We figured out that our only option would be finding a wireless network and check on the couchsurfing site if we could contact her some other way.

When we parked our car and took a lift to San Marino, the experience was kinda shocking. This must be the most incredible place I have ever been in. Very old and beatiful city built on top of a high mountain, full of life. Its hard to describe by words.

Finding the wireless network wasnt very easy, but we finally managed to find one. The net access wasnt working, but the router had default passwords etc so I just fixed the settings and after using it for a while set them back like they were. Talk about desperate ways to gain internet access...

We found out that Elisa had misspelled the phone number a bit, and after checking the correct number we could contact her. She was in Rimini, and there was going to be a couchsurfing beach party. After having a quick lasagne in San Marino we are now heading to Rimini, that party sounded like a lot of fun :)

After spending a really hot day in Loiano at least Laura was a bit exhausted because of the heat, so we decided to change our plans a bit and leave towards San Marino a day before. We drove close to Rimini and found a nice beach here. The Adriatic Sea was so refreshing after the scorching temperature of Loiano. Its a windy day, so we got to enjoy high waves :)

Damn its hot in here. We were forced to get up at 9, because our tent transformed to a sauna. After the last few days Im really feeling like avoiding these areas in future and staying at the coastline. Warm weather is lovely, but it requires to have a sea nearby for cooling. Tomorrow we should be going to the coast, and be able to swim in the Adriatic sea again. And after tomorrow we will stay near the coast in Greece also, so a beach will be close all the time.

I have no idea of the temperature at the moment, but it has been around 35C and the mediterranean sun is really hot. The humidity is also around 80%, feels like being in a greenhouse. Well, the funny thing is that in our office in Finland the conditions are the same, my workmates actually have to work in there and they still havent got air conditioning installed. Enjoy there guys, Im sitting in shadow having nothing to do and enjoying my cold coke :)