Athens at last. The leg from Kalamata to Athens is not that far, but it has proven arduous: aside from 1400m climbs and bone-chilling cold snaps, the rest of the ride has ranged from rolling to outright mountainous. We've remarked that our pace has dropped considerably since entering Greece, as the topographically squished terrain is anything but easy to cycle across. Nevertheless, after camping in a small unused field just off the road near Korinthos, we manage 100km today along the motorway service roads to meet Valkyrie's friend and ex-coworker Nikos in Athens...
...on Halloween! Bike touring makes it difficult to prepare costumes, so we settled for the obvious and went as battle-hardened cyclists. Extra points for realism! The road to Athens is just that - a road whose only real virtue is that it is not the motorway. Of note: just out of Korinthos lies the Korinthos Canal, completed relatively recently at extraordinary expense to spare seafarers the notoriously dangerous 700km detour around the Peloponnese. A quick Wikipedia search tells more: the canal project was undertaken and subsequently abandoned by several Roman emperors; the completed canal was blasted with the help of the same engineer who consulted on the Panama Canal project; long before the canal, there was an overground route for pulling large ships on rollers across 6km of land. The rest of the route takes us past clusters of refineries with their industrial stench and flame-belching smokestacks, past coastline and olive groves and more coastline, and finally down 20km of harrowing outer city four-lane-highway madness into the city proper. We find that the way into cities is always most dangerous; unless you know the local roads and bike routes (if such exist!) you end up taking large highways choked with heavy traffic. Here the danger is magnified by a large hill that must be overcome before we are afforded a view of the Acropolis, that famed monument of ancient Greek civilization.
Following the railroad station signs, we reach Larissa Station and promptly set about to contact Nikos. Fortunately we have a phone card this time, and the rates for local and national calls are reasonable - but the first call fails, so we poke around the station a bit. Not much here, but fare to Iraklio (where Nikos lives) is just 1€, bikes included. Before trying that, though, we decide to call up Nikos again, and on our way out to the payphones are stopped by two American girls curious as to what two similarly-dressed and generally scruffy cyclists could be up to in this bike-unfriendly city. They are working up in Thessaloniki, to where they will return this afternoon after a weekend visit to Athens. Back at the phones, we succeed this time in contacting Nikos; he will meet us in 15 minutes at the station! We pass this time by taking photos of ourselves with the bikes...
...because this is our 10 000 kilometre checkpoint! Granted, we have neither GPS nor cycling computers, so this is a (probable under)estimate; nevertheless, it seems as good a place as any to draw the proverbial line. 10 000 km. We have reflected many times upon this, with increasing frequency as we neared Athens. It is not a distance that we truly understand, even though we have just biked it - the distance is too far over too long a time to grasp as one whole, and the trip itself has changed character so much from those early days in the north that we feel it must properly be understood as several trips stitched together. 10 000 km. It seemed laughable for a while that we could achieve that - and yet, by continuing on and chopping away at the distance (almost) every day, we have arrived here.
Nikos arrives in his trademark brown-and-navy-blue long-sleeve. We follow him to his friends' rooftop pad, where they have laid out an array of tasty foodstuffs: cabbage and sundried tomato salads, grilled meat from the local butchers, bread rusks with tomato and goat cheese, a sweet custard-filled pastry - enough food to compensate for the ride. We fill up on food, exchanging stories with some of the other guests who happen to be cyclists, drinking wine and lounging on the rooftop patio in the Athenian sunset. What a welcome...
...but we are also here to see the city! Since we will likely spend much of tomorrow perusing ancient Greece, Nikos takes us around the trendier hillside districts up further from Iraklio. Much as European and Asian cuisine is trendy in North America, "American cuisine" - if such a thing could be said to exist - is wildly popular here, except that they have given it a peculiarly European spin. There are bistro-style Pizza Huts and TGIFriday's and Applebee's, and it is The Thing for those with money to take their friends or family out for a meal at one of these American fast-food icons. We pass luxury apartments and hotels and mansions, a far cry from our usual roadside or field lodgings. On the way down, just by the motorway, there is yet another sign of rampant American influence: The Mall, an American-style mall with supermarkets and clothing stores and a cinema and all manner of shopping conveniences. This is strange to see on a continent where most supermarkets are less than 10 years old and many still buy their produce from the local fruit and vegetable stand, or perhaps even from a neighbour or relative in the country...
...after an impossibly complicated twisty path through the streets of Athens, we finally reach Iraklio and head over to Nikos' apartment. Despite his disclaimers to the effect that the place is quite basic, we find it more than suitable for a good rest - but there is one matter to attend to: Halloween! By this time it is getting late; a quick Google search turns up a Halloween party downtown, but since Halloween is practically unheard of and the trains have spotty service pending completion of a subway tunnel overhaul we opt for simpler entertainments. We head over to the nearest DVD rental shop, grab a random horror flick, and while away the pre-bed hours watching it with a bowl of popcorn by our side. Even a token celebration is enough...