Greece - Athens and Levidi

Here is one of many backdated postings to catch up on things and make sure that our website serves as a good historical reference of the trip for us. Or, you could look at some of this too as a bit of foreshadowing because I am now back in Durham as of last Thursday evening (June 18th and I started back at RTI on Monday the 22nd). Kelli, Ainsley, Jack and Eliot are still in Basel, Switzerland, with our friends Stefan, Katharina and their four (yes four!) children, Oliver, Sophia, Fabian and Marion. They will stay there until July 9th, when they fly to Boston and then drive to Cape Cod to spend a few weeks with her parents and other family before heading back to Durham to prepare for the start of school a few weeks later.

You may notice that no pictures accompany this post at all. We had a most unfortunate and awful experience in Venice, Italy (again a bit of foreshadowing) when our computer bag and all contents were stolen from our hostel room while we slept. Ugh!! Two other rooms at the hostel (a very nice Catholic hostel/convent) had similar thefts that night, and frankly, I am trying to forget about it and won’t go into much more detail here. Suffice it to say, we are happy to have all of the pictures we uploaded to Exploring the Marble, to have a full complement of all of our South America time (we had exchanged computer hard drives in Los Angeles in November, ironically for greater capacity for photographs, and mailed the original back home) and to have a few snipits that remained on the camera, which was not taken that fateful night. Other people we have met along the way have sent random photos to us as well. But, we lost virtually our entire catalogue of photos and video because in addition to the computer, our external backup drive also was stolen. In the end, the stuff that was taken was just that, stuff, and we are comforted in knowing that if this was our worst expereince of the trip, we are fortunate. It has been a painful process nonetheless to accept the loss of our photographs and video. We could have easily walked away from the loss of the electronics themselves, but losing our photos has been very difficult for us all. On a brighter note, as I mentioned before, we are very grateul of have uploaded so many images to Exploring the Marble. Sadly, we have no pictures at all from time in Levidi because we took many, many photos while we were there, transferred them to the computer, and deleted them from the camera but had yet to upload to the web.

Back now to the past for those of you (a very small number I’m sure) who are really following our travels and have been left hanging as to what happened next.Yes, GG did leave us in Athens and returned safely to Colorado. Everyone loved having her visit and were sad to see her leave. We stayed one additional night in Athens to wander around the Acropolis and soak in just a bit more Greek history and scenery. I’ll try and get some pictures from my mother to post soon. From Athens we went to Levidi, a small town on the Peloponnese Peninsula. It is not a major tourist spot. Actually, it does not even appear anywhere in the Lonely Planet Greece guidebook, not even a spot and name on the map! So, why did we end up going to Levidi? Nick, our backdoor neighbor in Durham, grew up there and left when he was 28 years old. He still has family, friends and a house there. As Jack said, “it would be a shame to be in Greece and not go see where Nick grew up.” So, that is what we did.

Nick arranged for his unoccupied house to be opened up, cleaned and equipped with sheets, towels, etc., all of the basic items that we needed for our stay. His recently retired friend George, who lives in Athens but still spends time in Levidi, offered to drive us there and to nearby sites. His daughter also volunteered to be our translator because George and most other residents of Levidi speak only Greek. We spent just under a week there and it was clear that everyone in this small village had heard of our arrival and knew all about us and our visit. News does move quickly in such a small place. We had many visitors and invitations to dinner and tea. Everyone made us feel very welcome and special. Ainsley, Jack and Eliot played soccer and other games in the streets with local kids, caught up on some math work and wrote in their journals. It was great to see the old stone house where Nick grew up and to see his sister and other friends.

We did a bit of sightseeing on the Peninsula too. Wish we could share some pictures, but perhaps some will enjoy a respite from more pictures of us?! Our driving tour one day included stops at Mycenae (a Citadel with remains from 1500 - 1200 BC with the famous lion’s gate and the very impressive tomb of Agamemnon of Trojan War fame), Epidavros (a 3rd century theater seating 14,000 people with acoustics so perfect that one can hear a coin dropped at the center of the stage from the last row of seating), and Napflio (a picture perfect seaside town with a 17th century Venetian-built citadel looming from a hill over the city).  From Levidi we took a bus to the port city of Patras, and then an overnight (two-night) ferry to Venice.  More soon about our time in Italy.