at long freaking last, i have arrived. where however, i hardly know. i kinda took a stab in the dark at the island of crete, and ended up in a speck on the map called plakias. thats getting ahead of myself though, more on that in a bit.
as i mentioned earlier, meteora was a sight to behold. well worth the time and relatively little effort it took to get in and out of there. something a little off the beaten path, outside of the typical backpacker-route of heading hard and fast for the islands (although thats now the path i'm on. haha). insite of meteora's seeming remoteness, the connections to this tiny little place were surprisingly good. one transfer to get there, none to get out. i hopped on the train there, not 100 meters from my hotel, and 5 hours later, it dropped me off PAST athens, at the port city of pireas, literally across the street from the ferries. originally i had thought that i would have to get off in athens, and figure out all kinds of metros and that sort of junk. nope. easy peasy, japaneasy.
so i bought my ticket to crete. to some town that begins with an "R". there were 3 to choose from, and since the ticket guy hadn't even heard of the town i was headed to, nor could we find it on the map, i decided to go with the most central of the 3. 24 euros. done. you see, in my original thinking, i was going to head to crete to hike some gorge, aparently the longest or bestest or something in all of europe. in looking for places to stay, i found only hotel-esque lonely-single accomodations, but happened upon a town, PLAKIAS, which had a hostel that had a 5 out of 5 star review from a handful of reviewers. unheard of in the wonderful world of hostels (usually SOMEBODY gripes about something stupid), this place prided itself in people returning and people staying for extended lengths of time (ahem, LAGOS), so i figured i'd give it a shot.
i should take this oportunity before i forget, to comment on the seemingly universal fad of GREEK MEN, to wear FANNY PACKS. its unbelievable. like, you can tell the locals from the tourists by whether one or the other is wearing a freaking fanny pack. i can't get over it.
anywho, bought my ticket, walked around the industrial part of piraes for a couple of hours, and then i finally am able to board the ship. it'd been a while since i'd been on an overnight ferry (stockholm to riga, in MAY), but my experience then was completely different. that was FUN. this was almost like pulling teeth, perhaps worse. screaming kids running around everywhere, people smoking left and right, and worst of all, BAD greek television, blaring right in front of me. we're talking BAD. ick. sleeping wasn't so bad however, for once darkness fell, the place looked like a freaking back alley with a bunch of bums laying around. anywhere there was free space on the floor, people were curled up with their stuff. so, in making like the locals, i found some free space, and curled up for a decent nights sleep.
gotta run, but to make a long-winded story short, i arrived in the R town at 6am, hopped on a bus at 8, and was checked in and on the beach shortly after nine. i only then realized how WHITE i had gotten, but i soon remedied that. my red bug bites from the other day are not quite so visible anymore. lovely.