OT-Study in Europe-High spots & Low spots....
Lone Haranguer
leaving our school with our entire luggage. Some girls had to buy extra
suitcases just to carry all the extra things they picked up while in
Athens. I carefully put all my findings within my large suitcase and did
not have extra baggage, besides my brand new awesome purse, which did
hold a lot of extra things for me. We decided to walk to Sytagma Square,
normally a 10-minute walk, and after twenty minutes we were only half
ways there and struggling. Our goal was to get to Syntagma square, take
the metro two stops away to Omonia, walk to the city bus 051 to take it
to the bus terminal to catch a coach bus to the port Patra, a three hour
bus ride away. A friend and I found a taxi to get us to the city bus
stop, which was helpful. That city bus was so full, an old Greek man
told me that my luggage was annoying, just like the Italians (I told him
where I was headed).
Three of us were able to get the last seats on the next coach bus to the
port Patra, we took it and found our own way to the ferry. When we got
off the bus, it began to rain. We walked a fair distance with that
luggage to find our Superfast ferry. We stood in line for our check in
for 30 minutes and finally made our way to the ferry. Our voyage was to
be 21 hours on this ferry, which ended up being 23 hours. There was a
thunderstorm the whole time, creating huge waves. We were sitting on the
7th deck and the waves were breaking against the ship over our windows.
The entire ferry was rocking back and forth for almost the entire trip,
and after 15 hours, I began to feel seasick. A couple of us who were not
feeling well just laid around waiting for the ship to stop rocking.
We arrived at Ancona and walked 2 kilometers with our entire luggage to
the train station for our four-hour train ride into Roma. When we got on
the train, very excited but extremely tired, we were joined in our car
by some young men that decided to huff spray paint. Not wanting to
confront some sketchy characters, we just minded our business and tried
opening as many windows as possible for those horrid four hours. We
arrived in the train station in Rome and got on the metro to find our
way to our apartments. There are few elevators involved with their metro
so this last stretch of our journey was very difficult with our heavy
luggage. The streets are all cobblestone, not wheel friendly at all. We
made it and enjoyed a wonderfully cold shower, and spent the remainder
of the evening in the dark because our power went out. My friends spent
the night on the floor because we had to get to the airport early for
our flight out to Venice, which we missed anyways, long story or another
blog entry. I am not sure how many pictures I have of this wonderful
journey, but I will be sure to put some up soon.
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Latest blog entry from our granddaughter studying in Europe. She had
earlier written of good times in Munich, Vienna and Salzburg though.
LZ