An interesting day …

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Hello!

I’m a bit subdued this afternoon, as I am more than a bit concerned about the situation in Greece at the moment.  Also that in France, but that’s another story.

All of R's shrimp!

My chicken

For the past several days, we have seen tractors lined up in towns that we have driven through, all as part of a general protest against new cuts in pensions.  Certainly not all the towns, but more than a handful.  And today, we came across a tractor road block.  Ouch.

But, to start with this morning.  After complaining so bitterly about how frigid it was in our room the past two nights, it was really odd to wake up sometime in the middle of the night being WAY too warm! 

Tractors...

The Patra bridge

More of the Patra bridge

The view from our Ioaninna hotel

Finally, that concrete started to absorb a little heat.  We were down to breakfast at 8 am as we still needed to pick up our (hopefully) clean and dry laundry down the street.

Breakfast was fine, and we had a nice chat with our host, who is a very nice guy.  As we were packing, R discovered the cable that connects the camera to the computer was missing and, after a thorough search, decided that it must have fallen out of the camera bag at dinner last night.  So we loaded everything into the car and went to the restaurant and – amazingly – recovered the cable.  How’s that for luck?  Then to the laundry to pick up our clothes.  The gal had everything ready and waiting for us, and it only cost us 7€ – about the price to launder a pair of blue jeans in the hotels.  Talk about highway robbery.

Then on the road first to Pylos, then Patra, and finally, Ioaninna, our stop for the night.  As I say, we did pass some tractors parked by the side of the road.  Oh!  But I’m forgetting the GARBAGE.  Either there has been a very long garbage strike in the Olympia/Pylos area, or something terrible is afoot.  We ran into absolutely HUGE mountains of garbage all over the place!  It was incredible!  We had read about and seen garbage piles in the Naples, Italy area, but truly, this was much worse.  Really would like to know what’s happening.  

Patra is the city on the Peloponnese with an absolutely stunning bridge over to the Central Greece side.  It is very reminiscent of the Millau bridge in France, but not nearly as high.  This bridge is really spanning water, but it was really lovely.  After that was where we ran into trouble.  

First ran into a police roadblock, which directed us down a side road.  We figured fine, some construction or accident.  However, when we finally went the way we were directed, there were three tractors stretched across the road, blocking it completely.  Wow.  With no guidance, we did get on some VERY bad back roads (calling them roads is really a stretch), which were really terrible – dirt and gravel, and lots and lots of mud.  Can’t even describe what the car looks like at the moment.  So, turn back yet again.  This time, we found two Albanian cars absolutely FULL of people and luggage, and between the three of us, we were able to get directed around Arta and onto the autoroute. 

Lobby of our hotel in the mountains

Our room

More of our room

Love the stone!

I have to say that it’s not the easiest thing to drive around a corner watching for tractors to be blocking the road.  Very nerve racking. [See note below.]

However, we were able to make Ioaninna (which I still can’t pronounce) by about 2:30 pm or so.  And of course, our hotel for the night, the Mir Hotel, is perched high on a mountaintop.  (R says it’s either that or in the middle of an “old town” with the winding streets, etc.)  Very nice hotel, although how I’m going to get out of the driveway tomorrow morning is anybody’s guess.

The daughter of the house greeted us, and helped us down the steps with our luggage.  The Mir is basically several buildings converted to rooms, overlooking the lake.  The view is beautiful!  Our room, 401, has a nice lake view, and is really warm!!  In fact, it was so nice this afternoon, that we actually had the windows opened for a bit.  But first, before showing us our room, the young lady brought us into the lobby/reception, which is really beautiful, and served us glasses of water and a real orange section that had been soaked in sugar, I’m sure.  It was delicious!  

Into our room, and while I started to rearrange luggage and pack away our newly cleaned laundry, R set up the computer.  Imagine my surprise to find a ladies grey t-shirt with a skull and top hat printed on the back, with a row of hearts and some writing!  Hmm…I have emailed our hotel in Olympia to tell them that we will mail it back when we get home.  I’m sure somebody will be looking for it soon!

Lovely view of the lake and the island!

Enjoying the spicy cheese spread

FABULOUS!

We are told that there is a good place to have dinner, “just up the road” – and when I say UP, I do mean up!  I took a walk up that way, but reached a point where the road divided into straight ahead and UP … decided to go back to the lobby and find out the name and the direction.  The nice young lady wrote it out for me – and R is even now trying to translate it from Greek!  Oh well!

Our plan is to get up and out early tomorrow (breakfast at 8 am, on the road shortly thereafter) and get on the freeway to Thessaloniki, and we’ll see what happens!  Please keep your fingers crossed for us!!

Lots of love,

m

xxx

So, back from a lovely dinner!!  We left the hotel about 5:45 pm as I wanted to make sure we arrived wherever we were supposed to be in the daylight.  We very closely followed the signage – we couldn’t really read it [ΕΞΟΣΤΗΣ], but we could look for the name – and while it was nowhere near the 200 m we had been told, it wasn’t terribly far.  And, of course, we were the first – in fact the only! – ones there, but they were open and happy to have us! 

We sat at a very nice table right close to the fire, which was great, and took a look at their “English” menu.  What was really great about the menu was what when they didn’t know the translation in English, they instead put the word or words in the Latin alphabet – which made absolutely no sense in English, and we were still lost!

The menu was very nice, but it turns out that only certain things were available. 

My chicken with mustard sauce and mushrooms

View from hotel at night!

R's grilled chicken with rice and potatoes

So, for starters, R ordered their “spicy” cheese – it was served hot, and was a cheesy dip with onions; it was great (not really spicy).  I ordered their fried zucchini and peppers – and truly, it was incredible.  The zucchini chips were just like eating great potato chips – only out of zucchini!  Who knew?!  For mains, we both ordered chicken (because they didn’t have the trout that R wanted to order).  R’s chicken was grilled, and mine was served in a mustard and mushroom sauce, both with some fried potatoes as well as rice.  Really terrific!  Then, they didn’t even ask us about dessert – they just put down a plate of apple slices and banana slices with honey.  Wow!  Again, everything was wonderful, and we are very, very happy!  Out the door about 7:30 pm for the 10 minute walk back to our room.  Very full and satisfied!  The food here has been really great!

So – hopefully more tomorrow from Thessaloniki!

m

xxx

(Note: When the police diverted us off the main route, they gave no information about the detour and so we ended up in a maze of dirt tracks that got worse as we went on and before we found our way to a workable route.  I just want to say that Margaret did a fantastic job driving through all of this mess while I tried to navigate.  Great job, M! – Robert]