June 23, 2009. Day 5

Stats

Trip total: 436 kms

Day total: 72 kms

Got up late and went to the farmer's market that was right outside the pansiyon. Did the necessary victualizing and then strolled into Dekelia. It is a nice little town. Nothing special about it. It has a nice small port, lots of sunshine and nice people.

After the little walk, I went back to the pansiyon, packed up and took my stuff down to the bike. As I was about to leave I stroke a conversation w/ the Gunes (Sun) family. They offered me tea and we chatted for more than an hour. It is a very nice family I must say. They have a very smart son and a cute little daughter that was trying to learn Greek. She actually showed me an entire page w/ filled up with Greek vocabulary. The husband's grandmother was Greek and this is why he knows a few Greek words himself and seems to be interested in Greek things. Nice as it was, this chat delayed me and did not hit the road till 12:00 noon.

I forgot to mention that yesterday I fell flat on my face form the bike, fortunately at zero speed, because I did not disengage the SPDs fast enough. I did hurt both my knees. Today I could feel the pain when I touched them but, thank God, not when I was biking.

As I was biking, I made up my mind to I decided to diverge and visit the city of Pergamus (Bergama.) I also noticed that the highway signs will typically have the name of a town in Turkish and then the Greek name. For example for Oren they also had Adramytteion.

Pergamus is a nice town, built at a very beautiful location as you will see. The town itself is nice but nothing special to write home about. I biked to the Asklipion but not to the Akropolis which would have meant another 10 kms of mountain climbing. Did take lots of pictures of it though

View of Akropolis from the town square:

Close up phot of the Akropolis:

Myself at the Roman theater of The Asclipion:

Roman theater and ruins of a temple

Stoa at Asklipion:

The location of the Asklipion is is exquisite. Going there is enough to cure you. The riddle, however, is what does a library (most famous in the ancient world after Alexandria's) and a theater do there. I'm sure that the epitomy of an anti-intellectual president (Obama) that keeps talking about health care reform would have absolutely no clue. I'm sure that he thinks that the ancient Greeks spoke Japanese. Unlike the president the Greeks were very intellectually inclined and in their mind healing and non-utilitarian knowledge worked and in hand.

Left Pergamus at 15:15 and resumed my battle w/ the wind. For the uninitiated the wind is the only thing that has the potential to demoralize a fighter biker. It did not demoralize me, however, but when a few miles down the road I saw an abandoned gaz station, I decided to have lunch and then take a nap.

When I woke up it was around 18:00 and hit the road again. I biked 40 kms non stop and made it to Aliaga, a city of 50,000. I took the photo below as I was entering the town.

The town is not that beautiful. I lodged at hotel yildiz, which was a dump, as the other hotels were really luxury and expensive. I do not mind it though, it is a lot preferable to sleeping on the road.

See yo/u tomorrow

Vassily