Fallen Hurdles

Well our plan to cycle to the Mani Peninsula fell at the first hurdle.

At the top of the big hill on our way out of Kalamata, we came across Diana Rooms. The views are amazing as from our room we look out over the mountains and sea. The room has untold luxuries (for us anyway) of a fridge, tv and air-conditioning all for a very reasonable price. So, within about two minutes of arriving we quickly decided that we'll stay here for a week, chill, read and watch telly (the Greeks have the right idea of subtitling english shows instead of dubbing them that the French and Italians do) and use this as a base to explore Mani.

So far, we haven't moved far from the room in case we miss an episode of Lizzy Maguire or The World's Funniest Commercials, but we plan to.

After our week in the sun, we're heading back north to pay our respects at Olympia (maybe an offering or two to the gods for the Aussie Olympic Team), before making our way on to Athens for the Games themselves. We've managed to book into a Youth Hostel Dorm for our stay, as the prices some of the hoteliers are charging would scare a Saudi prince. We looked up one hotel we stayed at two years ago on a visit to Athens and the islands. We paid 40 Euros then. We looked it up a week ago and its charging 380 Euros a night now. It was barely worth 40.


Book Crossing

Whilst reading an imported copy of The Sunday Times (Banz had to read about an English cricketing victory in as much detail as possible), we read about this site, BookCrossing.com. A simple, but great idea (as all good websites are), where when you've finished reading a book, you "release it" into the world after writing a review on BookCrossing's site. We've been doing a similar thing with putting the Big Trip's URL into books that we've left behind, but on the site you're able to actually leave a note where you've left it and people can "go hunting". For our reading list, go here.