intense training

Greece

Kilometers drift
Along rails, humming away,
Our eager eyes watch.

We woke up at the forgotten time of 0500 today. When we're cycling, the sun isn't out then, so we're not out then. I don't think we've been up that early since... Spain? Something like that. We (quietly) packed all our things from their far-flung locations around Stelios's apartment -- somehow we always manage to fill the space we're allotted, sigh. We hopped on our bikes for the 5-or-so minute ride to the train station to arrive there by 0630 for our train.

We were actually about 45 minutes early, but it was a good thing because there were apparently some hoops to jump through WRT the bikes. Most trains will either not allow them or permit you to take them on in a special car yourself, but the Greek train system's policy was to check them as luggage and take care of them for you from end to end. For this they charged the extremely reasonable 3€/bike. We handed over our tagged stallions as we boarded the train and plunked ourselves down to enjoy the ride.

The train had only 6 cars, and we were riding in it for as many hours. We explored it as extensively as we could, then settled into the dining car to play on the laptop (Indiana Jones) and to work on our scenario while munching tiropita (Evan reported that the dining car guy thought Evan was Greek due to his correct pronounciation when ordering this treat) and sipping coffee and water. We were periodically amused when the train seemed to accidentally bypass stations and had to back up to reach them. We got pretty far in listing ideas for things, anyway, but we were happy when the train pulled into Alexandropouli.

We picked up our bikes and headed for a café, since it was only 13h and we weren't planning on going anywhere. We played games and checked the Internet until our battery pooped out, then took a leisurely bike tour of the town. Sadly, it's a fairly small town, but we popped into a few places to get food for breakfast and a snack to hold us over until dinner. At the gyro place we stopped for our snack (we had pita, tzatziki, and feta), the owner excitedly offered us to try his eggplant dip when he found out we were travelling. I have to admit, it was the best eggplant dip we've had, and we were sorry we didn't know how delicious it was before we'd ordered. :)

Some more wandering brought us to the beach, where we sat and watched the sunset at the foot of the lighthouse. As the light faded totally from the sky, we realised that it was barely 18h and that we'd have to wait at least two and a half hours before going out to dinner to kill our last euro. We explored some residential areas and settled on a place to camp (another abandoned building), then sat in a park to try this scenario thing some more. P.S. if you are reading this and will be in the bay area in the spring and are interested in playing some D&D, please send us an e-mail.

Dinner was satisfying at a local taverna, and although we didn't managed to spend all our remaining Euro, it's okay. We tried even more Greek food we hadn't had before (randomly pointing to things on a menu you can't read can lead to interesting dinners) and headed to bed. Our last day in Greece!