Our last evening in Italy begun with a marvelous familiy dinner prepared by Matteo's mother and continued with a little farewell party with friends and vin brule' (Gruehwein or hot wine punch) on the bridge under the Specola in Padua.
The day after we left Matteo's home at 9:20 - just 20 minutes late - almost at german time....together with a whole caravan of familiy and friends (Matteo's father Paolo, his brother Francesco, his oncle Fabio, Bebo and Tranzo) we cycled along the old Brenta-river, which connected Padua and Venice. Matteo's mother Lucia escorted us by car, waving to us at every corner.
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| the luggage - maybe already too much |
We arrived Venice just in time to get the tickets, take some last pictures and say goodbye. What followed was a 3 days jurney. The first 30 hours were on the ferry to Patras, with nothing special happening. Finally we started to read the guide of Turkey (better late than never). We landed in Patras at 21:00, and spend some time enjoying gyros-pita and beer before taking a bus to Athens at 2 am.
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| Gyros and beer in Patras |
In Athens we arrived early morning at 5 am and cycled to the center and up to the Acropolis where we arrived just in time to see the sunrise. Again we were the only - and first tourists. But to be honest: who would go to visit the Acropolis at 7:00?!? We took a ferry at noon from Pireus and arrived at Chios at 19:00. This time we did not even manage to continue reading our guide: we slept almost all the time.
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| Sunrise behind the Acropolis |
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| A tired tourist in Athens |
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| A fit tourist in Chios |
Now we are in Chios, a pretty, but windy (at least at the moment) Island just in front of Cesme(Turkey). Temperature around 20 C.
Chios has a continous history of 8000 years. Mycenean, Greeks and Romans were here. It was also a strong byzantine center and untill the 16th century it was a trade center of the italian marine republic of Genoa. Afterwards Chios was part of the Ottoman empire. It remained christian and since 1912, after the dissolution of the Ottoman empire Chios belongs to Greece.
We took a room in Karfas directly on the beach. Today we did some "mountain training sessions" between orange, lemon, olive and almond trees. Up-hill and down-hill is standard here, and as flat land exists only in the Po Valley and the Netherlands, we're preparing ourselfs for roads like this for the next months...
Tomorrow we'll take the 8 am ferry to Turkey.
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