Land of the Gods

By Johan - First impressions of Greece include lovely people and a lot of history. We spent some time trawling though the local markets and afterwards we settled on our Athens appartment roof top terrace which gave us a good feel for the city sprawl on our first two nights in Greece. 

The iconinc outline of the Parthenon on the Acropolis certainly is impressive. The largest marble structure on the globe looks impressive even though it’s guts were ripped out around 1620 because the Ottomans were clever enough to leave a gunpowder stash in the basement while the Venetians tried to bomb the place. 

We set off to the Greek islands today; Coming in on the ferry Santorini lloks like a pretty awesome place with the white buildings along the cliffs looking like snowy mountain ranges. Unfortunately the heavy winds ruined our sunset so we settled for the night with some rum and coke and Greek wine in our cave mountain side apartment. 

The 8 hour ferry ride today allowed me to get my game face on and read a whole novel in the 8 hours or so we spent on the ferry (for those of you that know me well, you will know that reading a whole novel in one day is quite an achievement for me). “Goodbye Sarajevo” is a memoir by Atka Reid & Hana Schofield that tells their story about how their family ventured through the civil war in former Yugoslavia and how they ended up living in New Zealand. It’s part of our introduction to the more recent history of the Balkans; an area we I’ll bike through in the months to come.