It’s about 12:20 and I’m sitting in the lobby of the hotel that I’ve been staying at in Athens. My plane leaves at 5pm and I’ve already gone down to the tourist area to get a t-shirt. Now what do I do. I could go to the airport and wait for until 3 to be two hours early for my flight. I could hang here for another hour or so, and then leave. I could go for another walk, but no… don’t want to do that. So the question remains, what do I do? I’ll probably hang here for a little bit, then go. It will probably put me at the airport at about 2 or so, but at least I won’t be stuck in one place the whole time.

Well, I got to the airport at about 3, maybe a little bit earlier, but now I’m sitting at my gate at 3:30 waiting for my flight that leaves at 5:30. I guess I remembered the time wrong, so now I’ve got two hours of sitting. No worries though, I’ve got 85% battery charge so I should be able to do something that will make time go by a little bit faster than just sitting and staring at the floor.

So now it’s 8:31pm and I’m sitting in the Cairo airport. Hmmm… except for a few staff I’m the only person here. My flight leaves from a terminal that appears to be empty, and my gate is at the far end of the terminal. It feels like it’s deserted. I kind of like it though. I would definitely like it more if I only had an hour to wait instead of, hold on there seems to be a problem with the time. According to my computer it’s 841, but according to the airport it’s 741. Must be 7:41 that means I’ve got about 2 hours. Next stop Dubai.

I’m sitting on the train in Thessaloniki waiting for it to leave the station, I think there’s about five minutes before I start the six hour trip to Athens. It’s been a long time coming that my vacation is coming to an end and to be honest I’m mixed on whether I’m glad or not. There is one side of me that wants to get back to normal life, you know, sleeping in my own bed kind of stuff, but there is also a side of me that doesn’t want this to end. The last week, or maybe two weeks have been a lot of fun and if it could keep going I think that I would be very happy.

The trip to Athens started this morning about 5 hours ago. I got up at 7, took a shower then took the scooter back. I should have returned it yesterday, but I had had a few beers and I don’t think the owner of the shop would have appreciated me showing up with beer-breath. ☺ So this morning I’m driving around the town looking for the shop but can’t find it. Remember the scooter is loud and it’s relatively early. I felt like a complete jerk. I did return it, and walked back to the hotel, grabbed my backpacks and headed out the door. I didn’t know when the bus would show up and I didn’t know where to catch the bus, but for some reason it didn’t bother me. I must be getting a little bit more relaxed or maybe more confident about traveling. I asked a guy in a café where the bus stop was he pointed out a small wooden building  about 20 meters away, just across the street. Taped to one of the walls was a bus scheduled, it On said that the bus would be there at 8, it was now 8:15. Damn. The next bus would stop at 12:45. So I’m sitting there trying to figure out what I am going to do, when guess what? The bus pulls up. Sweet.

The bus dropped me off at Thessaloniki at about 10, I grabbed a city bus to the other bus station across town. As we went through the city I saw the train station off the main road so I decided to check to see if there were any trains to Athens that fit my schedule. The next train was at 12, about 45 minutes from the time that I got there. Another sweet.:)

So now I’m on the train to Athens. It left the station not more than five minutes ago and it’s supposed to arrive at 1715.

I got to Athens at about 5:30 and it took me a total of about 15 minutes to get to my hotel… actually it probably took me closer to 30, but it seemed like 15. Other than getting something to eat I didn’t do anything. At one point I started to take a shower with the expectation of going souvenir shopping, but decided that I could do it tomorrow. I have to be at the airport at 3, so I’ll have most of the day to look for some souvenirs.

Ah, the good life. I headed out this morning about 930. I started late mainly because I couldn’t fall asleep last night. At about 2, I started to get worried that I wouldn’t fall asleep at all, eventually though I did. This morning I didn’t have any specific place that I wanted to see, and nothing that I could say that I wanted to do, besides go for a ride on the scooter. So I hopped on and I was on my way. I pretty much just followed roads at first, I did kind of have and idea that I wanted to go to other towns to see what they were like, but I was a little worried about driving the scooter on a highway. The best thing for me since I haven’t ridden motorcycle in about 13 years was to take it slowly so I stayed around this city. I did find a road that went up into the hills that surround Neos Marmabas and followed it. It was a blast, relatively no cars and a serpentine road that went on for about 25km, in fact after the paved road ended a dirt road kept going high into the mountains. Great fun. The road took me through some small villages, cafes and few other interesting things, but the views are what made the trip memorable… well, the fun of the scooter helped too. ☺

After about 20 minutes of just being on a dirt road I decided to turn back, mainly because I don’t know how reliable the scooter was and I didn’t want it to break down and have to push it the full way back to the city. Once I got back to the city, I was a little bit braver and decided to try the highway to the next city. For about 5 km I cruised along with the motor screaming away at about 50 on straightaways and 60 kph going downhill, cars constantly passing me, and then reality kicked in… maybe I should say the vision of me losing control and flying through the air kicked in and I turned into what looked like a beach. I’ve talked about the water of the Med… Aegean before, there is no other word for it, but stunning. It’s got a blue-green tint, clear and to make it even better it’s the perfect temperature. So I went for a wade in the water, I wanted to swim but there were a lot of sea urchins in the water, so wading was the best plan. A little bit disappointed I headed toward the city again until I found another swimming spot. This one was off rocks, and to be honest I think I like swimming off rocks better than a traditional beach. I’m not sure why, but I think it may have to be that the water gets deeper quicker, and maybe because you don’t get the typical waves that you do on a sandy beach.

About the only thing that would have made the morning better was if I was with someone. Usually I like traveling alone, but today was one of those days that having a buddy here would have been great.

I ended the morning back in the hotel drinking a beer. It’s definitely a good life.