Well yesterday was quite the adventure, as always. We woke up early, and headed to the Thessaloniki train station to buy tickets to the town outside Mount Olympus, called Litochora. It was difficult to figure out the train schedule because everything is written in Greek! But we made it to LItochora, and asked someone how to get to Mount Olympus. He said it was about 15 km away, and that we’d need to call a taxi. We didn’t know how much it would be, but we’d made it that far, so we caved and called a taxi to take us the last leg of the journey. The taxi driver dropped us off, and off we went! We followed signs and wandered a while, and then found our way to Olympia National Park. We followed the paths through beautiful mountains, overlooking ravines. We passed a waterfall, and climbed up on mounds of rocks. It was so beautiful! And to think, that we were climbing the mountain where the Greek gods were thought to live. It was pretty neat. We made it to the end of the path; it ended and you couldn’t cross the waterfall. We still wanted to hike more, so we went to the smaller trail that went more up the mountain to explore for a little while. It was very quiet. We’d only seen a few other hikers the whole day. As we were walking, Madison made a comment that no one knew we were there, and no one expected us back. That’s never good, just for emergency purposes. So we sent a quick text to a friend, telling her that we were at Mount Olympus, just in case we never came back. We felt better after that, so we went deeper into the mountain. The trails winded through the forest, and up the mountain we went. Over the river and through the woods, to the top of the mountain we go! A while later, we were climbing, and we saw this man up in the forest, off the path. He started talking to us, and asked us where we were going in a thick Greek accent. He looked a little bit dirty and grimy, and was probably about 40 or 45. We told him we were just walking, and that we hoped he had a great day! I think all of us thought he seemed a little strange. But we continued on our way, up, up, up. Twenty minutes later or so, we came to a ledge with tons of rocks and a magnificent view. We decided to climb the rocks and take some pictures. So we’re hanging out, taking pictures and sitting around, enjoying the beautiful view. On the other side of the rocks, we see a cave. We talked about going inside the caves and exploring a little bit, but we weren’t sure if we wanted to or not. Then, we see the man coming over toward us. All of us got a kind of weird vibe from him, so we started climbing down from the rocks back onto the main path. He came over and started talking to us again. He told us that he’d been living in the caves of the mountain for ten summers now! A REAL LIVE CAVEMAN, LIVING IN MOUNT OLYMPUS!!! We felt kind of cornered by him, and wanted to get on our way, but he kept talking to us. He was talking about traveling, and wanting to go to Brazil. At one point, he used the word “we” when talking about visiting Brazil, and we all really just wanted to get on our way! So we ended the convo and said we had to go, and kept walking up the mountain. We walked for a while, letting the fact that we’d just met a caveman kind of sink in a little bit. We hadn’t seen any other hikers for a long time, and we started to get a little bit scared of Caveman. We hoped he wasn’t somehow following us or something. As we climbed further and further into the forest, I started to get a little anxious. You know when you can feel the nervousness in your stomach, and you can feel your heart beating inside you? That’s how I was getting. So we stopped, to decide whether to keep hiking or turn around. We came to the conclusion that if Caveman were following us, it probably wasn’t a good idea to keep trapping ourselves further and further in the forest. So we made a quick game plan. We all picked up rocks and carried them with us. And if we saw him again or anything happened, we’d be good to go- rocks already in our hands! Hahaa… but seriously we carried rocks. We started walking pretty quickly, and anxiety was building inside me. I was praying so hard as we climbed down! We passed Caveman like 15 minutes later, but nothing happened. On we went. When we got to the main path again, we weren’t so afraid, and eventually we returned to the town at the base of the mountain. We were fine, and finally had time to regroup and collect our thoughts a little bit. Yep, we climbed Mount Olympus, met a caveman, hiked alone deep into the forest, were followed by the caveman, planned to attack him with rocks if he tried to do anything to us, but made it down. What a hike!
We walked back to town, and ate gyros at a little local café. They were cheap and delicious- good meal. Then, we took a taxi back to the train station, and figured out the train back to Thessaloniki. When we made it back to our neck of the woods, we went to “our café” as we’ve been calling it. Our first day in Greece, we ate at this little café, and they gave us free cookies for some reason. So nice! So of course, we went back the next day. They remembered us, and gave us free dessert once again. We couldn’t believe it, free dessert two days in a row! So that night, we thought we would go and say thank you, and buy our own desserts. But when we got up to the cashier, they knew us as their American girls, and wouldn’t let us pay! The cashier told us that the worker had told her that we were very good customers and that we were her friends, and to give us free dessert! So that was our third free dessert. Crazy. After our Mount Olympus adventures, we went back to our café to see our friends there. We were going to buy only desserts. But when we got up to the front, a new worker told us that they were free! So we didn’t even buy anything, they just gave us chocolate croissants and berry pastries. Free dessert for the 4th time in a row! We absolutely couldn’t believe it! So we wrote them a nice long thank you note, and left them a good tip in Euro’s plus some American change. We asked them for the address of the café, so we can send them a postcard from Graz. It was sad saying bye to them! They were the nicest people; we had no idea why they liked us and why they continually gave us free desserts, but we formed a bond with the workers there and I was sad to hug them goodbye! We stopped by one last time on our way to the airport this morning to buy a breakfast pastry. Our favorite place!
Now, Madison and I are on the plane from Greece to Italy. We fly into Birgamo together, and then we’ll split. She’s going to Ireland, and I’m going to Austria to meet my mom. So I’m taking a bus from Birgamo to Milan, then an Italian train from Milan to Venice that gets in at midnight tonight. Then, I’ll switch to an Austrian train that leaves for Vienna at 1:30 am, and should arrive in Vienna at 7:15 am, where I’ll meet Stina and Carmen. I’ll spend the night at Carmen’s apartment, and Mom and Caroline will spend the night in London. Then, Friday night, I will wait at the airport for them to arrive! I am BEYOND EXCITED to see my mom! It will be so great! We will spend two nights in Vienna, one night in Innsbruck, two nights in Lake Garda, Italy, and then the last two nights in Venice. It will be so nice to stay in hotels rather than sketchy hostels! In some of the rooms at Hostel Arabas, the ceilings were so low you couldn’t even stand up straight! The comforter smelled like dirty socks. The owner of the hostel was blaring the songs “But then I got high” and “Show me your genitals” with us all sitting in the room. We didn’t feel comfortable leaving our things in the room during the day because we couldn’t lock the door. The shower was freezing cold, a sink type thing with a hose, and I had to air dry because I didn’t bring my own towel. It makes sense that it’s 12 Euros per night to stay there. Let’s just say I’m unbelievably stoked to be with my mom and to stay in nicer places! It’s gonna be great. Alrighty, that’s all for now!
-Lyndsey and the Caveman
No comments:
Post a Comment