Day 3, 4 & 5

Day 3, 4 & 5 

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday

 

 

Athens and surrounding suburbs are crazy in love with motorcycles.

 

 

Motorcycles make up at least 1/4 of the vehicles on the road. That's a lot of motorcycles.

They are of all shapes, types and sizes. With a large number of them being large adventure bikes; V-Stroms, BMW - GS, Triumph Tigers, Honda Transalps and many more we never see in the USA.

 

These are well used machines, not simple garage queens.

This is Sunday afternoon at the local beach.

Vstroms are used as police and EMT bikes. I am impressed!

The beach, South Coast, in the motorcycle pictures, is a really nice beach directly in front of our hotel. But, it costs 5 euros - each to get in and its crowed and noisy...so we choose the beach next door that is free, a little trashy, and decorated by the locals.

But it was quiet and not crowded and didn't have pesky sand blowing in your face.

It was a nice mixture of ground up palm trees, rock and sand.

No real waves, water was cool, but not cold.

Great natural deco, with the ice plant growing down the beach cliff.

It reminds us of the So Cal coast.

It was a great sunset at 8:45 PM. Day temps in the upper 80's, night in the low 70's.

Monday: Learning the Metro, bus and train systems reminded us of Brussels Belgium.

Except that they use a lot of Greek script here and don't always back it up with roman script.

So most of the time its just plain "Greek" to us.

We finally found the bus station we will leave from on Friday morning.

Tuesday: About 5 kilometers south of our hotel is a natural mineral springs lake.

 It was like a cool spa at 80 degrees F. (27C)

It has a small pine forest growing on one side and lots of vegetation.

Not quite a 1/4 mile long and 1/8 mile wide with lots of variation in depth. It flows into the ocean, just over that ridge behind the stand of trees, as it is 1/2 meter higher than the ocean; . Its the mineral content that draw people here. It seems Greek mineral springs have some great soothing, some say, healing powers for a lot of what ails you. It did feel good to us.

Here, see, this is one happy and contented woman

 after spending just 30 minutes swimming in the water.

It felt so good, she is ready to go back for more.

The surrounding landscape reminded us of Canyon Lake, just east of Phoenix, AZ.

We went and returned by local bus. Still a little tricky! We waited for bus 115. We were told it would take us there but after half hour we asked the lady next to us if another would work. Yes, the E22 which passed by several times also went there. Another thing we learned...We thought we could just buy tickets onboard. No. (Got a free ride that time) (Dumb tourist!) Tickets, 1.4 euros, are good on any transportation, bus, tram, and metro for 90 minutes. We think one is supposed to buy several tickets the day you travel and that way you are ready to simply validate them whenever you ride. We are learning...eventually we hope to understand. This is why foreigners our age buy tour packages.