Roma

Venice to Ancona to Patras

Felling lot better this morning. I made the decision to pro-long my real birthday celebration till the 30th for when im in Mykonos and with Helen. This way i get to celebrate it again and not feel like i missed it. A guy we met on busabout was kind enough sell me his laptop. He made me so happy because Ive been planning to buy one for months, just couldnt justify the cost of one. Its little travel laptop which does everything i need it to do. So as a birthday pressent to myself i brought itfor 250 AUS dollars. Its now my new baby. It was a short bus ride to Ancona to catch the ferry to Patras. We made friends with a couple and together we brought tickets and lilos ready for the ferry. 21 hours on the ferry. What did we do. First we scored some deck chairs where we napped until it got too cold and windy then we migrated inside to a quite corner to play cards and blow up out lilos. Had a realtively good sleep considering the surrounding enviornment and sleeping apartus. The next day we still had till 3pm to entertain ourselves.

26th We ate our cornflakes with milk we aquired from the bar, how stingy i know but we treated ourselves to a ham and cheese sandwhich for lunch. haha. Spent most our my time writtng my blog on my new laptop. The boat docked and we jumped on a bus from Patras to Athens. Another 3hrs. The secenery was'nt too flash. Didnt look anything like postcards. Our company on the bus informed us that Athens was a dirty, busy, big city and not very nice to visit. We later found ourselves repeating this others. We finally made it to our hostel, thanks god for the couple because i had no idea where we were going. We managed to score a private double room as they over booked. lucky us, we were able to leave our things out every where. A scares luxury when backpacking. We indulged in our first of many gyros for 2 euro.

Roma

27th Lazy day, took advantage of the free internet and private room. Only really ventured out to get food. Nice to relax.

28th Woke up late because i forgot to wind the clock forward 1 hour. So we had 15min to get ready for our walking tour. A mad rush but we made it. After 45 minutes of walking we finally began out walking tour. May i add it was the s***est tour ive ever been on! and for 18 euro i was not happy. Our guide told us little information and while we entred the sites he waited outside and had a coffee. So most of the time we didnt know what we were looking at or had any historical information to enlighten us. Even when he did give us some information (which i think was false) it was like 'this was built in the 300 BC because the leader wanted it too be built'. But all negatives a side we did visit the Acropolis, the iconic symbol of Athens, although it is being reconstructed it was a nice spot to see the entire city. We also visited the Parthenon, the temple of Athena Nike and also Theatre of Dionysos on our tour. The Ancient Agora seemed more like a rock farm rather then an ancient market place, however the temple of Hephestus remained perched on the hill. The temple of Olympian Zeus took more than 700 years to build and was completed in AD 131, but unfortunatly only 104, 17m columns remain today. Poor Ancient Athens, named after the goddess of wisdom, Athena its has faded away. For a place with so much archeaological and influencial history, it was a bit of a let down.