Saturday 23.8.2008 – Sunday 24.8.2008
Our final morning call… Our feelings were mixed…. We started to pack our things and load them to our motorcycle, for the last time. Fortunately, the fact that we were with Giorgos and Stergiani in the same emotional situation, really helped us all a lot. We took the road heading to the port, checked-in and the embarkation began.
As the ship was sailing away from the Grand Canal, leaving behind the St. Marcus square, a melancholy mood got us all. We loved Venice and that scene was the epilogue of our trip and our return to reality.
The hours passed easily with the companion of Giorgos and Stergiani until we reached the port of Igoumenitsa. They disembarked and got the road until their final destination, the city of Ioannina. For us, the remained hours until the port of Patras passed excruciatingly slowly. For a minute we thought that it would have been better if we also stopped at Igoumenitsa and took the road back to Athens. We finally arrived at Patras just before 11.00 in the evening, feeling very tired.
We were really impressed by all that mess(!) Greek people created with families and children screaming(!) when they boarded the ship, in comparison with the route Venice - Igoumenitsa - Corfu while we were traveling with a group of about a hundred young Slovenes going for holidays, without bothering others around them. The difference between Mediterranean and European culture, at its finest!
The fact that we arrived quite late and tired at Patras led us to the choice of accommodation in the Achaean capital and return to Athens the next morning. After so many kilometers we had done safely, it would be naive to return from this particular road during the night and feeling tired. But to tell you the truth, even the morning after when we were fresh and relaxed and the daylight suppose to help a lot, we didn’t like it at all, as we were used to different type of roads and in totally different driving behavior by motorists ...
EPILOGUE
Somehow our trip ended. May not have been the first time we came back from vacation feeling... tired, but this same time our batteries were full and all these images fulfilled us. It is a unique experience and if someone does not have this experience cannot feel the emotions it generates. If anyone has inhibitions about the difficulty or danger of such a trip by motorcycle, I can understand perfectly why… I also had mine before.
Actually, if you are riding a motorcycle in Greek roads, you have nothing to fear from European ones. The only extra thing I did was to pay for road assistance, just in case we need it. And one more thing I forgot to mention at the beginning. Before my trip, I printed all the addresses and telephone numbers of the Greek embassies and consulates in the countries I was going to visit.
The interaction with our friends from Motoriders Club, gave us the chance to watch them every summer coming back from various trips and see each time the sparkle in their eyes and the thirst for the next destination. Now we feel the same and in fact we understand that all we have to do is to choose new destinations and ways to stream to another land ... another place!
