Last night in Greece...tomorrow on to Santorini!

Hello all,
Today was Athens in a day :) We left the hostel at 9am and didn't get back here until almost 6, with only a 45 minute lunch break, so we were busy busy busy! The Acropolis was cool, except that it's been under construction since 2000, so there's scaffolding in all of our pictures, but if you can look past that, it's amazing to imagine what everything looked like way back when, and how they constructed everything to last so long without the use of modern machines! We got to go in a museum and saw all sorts of cool artifacts that were found at the site, and they came up with some really creative ways to do things we take for granted, like time speeches, and keep their wine cool, neat :) Last night we treated ourselves to dinner at a cafe, and even though the food was really good, we decided it wasn't worth the 20 euro we spent, and we're better off eating a large cheap lunch from now on, and having a smaller dinner before bed. That's what we did today, and we each had two of the most AMAZING gyros ever for lunch! SO good, and we loved every bite...of both... :)

Ok, our ferry ride...insane. We got on, and it is more like a mini cruise boat, so we staked out a spot on the deck loungers thinking that would be more comfortable than sleeping on the concrete floor on the deck below. So that meant that in order to save them, we had to spend all day near them, hence, we were in the sun the whole two days...I lathered on the sunscreen (Katie was loving it, she spent a lot of the time tanning :), and tried to read or write in my journal in the shade. The other bad part was that everyone smokes everywhere, so it was hard to get away from that. And we met a few other travelers while up on the deck, one guy who was traveling for 5 monthes, a couple of girls from Austrailia, and then this guy who was probably the most negative person we've met on the trip, and maybe one of the most I've ever met...he complained about EVERYTHING, and was one of those people who doesn't know when not to talk to them when they want to be left alone...kinda annoying and it's hard to be by yourself, you can't get off the boat :)

Bedtime comes along, so KAtie and I start setting up our sleeping bags on the loungers, locking our bags up beneath us (every other deck passenger was doing the same thing, so don't worry mom :), and just as we're getting into our bags...it begins to rain :) We're like, WHAT? The guy on the boat said it never rains! This, of course, gave our negative friend one more thing to complain about...so we had to move to a spot over by the bathrooms on the lifejacket boxes, and tried to sleep there, but it was rattling a lot and loud (it reminded me of trying to sleep on the floor of the bus during my long soccer trips...not good ;), and I didn't sleep much...around 6am, we moved back onto the loungers, and slept for a couple more hours until people started moving around on the deck and going in the pool and stuff...then it was another long day in the sun...

We got into Patras, and these other people we met while getting off the ship were going to find a budget hotel...but it would have been like, 16 euro a person, and katie and I had found a camping site that looked really nice on the website (we checked the website that day on the ship), so we were like, well, let's just do that, it's only going to be 6 euro a person. So we wait for and get on the bus (Really funny, all of the city buses were Mercedes coach buses :), and talked to the guy on the bus for awhile and he says it will drop us off right in front of the campground. So it does, and we get off, the bus leaves...and the campground is closed...it's dark, and we're 30minutes from anything in the main city...great...so we start walking into the campground anyway to see if we can find anyone, and this guy stops us right as we're going in, and is like, the campground is closed, we are repairing from the earthquake (apparently it hit patras more than a lot of other places), and we're like, we have nowhere else to go! So he's like, there's another campground down the road, come on, I'll drive you there...okay, I know we're not supposed to get in cars with strangers, but this guy was old, nice enough to offer,and obviously the owner of the campground we were at. And he has a nice truck...so we get in,kinda nervous, drive 5 minutes down the road,and he drops us off by a sign that says Campground 500 meters. So we start walking, and thankfully it's a lit road,and all of the houses look very nice, but we're kinda nervous we're going to get there, and this campsite will be closed to, and now we're farther out without other options, and these dogs keep jumping up and barking at us from behind the fences as we're walking by, but we finally get to the campsite, pay, and she leads us to our spot.

Now,we're thinking that it will be like the other ones we've been to, where they just have a big field for the tents...but this is more of a camper campground and apparently they are really full for a Thursday night. She points to a spot between two trees that is just large enough for our tent, and right in between two other tents, the couple next to us is just looking at us, and it was really akward. And we were tired and hungry, so got some fries at the restaurant (the cheapest thing on the menu), and by now it's almost 11:30, so we just went right to bed. Got up the next morning, walked to the bus stop, got to the train station, and headed for Athens! So a crazy couple of days, but it was a great adventure, and makes for a good story to tell :) But next time it's late and we're looking for a place to stay, we'll just go to the budget hotel :)

We're off to watch the Greece soccer game at a bar...hopefully it's an exciting one! Hi to all, and don't get too wet, we heard everyone is having a lot of rain it seems. LOVE YOU ALL! Talk to you soon!
Sarah and Katie