Aeons of brav'ry,
Never forgotten, valiant,
Memories in stone...
Some places don't get it: we're cyclists. Fortunately, this hotel did get it, and we were fed breakfast accordingly, and at nearly the right hour! To be honest, we woke up around the time our alarm usually goes off (just around dawn) and wandered around in the dark of the hotel before apparently someone woke up to our noise. We were sat down at a table and brought bread of several varieties and honey and jam and coffee and orange juice and tost with ham and cheese. It was a portion that was actually enough to satisfy us until we needed to stop for lunch; for 90€/night, I guess it'd better be.
After plunking down our cash on the desk, we headed off to our adventure of the day. We stretched in front of a British Military Cemetery (mysteriously from WWI; neither of us could call anything to mind about the English being in Greece at that time... sigh, western-centric education) and headed over a several-hundred-metre hill that we didn't expect. These days, it's just a routine.
At the bottom of the hill on the other side, we found THERMOPLYES. If you've seen 300, that classic of cinema, you know that Thermpyles is the Hot Gates, the site of the Spartans' stand against the Persians. Some boards in the area said that 300 Spartans (accompanied by 700 or so Thespians (I can't imagine anything other than their crying 'o, I am slain!' in dramatic voices)) were killed by an army of 1,700,000 Persians. The boards also said that the bit about the goat path and the Greek traitor was true; they were surrounded by these means, and that led to their downfall.
We performed the requisite yells of "THIS. IS. SPARTAAAAAAAA." and "THIS IS WHERE WE BIKE. THIS IS WHERE THEY DRIVE." atop the hill (you can see them on our Youtube channel), then walked back to where we parked our bikes. The place where we parked our bikes was very important.
Hot springs! That's why it's called the hot gates, friends. We stripped all our clothes off (this is Europe, after all) and joined some other vacationers in the sulfur-tastic water. It stank like the dickens, but the warm water seeping through our still-chilled skin was so pleasant that we didn't mind. :D
It was a short ride to Lamia, where we planned to have lunch. We paused at a HellaSpar (Spar is a supermarket chain in Europe, and "Hellas" is "Greece" in Greek, but it just sounds funny to English-speaking ears) to get things for a lunch of Greek salad, and we attempted to find a new tyre for me in the InterSport next door. Alas, like many other sports stores in Europe, this was not a sports equipment store but instead a sports clothing store. Sigh.
Another unexpected hill met us after Lamia. We climbed for around 20 straight kilometres, and at the top we were met by a fellow we'd first come into contact with at the lunch party in Athens! He wished us luck on our trip, and cautioned us that we should be extra careful on this road due to its mountainous nature. We learned that he was heading to his hometown up in the mountains to stay for the weekend.
Down and down and down after that, til we found a plateau where much growing was done. There were endless fields of watermelons and peppers, of all things, and we passed through them with a look of confusion.
At last we reached Domokos, where we bought some yogurt for breakfast and some wine to have with dinner. We headed out of town to find a campsite, only to find another enormous downhill ahead. We were happy we'd bought the lights; in the fading sun we were nearly invisible to motorists down that twisting way.
Off the main highway at the bottom of the hill, we found a tiny cluster of abandoned houses close around a train station. The station seemed to belong to Domokos, confusing since that town is up a hill and many kilometres away, but we found a space of grass that we figured we could set the tent on. We chilled around the train station, drinking our vile wine and watching the stray dogs and cats roam about while we enjoyed the artificial light. Now, it's bedtime (early, as usual). Maybe we'll play some adventure games first...