Sailing North!

We left Paros a couple days ago, eager to move on to a new country. Island hopping around Greece has beeng reat, but we're ready to move North.

Our last jump to Paros was a quick one. We arrived in Paros on the evening of the 16th and decided to be spontaneous (oh, how I love that) and take up one of the hawkers at the port on their offer for a room. Everytime zou land in the port, there is an area filled with people flashing brochures and flyers, enticing you to book a room in one of the free spaces they have at their hotel. And, because we weren't able to book ahead of time, Brent suggested that we try out the hawkers at the port. And it actually worked like a charm. When everyone approached us, asking us to name our price, I cut our budget in half and we ended with a pretty decent place for super cheap that evening. Guess it works to be spontaneous sometimes. :)

We were both bummed that we only had one night in Paros, though. The area seemed really cute and a heck of a lot cheaper than Santorini. Santorini even lost its appeal to us as we got to know the island better. There are certainly beautiful, serene areas of Santorini, but beyond the high prices and crowds in Fira and Oia, Santorini was not the magical island we thought it would be. The cities outside of Fira and Oia are actually quite a mess and very run down. I'm sure Satorini would have been a completely different experience if we would have stayed in Fira or Oia. Nonetheless, we enjoyed putting around on our quad and exploring the island. :)

Now, let's fast forward to yesterday, the 17th. We left Paros on our 10:45am ferry as planned to make our way back to Piraeus (the port town on the east coast of Greece) then to Athens. Everything went fine. Typical ferry ride. We even hopped right on to the Metro from the Piraeus port to make our way towards the train station in Athens. No big deal--we were on track to get to Patras (the port on the west side of Greece) a few hours before boarding the midnight ferry to Venice.

We arrive to the Athens train station around 4:00pm, walk in to check the time for the next FREE train to Patras and stare balnkly at the kiosk.

"STRIKE."

Cool. The train station decided to go on strike. Makes it easy for us. But, the hilarious part was that they were only on strike for the 17th. Good ole 24-hour strike and we got lucky.

Brent spoke to the info office at the train station who told us that we had to take a local bus to get to the central bus station then catch a bus to Patras from there. We made the 5:00pm train without losing much time due to the hiccup in our plans, but we were out about 50 bucks. Bummer. At least we made it in time for our ferry.

Now we're passing time on this two night "cruise" up the Adriatic towards Venice. We're a little jealous of everyone around us with sleeping bags, but hey, I guess we should appreciate the cooler weather. :)