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Published: November 21st 2011
Got up at 10am and finished the last bit of packing, showered and had breakfast with Steve and we talked through some eth the previous night’s stuff. Steve and Rachel took the transfer with the luggage from the hotel to the new ferry port to meet our ferry Highspeed 5. The ferry was at 11:25am. I took the rental car and met the rental car guy at 11:15am. Holy crap I was freaking out that the rental agents were going to make me miss the ferry! Argh I hate being so stressed out by stuff like this, and the rental agent was laughing telling me to ‘relax - the boat never leaves on time’.
We wrestled the damn luggage up the car ramp and onto the ferry again. Okay this was officially way too much luggage!!! And the ferry did leave on time on the dot! We went upstairs and found our seats and tried, so, so, so very hard to go to sleep for the length of the trip, but nothing doing. It was stiflingly hot in the area where we were sitting and the seats were super uncomfortable. This ferry stopped at the islands of Siros and Tinos.
I was so glad to see Piraeus port! What an uncomfortable ferry ride this was. Oh and we saw the weird ‘Oh Yeah’ guy from the Paradise Beach Club while we were with the luggage in the ferry garage waiting to get off the ferry. Both Steve and I hid our faces so he wouldn’t see us!
We got off the ferry and dragged all the luggage into the shade and Steve went to find the agent from Fantasy Travel who was meeting us there. Of course she came from the opposite direction he went in. I saw her in the distance and flagged down, and then I went and found Steve. When she got us all together she told us that the taxis were still on strike in Athens and that we would wait for another group coming in on a different ferry aaaaand unfortunately it was delayed. She said 25 minutes but it was at least an hour. To make the best of it, we got something to eat at a cafeteria across the street while we waited.
Finally the other four people showed up and of course they were to get dropped off first in
Parnassas
Me & Rachelthe city center of Athens which was completely the opposite was we needed to go. It was weird the other people in the van spoke English, but they barely said a word the entire ride. They could have at least said sorry to us for making us wait for them.
We eventually got to Maria’s house in the Athen's suburb of Neo Psychiko. She had cleaned the SUV for us even though we told her not to worry about it and that we would clean it. It was so awesome of her to let us use her car so we didn’t have to rent one. It literally saved US$600 or 425€s. The car was a Nissan Qashqui, kind similar in size to a Nissan Rogue here in the US so it’s a good size SUV and could fit us and all of our luggage, well barely! We loaded up and turned on the GPS and headed out of Athens. The SD card with the Greece maps worked awesome.
I started out driving and we stopped and filled up with petrol and headed toward Delphi. We made it out of Athens with no problems. Thank you Garmin! I was
Parnassas
Steve & Rachel worried how it would be to drive out of the city but since it was a weekend and we were near the outskirts of Athens it wasn’t too bad at all. We stopped in Parnassus and took some photos at a scenic overlook. The road up from Athens is just beautiful with lots of crazy switchbacks and steep grades but the views are just breathtaking…
We found our hotel in Delphi and it must have been our lucky day because there was parking right in front. We checked in and just brought a couple of things up to the room that we needed for the night and left the luggage in the car. The hotel we stayed in was the Olympic Hotel in Delphi; it was a really cool hotel. Our balcony overlooked the valley all the way down to the town of Itea by the sea.
We asked at the hotel for a recommendation for a nice place to have dinner and were directed to a place just a couple doors down called Patrikos Mas. What a great place this was! Awesome food, the server/owner was super friendly and the views were to die for. Wow!! We sat
out on the patio and it was actually the same view as the view from our balcony. The patio was shaded by a tree and grape vines and was everything one would imagine a mountain café to be. We had a prime table right at the edge of the patio. The food was just delicious and reasonably priced too. Steve had rabbit and Rachel and I both had spaghetti, the sauce had black olives in it and was fabulous. We also had an appetizer, fried zucchini balls, tzaziki and saganaki. Yum! Loved this place and I took a bunch of photos for photographic evidence.
After dinner we walked a lap around the village of Delphi and then went back to the hotel and used the free internet and Rachel Skyped with Adrian. We had a nice chat with the owner of the hotel too. Went to bed and just crashed until 8am as we had very little sleep the night before.
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