It's been awhile since I've put an update on this page... But I thought I'd just cover a whole region of Greece before I leave it. So after leaving Corfu I headed into Patras on Pelopenese from Corfu town - the ferry ride was uneventful. The ferry was pretty posh though - a pool, bar, showers, and an aircon section! According to Greek law all domestic ferries must cost the same for the same trip so the way the different ferry lines get and keep customers is to put ammenities on the ship. Actually works too!

Was only planning to spend the night in Patras before heading onward but ended up meeting some "locals" in town (they weren't really local - they were from Albania but had been living in Greece for the past 10 years) and got shown around. Always fun to see a town with people who live there. But there still wasn't really anything to do there so I left pretty soon and headed to Corinth. Corinth is a much nicer town with some ruins nearby. I got there in the early evening so I didn't do much, just grabbed some dinner and relaxed in my hotel room. The next day I had a mission to get to Ancient Corinth - the ruins. This was much harder than it should've been... mostly because it was my first introduction to GMT (Greek Maybe Time). The buses were supposed to run every hour on the hour but after trying to catch 3 of them and not making it I finally parked myself at the bus station (to make it even more confusing there were 3 bus stations in this town and I kept getting passed to a different bus station) for an hour and the bus actually did come! Ok, so it was 20 minutes late but it did come. Got to the ruins and they were ok. Not spectacular, not horrible. There was a pretty cool temple to Apollo on site though. Getting back to Corinth was much easier - a nice local man helped me get on the right bus...

The next morning I decided to head onward to Nafplio. Again the bus was about 30 min late but by this time I was aware of this happening and was prepared to wait. Got into Nafplio and headed to the one hotel in town that supposedly offered dorm beds. No dorm beds available but I could sleep on the floor of the restaurant for 5 euro. No problem. I found out later that that's really the only option in town - the next cheapest place is about 80 euro for a single room.... Nafplio is a great town - it's a resort town for the Greeks so there were lots of tourists but not foreigners. There's 3 fortresses in town but I only really saw one of them. One is on an island out in the sea, one has been converted into a hotel, and the last one is the one I hiked up to - what's 1000 steps anyway? I highly recommend not doing that in the middle of the day - I got completely exhausted. I also spent quite a bit of time walking on a path that follows the coastline - there were secluded beaches all along and it made a really nice walk. I'd normally get some take-away breakfast and find a spot on the water to eat. Very nice. I did make it out to Mikines - an old mycenean ruin nearby. Not much left of the buildings, just about a foot left of all the walls. But it was still fun to climb all over everything. I tried to go to Epidauris on both Friday and Saturday night as they did greek dramas there but they were sold out both nights unfortunately.

In Nafplio I met a French girl and we decided to head on to Sparti together. Sparti is also a fairly nice town... The Spartan ruins are pretty much non-existant. The theater exists but that's it. Everything else was taken by the Myceneans for Mystras. And that's what we did there - headed to Mystras. Mystras is absolutely huge! The bus dropped us off at the lower entrance and as we looked up to the castle it looked impossibly high. But we started hiking the road up to the upper entrance - only took us about an hour! Once we got into the site we had to walk up some more steps to get to the castle on top. Once there we decided we deserved a break and took out or picnic lunch. After relaxing for about an hour we proceeded to explore the massive ruins, walking down the hill. There was everything imaginable there - including an ancient monastary that's still in use! We spent about 5 hours wandering around the ruins before getting absolutely exhausted. Hoped on the bus back and relaxed all evening enjoying our aircon and tv in our room (no budget hotels in Sparti!)

Next morning Anne, the French girl, hoped on a bus headed for Patras while I chose to head down to Kalamata. The drive from Sparti to Kalamata was absolutely amazing! Weaving up and down the mountains was incredible. On the bus I met Matt, a Swedish guy who was planning to spend a few days in Kalamata. So once we arrived in town we headed down to the port in search of the cheap hotels (aka bad neighborhoods)... Found a hotel and decided to share a room to make it a bit cheaper. And in that day we exhausted all there was to do in Kalamatas - we walked up to the castle which was non-existant and we explored the local archealogical museum. With nothing left to do in town but lots around town we decided to share the cost of renting a car and driving around the area.

Now for those of you who don't know, renting a car in Greece is a BAD IDEA. Driving here is horrible! But we didn't really know that before heading out.... First stop was Ancient Messini - a massive ruin that they just recently discovered and are still excavating. So we explored the ruins, debating what each structure originally was, and watched the workers reconstructing columns, walls, etc. From there we headed to Nestor's Palace. In case you don't remember the Odessey, Nestor is the king who helped Telemachus (Odysseus's son) when he was looking for his father. The palace is amazingly intact - you can see the entire floor plan and some frescos left over. From there we headed down to Pyros and stopped for some lunch on the water. We were planning to go to the castle on our way out of town but somehow missed the turn for it. No worries - we continued on to Methoni. In Methoni we explored the fortress ruins which were pretty cool. Lots of underground passages and there was an additional fortress on a little islet that we could walk to. We also decided to check out the beach in Methoni which was pretty nice as Greek beaches go (there was actually sand!). From Methoni we headed to Koroni. And finaly got lost as it was bound to happen sometime. We came to an intersection and it said Koroni was both directions... So we picked one and it ended up going somewhere completely different so we headed turned around and finally found the road we wanted. Got into Koroni and it was obvious I had reached my limit (I was driving the whole way). I just couldn't handle the maze of one-way narrow streets in central Koroni. So we decided to skip the castle and just head back to Kalamata. We both just collapsed that evening and did nothing - the heat and constant concentration all day just killed us.

This brings us to yesterday. Didn't really do anything at all yesterday - sat on the beach for awhile but it was really too hot. The water was even too hot - I'm used to being able to cool off in the sea! I had some plans to spend yesterday doing errands... Was going to get my laundry done, check my email, buy my ferry ticket, etc but as I was walking around trying to find a travel agent to get my ferry ticket I realized everything was closed. Took me awhile but I finally figured out that it was August 15. Day of Assumption. National holiday in Greece. So I relaxed all day instead. Not so bad... Today I bought my ferry ticket and I'm obviously checking my email. But no laundry... Heading to Kastelli-Kissamos on Crete tonight - will arrive early tomorrow morning.