Day 34

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Day 34 (From Pylos returning to Poros)

We got up at 7:45am, got changed, packed up and headed down for THE MOST DELICIOUS breakfast I’ve ever had! We met Isabelle at 8:30am and headed down to the main lobby for breakfast and met up with everyone else there. We set our things down and started at the buffet line. There was: apples (I took one for the road), oranges, yogurt and honey (the yogurt went bad so I didn’t take more than 1 bite), tea and coffee (I had tea), chocolate/vanilla swirl pound cake (I had 1), lemon pound cake covered in chocolate (I tried 1), croissants with laughing cow cheese spread and jam (I tried 1), baby spanikopitas (I ate 3! :P), hard boiled eggs (I actually ate one whole one to myself!), packaged toast (I took one for snack later) and sliced meat. We finished our breakfast feast at 9am and headed back onto the bus with all our bags and shopping.

We drove for a good half hour to the biggest Venetian fortress in Greece; Methoni Castle. There were bathhouses, a Turkish monastery, a cathedral, a lighthouse, towers, moats, cannons and tons of castle-ee things!! It made us really feel like we were experiencing history and medieval stuff! We took tons of pictures, but it was so windy that our hair’s flying around everywhere in almost every picture. Luckily I braided my hair that day so it stayed in place pretty well.
After about an hour in the castle we headed to another hour drive to the Palace of Nestor, where, in Homer’s Odyssey, Odyseus’ son goes first to find out the whereabouts of his father. He is well fed, since he comes during a great feast in the crown room; where we went into!!! There was also many oil magazines, a bathtub, and we saw the stairs that led to the 2nd floor before the building burnt down and the wooden walls collapsed. After we looked around and took pictures, I was in total awe of the place and I could really feel the Odyssey coming alive right before my eyes!!
Just outside of Nestor’s palace there was a group of 4 puppies living inside a sewer hole. We were all crushed to see them shaking (probably because there were so many of us and people were picking them up), but they appear to be taken care of; there were cut water bottles with water inside acting as a trough and we assume that their mother was just out hunting for them. Of course Neil had to pry us away from the puppies, but we said our last goodbyes to them after we checked out another tholos tomb just a few minutes walk away from the bus, the puppies and Nestor’s Palace.

We went back onto the bus, stopped at a kiosk for snacks, and drove for another hour and half to a town where our prof took us for sandwiches. I ordered another one of what my prof ordered; a toasted sandwich with spicy cheese spread, turkey and bacon, and mushrooms. It was delicious and great for a late lunch! After our last stop, we got back onto the bus for one final time and sped off to catch the last ferry leaving the Greece mainland for Killini at 6pm. We made it with only 3 minutes to spare and Gioria, who was coming back from Athens herself, had to stall the ferry for us. Isabelle and I hung out on the top deck of the ferry because the girls sitting behind us the entire trip were driving us crazy!! One girl kept putting her ugly, smelly feet up on my arm rest (I tried to make an open complaint by saying out loud that I smelt rotten cheese, but she didn’t get the point), and the girl sitting directly behind me kept laughing and talking in a super loud voice and hitting the back of my chair without any concern for me and she even put her hand on my head once thinking that it was my chair or something! (I had fantasies as I, uneasily, fell asleep, of reaching back and strangling her). Those girls are so stupid; they tried doing ONE crossword puzzle for the entire 2 days, but couldn’t get half of it done so asked for help on the ferry. Because we weren’t obligated to stay with the group, Isabelle and I escaped to the outdoor top deck and talked while enjoying the view. Our prof and another student came to join us and we repaid him for our sandwiches. We talked for a good half hour before we docked back home in Poros, and Vasilis drove us all the way back to our apartments (a whole 3 minute bus ride).

Isabelle, Lisa, Jen, Sara and I decided to go grocery shopping for the week at 8pm. We unpacked all our stuff, I grabbed a little snack and we headed out. It was dark by the time we ventured out, but we walked past Pantelli’s and he offered us free pizza because he made too much that day. We agreed and we said we’d be back from shopping by 8:30pm. We quickly went to the produce store, where I got veggies and fruit, and to the grocery store, where I got yogurt, eggs, sliced ham and sliced cheese.

Sara left to have dinner with her roomie, while the 4 of us went back to Pantelli’s for dinner. It was deliciously fresh pizza with everything on it; mushrooms, green peppers, bacon, pepperoni, cheese, white onion and tomato. We ordered milkshakes, I got a banana, thinking that we’d repay his generosity by ordering one of the most expensive drinks on the menu and paying for those, except at the end of our meal he said it was all on him! We thanked him a million times and promised we’d bake him something one of these days, since he owns his own restaurant and probably doesn’t need any more savory foods.

We returned home, the rest of them went out for huka at Neil’s, but I unpacked, made myself at home and got ready for bed. I went to bed talking to my boyfriend on skype and my sister on msn.

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