Road to Kiparissi, Lakonias - Part I (11-9-12)

Kifissou Bus Station

From Athens hotel to bus station at 5:30 am - luckily the taxis came back online @ 5 am after a 4-day strike. (No Metro either. Had made my way to bus station from airport yesterday to buy my ticket and then to hotel via 3 buses + hotel shuttle!)

The bus left the Kifissou station precisely at 6:30 - with a stop in Piraeus 30 minutes later, where seating becomes a problem (as the seats are assigned). Now there is an older man sitting next to me who must be a smoker..

Going along coast, and around Elefsina we went thru a toll booth and were really on our way. There was some fog, and did I see frost? After a pit stop in Tripolis, we continued - but the road was now a 2-laner and the climb steeper. I can see small villages nestled along the mountain sides, and a host of roadside enterprises.

LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of olive trees everywhere - and now we are in Sparti, a good-sized town with a Mr. Donut and quite a few palm trees (or are they date trees?)...Yikes, no one told me we have to grab our luggage from below and change buses!

Molaos Supermarket

It's 11:45 and I am starting to worry - will I make the 12:30 bus to Kiparissi? We're not so high up, so the bus is going a little (too) faster now...In Molaos, and my last bus actually won't leave till 1:45 -- giving me time for my favorite pastime: visiting a supermarket! Lots of different ouzos with their "mini bottles" and a large Tobasco Sauce for. 5.76 Euros. Always interested in what people are buying/eating - and the area does get tourists going through by car to the sea. I buy locally harvested Rosemary... 21 degrees C, beautiful weather and not a cloud in the sky..

The bus has departed on it's 2-hour journey. A Mrs. Poulakis sits next to me and the grilling begins. Turns out her husband's sister was married to George and Pete Pappas' brother Paul, and I may well have been in her house in 1974 when I came to Kiparissi by boat from Leonidhion with Pete and Faith. Now I see the Kiparissi sign, and the bus stops to let me out for the walk to my hotel past a field of curious sheep -- touchdown!  

"Bus Stop" for My Hotel

 










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