Saturday

Today was the day of walking. I got up at around 5:45 and took off to go see what the beach was like in the morning. I had thought about swimming, but it was a little cold, so I just walked along the beach and took pictures. I got to see some crabs and sea anemones in the rocks. My plan was to go to a museum that was on the map that they gave us for the conference. So I caught a cab at about 9, thinking that the museum would be open. This was the first time on the trip that the language was a problem. The cab driver knew no English at all and had to go into the hotel to get the receptionist to translate where I wanted to go. The only words he ever really said were “No problem.” He was also the fastest taxi I had been in, this guy flew, and his cab was a brand new Mercedes.

He got me downtown to where the museum was supposed to be, but it was not open until 10 and it turned out to be the wrong museum. So I walked around the streets of downtown for a while. There were a lot of jewelry and shoe stores, it was the most shoe stores I have ever seen so close together. I also walked down to the dock area and saw the lighthouse that was on a bunch of the post cards I had seen.

I went back to the museum that I was dropped off at and talked to the lady there who suggested a lot of site seeing that I just didn’t have time to do, but she did send me to another really nice museum. It was the Ethnological Museum of Thrace. It was in really neat looking building that was constructed in 1899. I had a lot about the history of the area and a lot of artifacts. Its website is www.emthrace.org.

After this I walked back through downtown to the dock area again and headed toward my hotel. I was getting hungry, but I didn’t want to eat at a place along the shore there because the seaweed was really smelly. So I ended up eating at a place just before my hotel. Again no one here really spoke English, but there was enough communication to order a salad and “meat” (I wasn’t sure what to expect). The salad was the tomato, cucumber, onion, and lots of cheese salad as usual. The “meat” was a large plate with a thick (1/4”) slice of bacon, a sausage, a slice of lamb, some really good chicken, a patty of some sort that was also pretty good, and fries. All in al it was a pretty good meal. I walked back to the hotel and took a small nap and then was off to the Thraki Palace to go swim and use their internet J. When the cab came to pick me up it was my non English friend again, but luckily they all understand the hotel names.

When I got that I headed for the beach, luckily it was not near as smelly of the seaweed, so I went in. It was a little cold so I didn’t swim around for too long. After swimming I changed into dry clothes and headed inside to use the internet. Well the internet refused to connect so I went to the desk and asked them; 10 euro for 24 hours of internet, ok so I took it. I went back into the business center and tried to connect “error.” Back to the desk, they tried about 5 different cards before they decided it must just be down. Well great, there went my free internet to talk to everyone for the last time before I left.

I thought about it for a bit and decided to head to the hotel that the BBQ was at, as I still had some time left on the card that I got there the first night. I decided to walk because I thought I might be able to get a connection somewhere along the way. I never was able to get one along the way so I walked the 4.6 km down the Grand Egnatia. Theirs worked perfect and the lady at the desk even gave me another free access card. Sweet!! I got online and chatted for a little bit, but it was late and I had to be up early so took off about 10:30. I ordered a taxi to take me back to my hotel (I figure I walked about 15 km today). Guess who my driver was? “No problem.” So hotel name, “No problem,” and we headed that way. I thought this guy drove fast during the day, we were doing 110 in a 50 kph area. One of the traffic lights stopped us when were flying back on the highway part of the road, I am pretty sure I heard a slew of about 15 Greek cuss words in a row as he straightened out the religious stickers that he had stuck to the roof. He dropped me off and I went to my room and packed and went to bed.