Day 71: Change of Plans

First of all, I wish to apologize for all that crazy talk about spending my time here lying on beaches. I blame it on the lack of sleep. I slept in a bit today but woke up with a much clearer head and a renewed sense of adventure. My first idea was to take the unreliable bus to the northern tip of the island, then walk all the way back to my hotel on the south. Actually, to make all these locations easier to follow, here's a map:


My hotel is near Perivolos, at the bottom right, and my ferry docked where the little anchor is. I think that's all I've mentioned for locations so far. I decided to catch the bus to Fira and then decide what to do from there since it's the largest town and the central hub for getting other places. During the long wait for the bus I met a trio of Calgarian girls who were all engineering students on exchange to Crete. They were also doing courses on the Minoan civilization, so between that and the mathy/computery talk we had quite a bit to chat about while we waited. They recommended going to Oia (at the top) for the sunset, so I started thinking how to work that into my day.

Fira, when I got there, has an amazing view. That chunk cut out of the left of the island is a big caldera, and the west coast (at least from Fira to Oia) is cliffs of black volcanic rock. All the buildings are built on a terraced slope so that restaurant and hotel has a view down into caldera and along the cliffs each way.

I picked up some gyros for a quick lunch and explored the shops for a bit before wandering north away from the shopping area, just checking out random streets. I met two older men, also Canadian (I swear everything traveller I meet seems to be Canadian or Australian) hiking uphill in town, and we started chatting. Among other things they told me of a cliff path that ran between Fira and Oia, and I thought this would be the perfect way to get a hike in and have plenty of time to check out Oia and catch the sunset. I was in no rush, so my walk included detours to climb up rocky outcrops or go check out other things that struck my fancy. The path followed a ridge that runs along the bay, so as it crossed back and forth over you get nice views down both sides of the ridge.



When I got into Oia I still had awhile until sunset so I checked out the town and walked down a path to the water. There were lots of fish restaurants at the base of the cliffs, and there was a bit of a path that followed the water's edge, giving a nice view up at the black cliffs. They offer donkey rides for the long climb back to the city, but I was happy to do it by foot. I got some dinner at a restaurant and then headed to the edge of the city to wait for the sunset, along with what seemed like half the people on the island.


I took quite a few photos of the sunset, because it's hard to tell how they'll turn out. Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the results.


I already have a basic plan for what to explore tomorrow, but we'll see what I feel like in the morning.

Day 70: Blue

I found the shuttle bus from the airport to the dock and took it around 4:30am, getting there just before 6am. Getting my tickets went smoothly, and then it was just a matter of waiting for the ferry to start. I'm not sure I've mentioned it yet, but I was heading to Santorini/Thira.

I feel a need to defend this choice, because Santorini is one of the commonly visited islands and is apparently one of those most touristy. Going to the islands at all was a bit of an afterthought for me, because my original plan had been to focus just on the mainland since that's where so much of the history I'm interested in took place. Ultimately I decided I didn't need very much time in Athens at all, and I should check out at least one island as part of the Greece experience, and Santorini was cheap and convenient, and I knew at least there would be lots for me to do. I'm here for around 3 days, and worst case scenario I'm forced to lie on a beach in the sun relaxing like normal vacationers, and after rushing around so much for months that doesn't seem like that horrible of a a fate. Also, all of the bookings and accomodations in Greece were made when I was in Florence that night after drinking 2 big jugs of wine...

The ferry ride was 8 hours but there wasn't anywhere comfortable to get any sleep, although I did probably get a couple hours of sleep here and there. The sky was cloudless and the water is such an incredible blue that most of the time it was hard to tell where the horizon was. You would just see islands or ships rise out of the mist around you then fade away again. Along the way we stopped by other islands to drop people off and pick up more, so there were a few chances for interesting scenery along the way.

When I finally got to Santorini I wasn't too sure how to get to my hotel. It was on the southern part of the island, and I thought there was some sort of shuttle service from the port, but wasn't positive. Just in case I had looked up the distance on google maps and estimated it to be 8km or so, so I figured I could probably walk it if I had to. It turns out there was a free shuttle, which was good because that 8km was as the bird flies, and the first step to get anywhere from the port is to scale a cliff face through 10 or so zig zagging crossbacks, and it would have been horrible to walk it with my bags. I don't know how much it's places dropping prices to encourage tourists, or just things normally being cheaper, but the pricing is incredibly reasonable. My room here costs about $26 CDN a night, which is comparable to what I often pay for a bed in a shared dorm hostel. Here, though, I have a private room with a double bed and private bathroom. There's a nice pool right outside, and it's about a 10 minute walk to the beach. Once I checked in the first thing I did was have a much needed shower and change clothes. Then I went to the beach to check it out and just lay in the sun drinking beer for the afternoon. I'm looking forward to a much needed night of sleep, and the lack of any real goals here means I can go exploring or just lie around tomorrow depending on how I feel.

Day 69: The Long Night

I made it safely to Athens and am making use of their 60 minutes of free wifi at the airport. It's about 12:30am here, and I have a ferry leaving around 7am from Piraeus (the port) which is about a 90 minute bus ride away. There was no point getting accomodations, so I'm just pulling an all nighter. I took a few pictures this morning at the Republic Day military parade in Rome, but I don't feel like digging all the cables out, and honestly it wasn't all that interesting for me. I missed out on my haircut in the end because I left it until the last day not knowing it was a holiday, and all the ones near me were closed. I managed to find a place to do laundry before I flew out at least, so one less thing to worry about.

Spotlight: Alice Pasquini

I first encountered Alice Pasquini's art in London. There, it was small scale stuff - a small silhouette in a back alley or a face tucked away. I had forgotten that her home base was in Rome, but as I was exploring today I found a few small things by her and was just happy to recognize a name and a style. Alice is kind of a hybrid stencil/freehand artist. From what I can tell, she freehand sprays pastel backgrounds of swirling colours, then stenciles her figures on in black, then colours them in freehand as well. The effect is really nice, and she is one of my favourite stencil artists.

I was happy just to see a few small stencils by her - and then I came across a massive block long mural she's done in the San Lorenzo area. When taken as a whole it's probably one of the nicest pieces of street art I've seen on my travels. Sadly my camera isn't really made for murals, but I took pictures of some of the sections to give an idea.

I also encountered another smaller wall done by her in a much more remote, hard to find area. No idea where I was, so that's as specific as a location I can give.

Hopefully I'll run into some more of her work on my travels!

Streets of Rome: Street Art

Most of the street art I found, guided by the suggestions and the internet, was in the eastern part of Rome. There are a lot of really great stencil artists in the city (one of whom I'm doing a separate post for). From what I saw most of the art in Rome is stenciled or freehand, with the occasional paste up. I'm going to try details on the artists (names/aliases at the very least), but for now here is a small selection of art (I took like 100 pictures today, so I'll be putting more on picasa when I get the chance).

Very prolific around town. I'm guessing he's a big name in Rome street art.

I saw quite a few by this artist around town, with glass being painted/frosted and having faces etched out from it.

I know you're probably all sick of Space Invader by now, but he gets bonus points for placement on this one.

Streets of Rome: Random Things

Here are some random pictures from the streets of Rome, with commentary!

My kind of shop - full of bits and pieces of sculpture.

Like with most big cities there are all these street vendors selling handbags to tourists around all the bit sites. This picture is from just outside of Vatican City. They have all their bags lined up neatly, then as soon as they see police or a siren in the distance they snatch them all up and are off into the alleys.

Mystery Door #1 - beneath the aqueduct ruins

Some abandoned building. Not much else to say!

Mystery Door #2. Could have probably put this in the street art section as well, but so much else for there!

Day 68: Last Day of Rome

I originally planned to do 5 posts tonight to finish up Rome and the second stage of my trip, but I've been drinking a fair bit tonight so we'll see how much I get through. This morning I looked up a few areas that a friend of Jessica's had suggested to me for street art, and found that they were relatively close to me. Beyond that, a chronology of my day is a bit useless as I spent 75% of the day completely lost. I had mapped out rough directions to the areas I was interested in, but the problem with me is that if it ever comes down to directions and something that looks neat I'm going for the neat bit. That leads to another interesting street, and soon I'm far away from my destination and not near any street names I recognize. Through my day of exploring back alleys and underpasses I did eventually cover the areas I started off looking for, as well as a whole lot more. I'm going to break up my pictures into a series of Streets of Rome posts following this one.

This marks the end of the second leg of my trip. As a quick summary, here is the transportation I've used between cities since I started (I'm leaving out intercity transportation since I haven't really kept track):
Airplanes: 3
Trains: 22
Buses: 6
Vans: 2
Boats: 3


The next month or so is going to be a lot more chaotic, so I'm not sure how often Ìbe able to post. I imagine it will be more infrequentt, so please don't freak out if I don't post for 3 or 4 days. Greece especially will be crazy for scheduling, and key I'm not sure how much wifi there is.

Let me try to write these last posts before I go pass out. The basic idea is that for most of Rome I've been spending time checking out touristy things in the city center. While these are interesting, it's nice to get a look at some of the other aspects of Rome as well. I'm planning on doing 4 posts on the streets, roofs, street art and a special post on a specific artist.

Oh, and apparently tomorrow is Italy's Republic Day. Holidays everywhere I go!