This morning I had an early breakfast for the case that the weather would be could enough to ride my bike out to the tree with the church in it. Forget that! The snow was coming down and the wind was blowing like crazy so I went hiking for three hours. Before I left, I made an appointment to use the sauna at 5. I’m not a sauna fan, but it’s a spa hotel and I figured I should take advantage of the office. So, The ladies at the hotel told me I would find the trails at the train station. I found the train station, but no trails. So I just walked out of town on an isolated dirt road. Of course there were barking dogs along the whole route.
I stopped in the tourist office when I got back into town and learned that there is a cog railway that takes you down to the coast from here. But today it wasn’t running because of a problem on the tracks. Rats! I would have been a nice diversion. So I walk back into town and see that there is a holocaust museum here. (The Germans had killed a lot of Greek partisans.) I walk around to the front entrance and see that it had been open yesterday but not today. Rats again. Meanwhile, I was in the mood for something chocolate. I went into a cafe and had a cup of tea and some terrific chocolate mousse on a layer of lady fingers that was so rich I almost couldn’t finish it. But I made the sacrifice.
I went back to the hotel and Skyped and texted until the sauna appointment. I went down to the sauna and it was the “meh” experience I had inspected. I’m just not the sauna type.
By now I’m getting hungry for supper and was in the mood for spaghetti. I went to the Italian restaurant in the pedestrian zone and had a great salad and spaghetti Bolognese. Then I start to think, “Hmmmmm, if that good old cog railway is running tomorrow, it will take me down to the coast in an hour and I’ll have a spectacular view I can enjoy without worrying about riding off a cliff.
So when I get back to the hotel, I ask the receptionists about whether the railway will be running tomorrow. They say they won’t know until the tourist agency opens tomorrow at 9:15. Hmmm, I had wanted to get on the road at 8 and the sign at the tourist office says it opens at 9. So I figure, by the time I get down with breakfast and get the bike packed, will only be losing about 45 minutes if I’m at the tourist office at 9; if the train’s not running I have to ride in that direction anyway, so I’ll get to the coast just a little later than usual. If the train’s running, it leaves at 10.17 and that will give me 45 minutes to still visit the Holocaust Museum. It’s worth the gamble.
She. I do get down to the coast at Xylokastro (however I do it),I’ll be picked up and driven back to Athens. Then, the day after tomorrow I have one last day of riding along the coast by Athens. As soon as the ride’s over, I’ll hop on the metro to the airport and catch the plane shortly after midnight to get back to Kazan.
I miscalculated a lot on this trip and would never do anything like it again. But I tried to get as much out of it as I could.
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