Citidel!

You know how I said in my last post, that Greek rulers liked to have their citadel on the highest mountain they could build it on.  Well the guy who lived in the one I saw yesterday, the Acrocorinth citidel, must have really liked being able to see everything in a 5 mile radius. His citadel wraps around a mountain 2000 feet up and on almost every side over the wall it's a 50 foot drop. In times of war the people from the near by villages could retreat to the safety of the citadel. It was built in 2000 B.C. then was taken over by the Romans, followed by the Byzantine Christians. Then it was taken over by the Turks, followed by the Franks, the Turks again, the Venetians, the Turks yet again, then lastly the Greeks . Each conqueror added something unique to the citadel resulting in a lot of different building styles.

When we were trekking up to the top I forgot the water so I had to go all the way down then, up to the top again. At the top we were all prepared to take a bunch of pictures of the view but we were so high up we were in a cloud. That must have been a really annoying problem living there. On cloudy days their visibility must have been only 5 feet in front of them. The reason it was up so high is that so someone could always see the the land between the Gulf of Corinth and the Saronic Gulf. Its a lot like Sechelt, B.C. where the isthmas is only 1.3 km wide. From the citidel it's only about 10 km in between the gulfs and if they wanted to get to the Gulf of Corinth from the Saronic Gulf they would had to go all the way around the Penopolese Peninsunla.

Back when the citidel was still active many great leaders tried to cut a canal across the ithsmas. For example, Julius Caesar tried, Nero tried, and Caigula tried but only in the 1800s it was made possible. They had to cut a six km long line through solid rock and make it wide enough so that big ships could pass through at ease. They did successfully complete the canal but the problem that kept recurring was that the sides kept caving in. Today it isn't as useful as it was made for the canal isn't big enough for modern day super cargo ships and just used for tourism.

Ruins!

The view

One of the things they don't tell you about the ancient Greek rulers is that they liked to have their citadels or fortified city on the biggest mountain they could build on. I don't know if they had a Yertle the Turtle thing going on or they just wanted a really nice view. But almost every citadel or fortified city in Greece is on a really big mountain because it was strategically smart. Since all the  ancient sites are on mountains, that means there are signs to them to lure people like us or old-pile-of-rocks lovers to come look at their "archaeological site".  Of course "archaeological site" means any pile of rocks or a place that once HAD an old pile of rocks and that means lots of their signs are very misleading. For example, yesterday my dad saw a sign for an acropolis so he turned up the road which turned into a dirt road that climbed all the way up a mountain. At the top it was just a old concrete building with the sign for “acropolis”. Though the next time we stopped for a archaeological site sign it was a lot better .

Lets get artsy!!

We were on our way to Athens but stopped at Mycenae. At one time Agamemnon was the ruler there . It was said that at one point in time he controlled all of Greece from Mycenae .  He also had a really nice tomb that is shaped like an upside down ice cream cone and then covered in dirt so it was just part of the slope. He also must have had a thing for really monumental entrances. The walk way in to his tomb that cuts into the slope is lined with really big rocks on both sides then a massive doorway into the tomb. When you stand in the center of the tomb and just whisper it gets amplified and you can hear it all around the chamber. After that we had seen most of what there was to see so we continued our course to Athens.

The famous lions over the doorway

Inside

The tomb enterance 

Lets go to the beach, beach, lets get wave

It was a hot sunny day and a lost family was sauntering along a beach. "Its a ship!" one of them cried "Oh no, it's a shipwreck you ningus." said the brother. "We must explore it" said the father.  So that was basically how my Thursday went minus being marooned on a beach. We had been going for a drive in search for a beach for the day and we turned a corner and saw a huge rusty cargo ship beached, literally.  It was rammed up on the beach in only a foot of water with an old rusted out semi intact hull. When I was standing beside it on the beach it was a lot bigger from the road. It was maybe 15 meters high and 50 meters long, with big holes in the site from rust and weather. My dad and brother decided to go explore it at the cost of getting their shoes wet.  So I had to think of something to while their inner swashbuckler came out.

While my dad and brother where exploring the ship, Bella fell in an indentation in the sand so that sparked the idea for me to bury her. I completely buried her with only her head showing so it looked like there was a lonely head in the sand. She lasted about 15 minutes without moving and in that time my brother and dad had come back from their expedition. They said that most of the inside of the ship had been gutted and that someone was living in the front or at least was, at one time. When I walked down the beach I discovered that there was an abundance of small logs so my dad and I propped them up in the sand. Then I found another and another. By the end I had sand everywhere and 6 logs propped up like woodhenge. By then the sun was going down so we packed up and headed back.

Later we discovered that the ship was rumored to have been a cigarette smuggling ship in between Turkey and Italy, but was commandeered by the Gythios port authority and then purposefully released it from the port and let the ocean take it while being set on fire. Then it was dragged by the sea to where is it today. Now today it is a tourist attraction and a mystery to all.

 

Greece!

One of the great things about my family is that, we stop for Acropolises, and we just did that a few days ago.  When we left Patris we drove south to Olympia but after seeing the tourist crowds we decided to drive to a town on the coast called Zacharo because we had seen a nice hotel there on booking.com. The second day we were there my dad saw a sign for an Acropolis so we followed the signs up a dirt road to the top of a small mountain. 


When we got to as far as our Kangoo would permit us we hopped out and walked the rest of the way up. When we reached the last sign that told us a little about the acropolis it looked like it had seen better days. There was no one around and nothing but trees and a old rusty covering for some old pottery so my brother and I decided to climb up to the top while Bella and my parents took the trail.  When my brother and I reached the top we could see a very ancient looking wall that was part of the acropolis. After taking about 1000 pictures of the view from the top we climbed back down walking on top of the old wall that remained.

 

Venice!

The Rialto Bridge

Some of my famliy

More Vencie!

You could say that the Italians are a little slow, technology wise. You could say that because at our hotel in Venice they make you pay some stupid amount of money for an internet code. But they leave the staff network open, without a password or anything. The best part about it is that they don't even know. Even when there are 4 or 5 people sitting on a bench outside the office with laptops "surfing" the web and when you tell them that all of those people are using the open network they say "oh no they're paying".  Only when we tell them that we were using their staff network to book their hotel on the internet they realized that people were using their internet for free.

Bella!!

Nap time !

Anyways, our hotel is actually not in Venice but across the bay from the actual city. So we had to take ferry taxis to the Islands of Venice. The first day we took the wrong one so that added an extra hour to the ride. We mostly walked around and saw the San Marco Square. Fun fact about St. Marco square--there are absolutely no benches to sit on! When you have a very tired Bella with you it's not fun at all so she ended up having a nap on some steps . The next day we took the right ferry and walked over the Rialto Bridge. From walking all over Venice I noticed that almost all of the buildings are falling apart and you would think with all the tourist money they could make the buildings look brand new. Most of the building's paint is coming off to reveal ugly concrete or stucco, and the streets motar is uneven and falling out. That is one of the mysteries of Italy I will never know.

SELFIEZZZ!

Snack break!

By then we had our fill of Venice so we booked ferry tickets to Greece. Which of course is a lovely 38 hours on a boat with almost nothing to do.

Venice! #nofilter

Windows!

San. Marcos Square!

Ferry Ride of Fun!

Easter!

The next day we packed our bags and headed to the for our ferry to Patras in Greece.  Although the boat was much more modern and fancy than any of the ships in the B.C. Ferries fleet their loading system was horrible.  The route we were taking from Venice to Patras, Grease is mostly used by truck drivers so that means the loading crew was used to big tractor trailers rather than people like us in our cube-like Kangoo. So that resulted in our being squished down in the bottom deck in the very front of the ship. Since we were at the very bottom we had to go up and down 7 flights of stairs every time we wanted something in our car, and being incredibly unfit  people it's not fun at all. So after unloading everything we needed and lugging it up stairs,  they announced that we were going to be delayed 2 extra hours.

#nofilter

After getting under way and settling in our small cabin that didn't smell that nice, we set up camp using one of our air mattresses we bought in Germany on the deck. We happened to sit right outside the place where the kitchen staff comes to smoke, but there was a nice breeze to waft away any horrible smells. Over time one of the cooks came out, smiled and gave us multiple giant sweet bread buns. He probably thought we were sleeping on the deck because some people were.  We ended up watching James Bond "Casino Royale" because there is a scene in Venice near the end.  Then we all went to bed. Bella was a little excited because the next day was Easter.

 such wind

When Bella woke up she was greeted with chocolate eggs in her bed  which resulted in squeals of excitement that woke the rest of us up. She also had a mini hunt around our cabin. Around noon that day we stopped at Igoumenitsa to off load some trucks and then it was 8 hours more to Patras.

We finally arrived at Patras around midnight and since our car was in the very front of the ship on the bottom deck and the exit to the ship was in the back, we would have to wait for all of the trucks to get off before us.  Since the deck crew was horribly uncoordinated and just bad at their job it took ages to get our car off the ship. By the time we loaded up again and were ready to go it was about 1:30 in morning and we were all tired. We got to our hotel which was near by and crashed.

Driving Through Switzerland

After Lahr we decided to head south to the warmer part of Europe like Italy and Greese. So we entered “Venice” as our destination into our Sat-nav system “Jane”. To get to Italy from Germany we had to go through the Swiss Alps, or under as we discovered. We got caught in traffic for about 2 hours trying to get in the massive 23 km tunnel that goes under the worst of the mountains. The delay was because of a traffic light at the start of the tunnel that makes cars go in pauses. After finally getting through the tunnel we discovered that it was the same so we added another extra 3 hours in traffic. In that 3 hours we started giving the other drivers names based on their personalities. For example we were beside a guy who was face timing his girlfriend while smoking and driving, he also looked a lot like someone from the movie “Grease” so we named him “Grease”. There was also “Diva”, Scary face”, “Mr. Fiat”, “Creepy Business Guys”, and “Miss Agressive”.



After Finnaly getting out of Switzerland it was about 9 at night and we didn't want to drive

anymore becuase it was getting dark so we spent the night in Millano. The next day, after feasting on the free breakfast we hightailed it out of Millano to Venice which was only 3 hours away. 

Dover!

Since I didn't say much about Stonehenge in my last post I'd like to elaborate on it now. To me it wasn't that monumental or moving but it was interesting to wonder about how did horribly primitive people move such big rocks from so far away.

Anyways after that we drove to Canterbury which was near Dover, the town that has the ferry port to Calais in France. On our way to Canterbury we looked in our book and saw that Charles Darwin's house was on the way so we decided to stop and see it. For those of you who don`t know who Charles Darwin is, he wrote the book `The Origin of The Species`. He wrote it after his voyage around the world in five years on the H.M.S. Beagle. The book is about the evolution of all species and his version of it was the most accurate the time. He was opposing the bible which at that time, was a pretty big thing.

After that we kept driving to Canterbury. We spent two days there so Jack could catch up on his work and so we could go see the castles in the area. One of them was the Dover Castle, one of the best kept castles in the world. It was used time in middle ages, in the Napoleonic wars and then again as acommand center for the Dunkirk evacuation in the 2^nd world war. The British launched a huge attack on German occupied France at Dunkirk. It horribly failed and the Germans pushed the British troops practically in the English Channel. The British mustered almost every single boat on the English Channel in a rescue attempt and Dover was the base of opperations for it. We also saw two other castles that guarded the opening of the River Thames.

 


 

An't no BC Ferrys

Queen Bella!

Frolicking!

The White cliffs of Dover!

Heidelburg!

After crossing the english channel to Calais we picked up our rental car and drove to Brussels in Belgium. In Brussels we went to the 1958 worlds fair site, then drove to Heidelberg. We got to Heidelburg at about 9 after being continuously passed on the highway because in some highways in Germany there is no actual speed limit.

The next day in Heidelberg we took the funicular up to the Heidelberg Castle and saw the worlds biggest wine barrel and then we saw the castle. The next day My brother and I decided to rent bikes and go biking up and down the Heidelberg mountain . The best part of the bike trip was when we were going back up the hill I discovered that I am horribly unfit*sarcastically smirks*. Going down the mountain I also discovered that the air is REALLY cold and it's not fun flying down a trail without gloves on when it's REALLY cold out. After we descended the mountain one last time we returned our bikes and headed out to the Black Forest part of Germany. We had booked a Gasthof (guest house) in a small town in a valley near Lahr. Lahr is where my dad had lived because my grandpa, or his dad, had worked at the Canadian base there 40 years ago.

 When my dad was a teenager he would come up here with his buds and walk along that