(written 14:30, 9/5/2006 in Spisské Podhradie, Slovakia)
We were up so early the next morning to catch the train that it was just like waking for one of Liz's morning shifts at the hospital! Needless to say we don't intend to do that very often.
Some coffees were found on the station while we waited for the train, which rattled into the station on time, its loud diesel engine strangely located between the two passenger carriages. Only other locals and staff were on this early trip - seemingly the only real use the train gets, given that the two later ones were booked out no doubt with tourist bus-loads.
Being so empty, we were free to roam back and forth across the carriage, taking in the spectacular mountain scenery from the train-line which had no doubt taken some considerable effort to build many years ago. The weather looked foggy from the bottom, but cleared rapidly as we rose.
Plenty of pictures of the river which had formed the valley, the surrounding forests, tiny settlements (where nobody or perhaps one person got on and/or off) and, further up, open plains were taken as we spent an hour or so working our way towards Kalávrita.
This little skiing-base of a town was set up to cope with the midwinter crowds, but there weren't many around this morning. We had a wander around town, but needed to sit down after a while to attend to a few important things - breakfast (cheese pies seemed easy enough to get as the staple foods), and to learn about about this strange language. The menus proved great for us to attempt to decypher with the help of our language guides, and it was great being able to work through each character only to arrive at something like kafe or chocolate - very fulfilling!
9:26 came around soon enough, and it was time for the train to rumble back down the bottom of the mountain. It was still mostly empty, although this time the driver stopped at the most scenic places, probably more out of habit for his usual load of tourists to take pictures.
Back in Diakoftó, we retrieved our car from the night's hotel, and drove back towards Pátra where we the ferry had landed the day before, and then turned south.
Despite being the largest road we could choose to go in the direction we wanted, we spent most of morning driving rather slowly through a succession of 90-50-90 zones, which is not at all an enjoyable way to get around. It's crazy because the locals don't follow the limits at all, yet for all we know there could be a cop around the corner just waiting to pounce on a tourist following along.
Still, we made it to Olympía - driving through the modern town to get to the old, no ancient one. The ruins proved worth a look around for an hour, being impressive, not over-touristed and nicely tree-covered for the most part. This is of course where the Olympic flame is lit from, but we couldn't find any evidence or even a sign-post marking the point. No matter, we must have been close!
Being spring, flowers were blooming everywhere both here and for pretty much the rest of our trip around Greece, making the site very enjoyable to wander around. Eventually one of the staff told us the site was closing (strange, it was only 2pm or so), so we took that as a hint to see the remainder quickly and head off to find accommodation.
After a few tries, we ended up in a camp site (Camping Olympia) on the outskirts of town, where we pitched our tent under some orange trees (pretty and romantic, but smelly as the site hadn't had it's makeover for the summer crowds yet) and then spent the afternoon in the sunshine chatting.
Later on we walked into town, and picked ourselves a cheap little place where they forgot our order twice but otherwise the food was good, as evident from the number of locals there. No tip left, we wandered back to sleep for the night.