La Vie En Rose for 2006 August 20

I am finally in the city of my dreams, Thessaloniki, as they say now. It's actually very nice, except for the heat, and that fact that nothing is open, since unfortunatley it's Sunday. We even had to try several internet cafes before finding one that wasn't shut.

We arrived 3:30 this morning and spent an hour wandering around looking for Salonika's cheapest hotel, but finally settled on a more expensive but findable one. So far there hasn't been much to do but wander around and look at the shut shops, but those seem very nice, and I have caught glimpses of the port, which I imagine to be full of transport and hospital ships, and the White Tower, where I imagine the likes of Olive King and Elsie Corbett dining in their SWH uniforms.

I am afraid I judged Corfu a little too harshly in my last entry. It is actually a very nice place, if overly touristy. I think the most unfortunate choice was to stay as this hostel-resort place instead of in town. Sunrock is rather in the middle of nowhere and there is not much to do other than go to the beach, and I am at this point pretty much beached out. They don't even rent bikes (with the mountains this is rather understandable) or peddle-boats. I really wish I knew how to drive a scooter so I could have seen more of the island, which looked quite nice according to what I saw of it. The real fault of the place was the owner family, who were unhelpful and bordering on rude. We managed to escape and go to Corfu town for a day, and I liked what I saw very much there. At a restaurant I ordered grilled prawns as a treat for myself and was horrified when they brought out the prawns, unshelled, head & all... I had to decapiate them myself. At some points I really feel like a spoiled, uncultured American, and a very girly one at that--espcially when it comes to using "Turkish" toilets. Anyway, I think it definitley would have been better to stay in town and rent a car to see the rest of the island. It's unfortunate that you need a car to see most of these Greek islands, but oh well. I'm more of a town girl anyway, and now I am in a real town. We made the best of the beach anyway and went with some others to a "nudist" beach--it wasn't very lively, there was only one naked guy there and some others clad in bathing suits--to do mud baths. Underneath the sand was this mud stuff perfect for masks. Quite fun. Our bus left Corfu at 7 pm and as I mentioned, arrived in Corfu at 3:30. Actually it was either an hour late or the time changed again. Or I never changed my watch in the first place. I think it was 4:30 when we got in. But you have to think there is a more convienvent time to make an 8 hour journey. The other bus leaves Corfu at 6 and arrives at 4. They are always full-up (we had to sit in the very back and we bought our tickets a day in advance) so you would think they would offer more, but apparently the buses in Greece are state-controlled prices so maybe there is no motivation for competetive things like convienent times. I was afraid I would get sick but I took drammamine and sleep fitfully most of the time & survived. I hope next journey I take will be by train, though, I am kinda fed up with these buses. At least nothing could be worse than Albania.

I am really quite happy just to be here, and I don't know how long I'll sat or where I'll go next, but probably Macedonia. I'm not ready to go home yet but hopefully I'll feel differently in 10 days. We'll see.

They have CHEETOS in Greece. But they aren't flammin hot.

"The final countdown" just came on in the internet cafe. Cheers.