Sunday Sightseeing

Rusty has Sundays off, so we spent the entire day going from one activity to the next! Rusty ran into Dimitrius, the vice president of the volleyball team, down at Eyenet Cafe, which is an Internet Cafe we live above. They have apartments above almost every business here. I like being above the Eyenet Cafe because it is a good place to meet people. Dimitrius wanted to take me and Rusty, and Jay, the other American out for breakfast. Jay was still asleep, so Rusty and I went with Dimitrius to a place called "Look Up Cafe". It was on top of a hill, so it had a great view of the city and you could even see out to the ocean.

Dimitrius is in his mid fifties and speaks some english, but it is hard to converse with him because he doesn't always understand what we are saying. His friend, Costas came and met up with us. Costas does not speak any english, so he he just sits there and smiles haha. They both smoke non-stop. Everyone here smokes, which I can't stand. Both Dimitrius and Costas carry small purses, which cracks me up, but it is pretty standard for men to carry them here. Costas rolled his own cigarettes the entire lunch. When he finished smoking one, he would reach into his little man purse and proceed to roll another one. Besides the smoking, lunch was great. It was the first time we had left the city, so we were pretty excited just to be sitting on the patio, let alone drinking fresh squeezed orange juice and eating club sandwiches, while looking out over the city!

Dimitrius and Costas

After we finished lunch, Dimitrius wanted to take us up to an ancient castle. The castle sits on the highest point of Lamia, so the view up there was even better than the Look Up Cafe. There is a small museum in part of the castle that we went into. It had display cases of things like ancient clay vases, Greek accessories for men and women, coins, weapons, and armor. Apparently pictures are not allowed in the museum, but I had taken a few before I found out, so I got lucky! haha   

When we left the museum, Dimitrius wanted us to come to his apartment for lunch. We had plans with three guys on the volleyball team to go visit, Thermopylae, a historic battle ground where Leonidas and the 300 Spartans fought the invading Persians, but apparently Dimitrius does not take "no" for an answer. We tried telling him we had plans, but he said in his thick Greek accent, "No, tomorrow you go Thermopylae, today you eat my apartment." So we went back to Eyenet Cafe to meet up with Jay and Mike, who were waiting to go to Thermopylae. Mike is the opposite on the team. He is from Holland and speaks english almost perfectly. I feel so lucky that out of the two other foreigners on the team, one is American, and one speaks as if he were American. We got to Eyenet and found Jay and Mike standing out front. Dimitrius informed them we would be going to eat at his place, and they knew there was no changing Dimitrius' mind, so off we went.

Dimitrius lives in an apartment right up the street from us. We arrived to find his wife and daughter preparing lunch for us. They had made a casserole type dish that had noodles and cheese, a salad, which was made up of vegetables only, bread, and cheese. Dimitrius cooked pork and sausage on their barbecue. We all ate out on the balcony. Dimitrius' wife was upset we were not eating more, but Mike, Rusty, and I had just eaten lunch! She kept looking at our plates, her eyes would get big, she would say something in Greek and then shake her head haha. After lunch Dimitrius had more plans for us! He wanted to take us to his other apartment, which is right next to the beach. Jay needed to Skype his parents, so we decided to meet up with Dimitrius at Eyenet in about an hour.

Mike from Holland, Jay, and Rusty at Dimitrius' Apartment

Jay lives in the apartment above ours and Mike lives at a different apartment building a few minutes away, so Jay went to Skype his parents and Mike came over to our apartment while we waited to meet Dimitrius. An hour passed by so we headed down to Eyenet and found Dimitrius. Another player on the team, the back-up setter was with him as well, his name is Mixalis and he is from Greece. Dimitrius got in his car with his wife, daughter, and wife's mother. Rusty, Jay, Mike, Mixalis, and I got in Mike's car. The cars here are small, so it was quite the squeeze, but we managed! The driving in our city is kind of crazy because all the streets are small, a lot of them are one way, there are tons of hills and all cars are manual, and drivers basically disregard pedestrians. Rusty and I have never drove stick before, so we are nervous to drive, but if we learn here, it will seem easy when we get back to the US!

After about a 25 min drive, we arrived to the beach! I was so excited because I had been waiting to go to the beach ever since we arrived in Greece. Lamia's beach is not the most beautiful beach, like the beaches on the Greek Islands. The beach was made up of little rocks instead of sand, but the water was pretty warm! We walked across the street to Dimitrius' other apartment. We sat out on the balcony which over looked the ocean. Dimirtius' wife fed us even more food! We had two types of dessert. One was an orange cake. The other was a cake that had layers of croissant that had creme poured over it. The orange cake was okay, but I didn't really care for the other one. I took Mike and Rusty's plates, which had more eaten off of them, and smashed them on top of mine, hoping Dimitrius' wife wouldn't notice I didn't eat much of the cakes haha.

Dimitrius wanted to take us to the top of a mountain, which was right up the street, to show us the view, so we drove up a windy road to get to the top. The view was the best we have seen so far. We could see the ocean and the little Greek city that sat right along the beach!

After we finished up taking pictures we headed down the mountain, over to Dimitrius' friend's house who lives a few apartments up from him. We chatted out on their patio. Chatting with people here is actually kind of tiring because you have to talk slowly and try to explain what you are saying multiple times and then you have to try to interpret their response. We finally headed back to our apartment! We were so tired from a long day, but also happy that we got do do so much!