Arrival in GreeceThe People You MeetInfluenza from Qatar AirwaysTo Thiva (Thebes)To DelphiDelphi, GreeceTo NafpaktosTo MytikasTo LefkadaPreveza, GreeceTo Igoumenitsa
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Thíva (Thebes), Greece
I rode today to Thiva. First I followed a route I planned on Google Maps out of Athens to Eleufsina. There was little trouble once I realized the road was always the same but changed names 30 times over 30 kilometers. At one point I dropped the paper with my hand-written directions. When I stopped to pick it up, I first rolled my bike through a thick mud. This mud stuck to my tires, sludged into my clean breaks and then dripped down onto my clean chain. Only a few kilometers out of Athens and I have managed to fill my new, well-lubed bike with grit!
I first learned how friendly the Greeks are when I got lost at the beginning of the National Road, E962. Despite this being the national road, it is completely unmarked as such and is ambiguous. Some Greeks in a pleasent little sandwich shop set me on the proper course.
Finally, I was leaving the industrial wastelands of Athens, which aparently lie just on the other side of a hill on western Athens. Up and up and up I rode. It seemed like I would summit the highest mountain in sight, and then around the top of the summit, the road would continue up another summit which had been hidden from sight. At the true peak, I took a long lunch break and ate an apple and peanuts. A truck driver stopped to check his load, he said a few things to me in Greek, which I did not understand, and then he gave me two bright organges. The one I ate proved to be as delicious as it looked.
The road down seemed much less steep than the road up, but in some ways that might be a blessing. This side of the mountain was extremely beautiful. There was a picturesque monestary and sheep herds. I rode through my first small town, then found that the sign pointing to Thiva was also pointing at the less well-maintained road. I crossed a bridge which made me think that I was travelling a route that Romans and Greeks travelled many years before me - an ancient road. So small was the road that I could not believe it was the National Road.
Being so out of shape makes my body easily discouraged. Even on the rolling terrain my legs were tired, and I took a generous amount of breaks. My map of Greece has not poved to be a terribly accurate guage of the distance between towns! Between the last town before Thiva and Thiva, the map indicates a distance of 11km. When asking which road to Thiva in this town, a man said, in Greek, that it was 25km. A concrete truck driver translated.
On my way into Thiva I asked a guy chatting with a newsstand owner which way I should go to find the plateia (plaza). "Follow me, my friend, I will show you the way," he said. And I followed his silver Peugeot around a few turns and up a hill to the plateia. I arrived at Hotel Niovi around 4.30 or 5.
The next morning I decided to stay the day in Thiva; not only because it is beautiful and the plateia is welcoming, but also because I thought I should rest my legs and build up strengh for the 800M ascent to Arachova, a town just east of Delphi.
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