August 9, 1999 Greece Lightening

OK, so it's been a while, but I stumbled upon this Internet Cafè and so it's time to write again.

Greece is where things really started to pick up for me.   The thing about traveling with someone is that you kind of stay in your group and it's harder to meet other people.  But throughout Greece I ended up meeting tons of people anyway and having a really good time.

When I last wrote, I was on the island of Corfu. Corfu was really cool.  Our hotel\hostel, the Pink Palace, was a very easy place to meet people from all over the world.  At dinner on the first night, I met this really cool guy named Dave from Canada.  So I ended up hanging out with him and his Canadians friends most of the night.  The Pink Palace has it's own dance club, so we went there.   We were kind of just a dorky bunch of guys doing dorky little dances and completely unable to meet women, but it was fun...

The next night went better, I managed to meet a girl! Yay.   Her name was Camilla and she was from Denmark. So I was actually dancing with a girl (still like a dork), but at least that's better than dancing with a group of guys.   When I told her I was going to Copenhagen later she offered to let me stay at her place and show me around and stuff, so that's really cool because Denmark is an expensive country.

Gah, I can't get into all the people I've met... there's just too many.  I don't even bother learning names unless I talk to someone a couple times, but it's been cool to just meet travellers from all over the world... lots of Australians and English people. It's fun to exchange slang with them.

After Corfu, we stayed in Athens for a day.  The Acropolis is truly impressive, I'm sure Athens was great in it's day, but as for now it's nothing to write home about (bad pun).

We then spent three days on the island of Naxos, which was also pretty cool and quite different than Corfu. The houses are extremely white except for the doors and window frames which are bright blue.  And the beaches on all the islands are incredible, you can actually see through the water which is so strange for someone from California.

On Naxos, I met the Norwegian Cecilie.  I wasn't really planning to go to Norway, but I just might work that in now (if she can give me a place to stay).  I just love Scandinavians (girls at least).  They're super nice and they have to study English in school for 10 years so they're quite fluent.

Well, I know I will return to the Greek islands one day, I wish we had more time for them, but that's OK. I just keep telling myself I'll be back some day.

Which reminds me, Nadine is going home early because of four things:

1. Lack of money
2. Job interview for a good job
3. Her boyfriend Alex (ahhhhh - she told me to put that in)
4. Nothing, there is no 4th thing.

So we came through Naples and now we're in Florence. After about two days here we'll be heading our seperate ways.  Nadine towards Berlin and me towards Switzerland (probably), then on to Spain and maybe Portugal?  Dunno yet.   But I'll be OK alone, well, not alone alone... hopefully I will be meeting people (read: hopefully I will be meeting MORE SCANDINAVIAN WOMEN).

So let me tell you what I think about Naples... not much.   Let me tell you what I think of Pompei... a little more.  Naples is an uninspiring town (though I did have to pay homage to it as the birthplace of the pizza).   The ruins of Pompei were much larger than I expected.  There were some interesting things there, like the brothel which had frescos of each girl's "speciality."  So it was OK.

Florence is quite beautiful so far, but we just got here so I can't say much about it.

So I guess that's about it for now!

Alan