2006-12-09 - 11:05 a.m.
Ok, this should be the last of the Ithaka posts. I was going to put it all up last night, but there were a couple guys waiting to use the computer, so I had to hurry. I'm not going to miss shared computers, that's for sure.
It didn't take us long to fall into a routine in Ithaka. We would get up in the early (occasionally late) afternoon, spend the day reading, writing, and watching music videos. The apartment had satellite T.V., but most of the channels were in Italian or Arabic, so that didn't do us much good. We eventually found BBC, which was nice. I realized the real problem with these constant news stations. It's nice if you want to just tune in for the news, since it is Nealy always on, but when that station is the only English station, and you are watching it for a couple hours, the news gets really old, really fast, and most of the other programming that they have is somewhat less then interesting. We found another news station, Euronews, that we would watch for a change. Other than this, we usually watched an Italian radio/TV station, which is a format that I've never seen before. It had lots of music videos, and we would spent the whole day with it on, hoping against hope that a song we liked would come on amidst the lousy songs. They played a lot of Italian music as well, most of which was fairly odd. There was a Polish music station, but all the videos they showed were fairly bizarre. We stayed away from that one.
At seven, we would switch to the Swiss kids station, and watch the cartoons for a while. If we were lucky, we could catch Tailspin, Recess, Sabrina, and Kim Possible. They were all dubbed into German of course, but it was a welcome respite from music videos.
We would wind up going to bed around three, and usually talking or fighting for the rest of the night. Most nights I heard the rooster crow before I went to bed.
I varied this routine somewhat, going out and exploring, but Jesse didn't really. I think he went out exploring twice the whole three weeks- once on the first day, and once on the last day.
By the end I was definitely ready to go. I was feeling cooped up, and wanted to go and do things again.
We spent our last day in Ithaka looking for the Cave of the Nymphs. This is the cave where Odysseus, of "The Odessy" fame, apparently met the faithful swineherd that was the only person to remember him after his twenty year absence. The cave was up a long steep road in the mountains, but we toughed it out, and made it up. It turned out to be a little fenced in enclosure, and a cave. We went in the cave, but since we didn't have a flashlight, we decided not to go too far in.
We left Ithaka bright and early, on the seven a.m. ferry. Neither of us could get to sleep the night before, since seven is often when we would nod off. This turned out to be a little painful, but good, as it effectively switched me from nocturnal to normal in a day.
Off to London tonight, staying with a friend of my sisters, who is kind enough to put us up for the whole six nights. Then back to Canada! It will be nice to be home, and see the family, but I have to say, if I had the means, I would love to keep travelling. Jesse is sick of it, and wants to go home, but I could really keep going for a while.
