When trying to decide where to go on a vacation this year, Pat's only criteria was that it was someplace warm. Actually I think she said "hot". I noticed the next WRC rally was in Greece. Greece is hot, so we decided to go.
We contacted Rally Travel to arrange our viewing of the rally stages and they set us up in the Stanley Hotel in Athens. I had a SoloSprint race the weekend before and a race the weekend after so the most we could spend on vacation was from Monday May 28 to Friday June 8th.
We arrived in Athens on the morning of May 29th and spent the day exploring the hotel (nice pool and view from the rooftop bar) and the sites within walking distance. We walked through the National Gardens which is sort of a Central Park for Athens. Watched the changing of the "pom-pom" guards in front of the unknown soldier statue. They have quite the funky routine. We walked through the Temple of Olympian Zeus which has huge pillars. And finally saw the site of the first Olympics of modern times.
The next day Pat had booked us on a full day bus tour. Pat is big on bus tours but she promised this would be the only one this trip. Ironically we spent much more time on a bus traveling back and forth for the rally.
The tour included a stop at the Corinthian Canal which is a huge canal carved out of solid rock hundreds of feet high. We stopped at the ruins of an ancient city (there are lots in Greece) which included a couple of large dome shaped burial chambers. Quite neat. We also stopped at the Partheon which is a massive amphitheater which is still in use today. The acoustics are very good and we could clearly hear people on the "stage" all the way to the back row.
The next day was the official start to the rally but we decided to skip the "shake down" stages in order to see more sites in Athens. We would catch up to the rally tour for the first special stage later that day.
We started the day at the Acropolis which is a huge temple on the top of a hill in the middle of Athens. You can see it from everywhere in Athens. It was quite busy with tours from the cruise ships docked in the harbour. We also saw a reconstruction of an ancient Roman market place, and a very well maintained temple which still had it's roof intact. It was cool to see what the Acropolis would have looked like with its roof.
We ended the day taking a bus and taxi to try to catch up with our tour at the Marco Polo arena where the first rally stage would take place. It was sheer luck that we bumped into the tour organizers since we had not been able to figure out how to reach them on their cell phones. Pat was worried we would have to take a taxi back home if we didn't find them. The arena stage was cool since you could see the drivers getting out of theor cars as they were being introduced for the start of the rally. The circuit also had a couple jumps for the cars.
Then it was back to the hotel since it was a very early start to the rally the next day. We all had to be on the bus, ready to go at 6:45AM. THat actually wasn't that bad. The next two days we had to be ready by 5:45AM and 5:30AM. Yikes. So much for any nightlife.
I'll finish the story later...