Exploring Greece | Edelweiss Croatia to Greece Ep. 4

Welcome to day eight. We're going from Meteora all the way to Delphi. Today is going to be our first full day riding in Greece. Now we're going to be on the road going to explore some of the really cool parts of ancient Greece. I'm glad that I have good rain gear and I figured out how to turn on the heated grips and the heated seat. All right this is uh some kind of lake dam that we just went over. We got the last rider coming in right now. Team Eidelweiss is pretty wet right now. Let's see what happens in the next 30 minutes. It's gonna die down and then we're home free hopefully. Not much else we can do at this point just keep riding and hopefully eventually it'll pass over and we'll be back to the beautiful sunshine. Ah seems like we might be out of the rain now. Skies are opening up a little bit. Cotton fields off to the right and grapes. Looking forward to our coffee stop up ahead. And now I'm traveling down a kind of a country road. There's mountains off to the right. Everything is kind of brown and traveling past small farms, houses, some little commercial buildings. Up ahead here on the right you can see this truck is all completely filled with cotton. Seems to be one of the big crops here. I've seen cotton fields on the side of the road. We have quite the system going on here with these toll roads. Our guide goes through and then he pays for everybody else one at a time. You can't just pay for everyone all at once. You have to go one at a time. So that's how it works for us. There are a bunch of dogs just laying on the pavement right over here. Everywhere we go there's dogs. Dogs and cats. So this is a monument that's under construction. Imposing statue of a warrior with a spear and a shield. So this museum tells the story of Battle of Thermopylae. 300 Spartan warriors withstood the attack of thousands of Persian soldiers for days before they all died. And it's become a tale of great heroism and courage in the face of insurmountable odds. This is the place the Spartans retreated to once they realized they were outnumbered. A traitor gave up their position and this is where they chose to die. And so the Greeks decided this is where they memorialized this sacrificial effort by their Spartans. Nice climb up the hill here. It's like taking off in an airplane. Downshift. Tight corner. A little accelerating out of the corner. Yeah. This 1300GS can behave like a sport bike. Once you get it up and going it's pretty easy to throw around the corner. So we are closing in on Delphi. That's where our hotel is. Also the location of the famous Oracle of Delphi. Some ancient Greek history. Okay I think we are rolling into our hotel. Hotel Delphi. Not too bad you can see this big big valley down here and a lake back up behind us. We're gonna go hike up the Oracle of Delphi next. That's a famous historical site here in Delphi. This is the Temple of Apollo built in the 7th century BC and it was where the Oracle at Delphi would have been inside of this temple. And the Oracle at Delphi was kind of like a prophet or a fortune teller if you will. Someone that could predict your future. And this is kind of the most prominent thing up here on this hillside in this location but we're absolutely surrounded by ruins everywhere going back literally thousands of years. I mean if that's 700 BC. Kind of like an outdoor park but an archaeological park. Well it's time to leave Delphi. Today we're gonna ride to Olympus. We're gonna be riding in the rain it looks like. Rain is not gonna kill us. Well it's part of the Some nice curves to get us started get the tires warmed up. Okay we've got the sea down here to our left. Hopefully we'll get some nice views riding next to the sea. And here's a beautiful stretch of the Grecian coastline high above the water here. Quite a few of these tunnels with the walls cut out. Kind of cool how it creates light inside of the tunnel. Okay we're traveling through a little village now. It looks like we're gonna take a road that maybe runs right along the coast. That could be pretty cool. All right how cool was that? We made it down here to the ocean. It's just right over here. First coffee break. So everybody's just sitting here ordering coffee now in this little village. It seems like it's maybe the off-season here. There's not a lot of tourists here but it's kind of perfect for us right now. It's just beautiful. Gonna have a coffee and sit here and listen to the ocean waves. This is so cool. We're gonna be riding down next to the ocean here for the better part of this morning along this coastline. And then we're gonna get to go across this really famous bridge that's gonna be coming up later this morning. I can't wait. Now I'm riding with the group through this little town and we're gonna go to a castle. All right this is a place called the Nafpaktos Castle. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. Oh beautiful stretch of the coastline here. Look at that. Here's the other direction over here. The sign here says that we are in the citadel. The imposing walls of the castle of Nafpaktos fortify the rocky hill and surround the medieval town and conclude at the enclosed horseshoe-shaped harbor. What a vantage point. You can see why they built the castle up here. You can see the invaders coming from miles away. So over here off in the distance that's the bridge that we're going to be going across. I think that was built in 2004. It's really a big deal. I'll get a shot of it here from the distance show you what it looks like but we're going to be going across this bridge after we leave here. All right now we're heading downhill from the castle. Oh what a lovely little view looking down on all the tiled rooftops of the village below. Slippery roads today in the rain mode and we're even going through a part of the castle wall now. It took an army of 1500 invaders to capture the castle back in the day. It was occupied by the Venetians. All right now we're down at the water's edge below the castle. Looks a little choppy out there. A little windy today. It's going to be interesting going across this big bridge. This is the Anterion Bridge that goes across the Gulf of Corinth. The bridge itself is over a mile long and the bridge is designed to withstand earthquakes and even a tanker collision. Interestingly enough it's built on a fault zone and the land is separating some centimeters per year but the bridge is designed to accommodate that and has a lifespan of I think 125 years. Here's another view of the bridge from down below. This is it. We're down here in the Gulf of Corinth. A little photo opportunity here at the bridge. What a highlight of this trip to go across this bridge across the Gulf of Corinth here. The wind today is strong. I'm fine. Okay good. I survived. That was windy but gorgeous. Beautiful. It's interesting trying to go straight when you got all that wind and you got to lean like this. A windy highlight of our trip. Now we're going to go just a little ways away and have some lunch. It's like we're down by the the port or the ferry terminal here. So cool to be right down here on the ocean the Gulf of Corinth looking back at the bridge over here. We're going to grab some lunch right here at this restaurant. Pretty nice spot to be right now. Ah well here we go. It's raining out pretty good. It could be a wet ride to our hotel. We all got rain gear. I think we'll do okay so let's do it. I don't really know how well you can see anything from my helmet camera because it's coming down good but we are rolling through the Greek countryside here in the rain just taking our time. I'm staying nice and warm and dry inside of my rain gear with the heated seat and the heated grips turned on. All right Team Idlevice is coming out of the rain to get a cup of coffee over here. Everybody is soaked to the bone but I think everybody's in high spirits. Are you guys all doing okay? Absolutely. Yeah. All right I think that's been about six cups of coffee today. So we've got about a half an hour now to get down to the hotel. The last of the rain. Last cup of coffee of the day. Well this is a pretty nice stretch of road even though it's raining. There are some nice views off to the left but it's pretty misty out. So I've been riding the BMW 1300 GS Adventure. She's a big girl. She gets thirsty that's for sure. All right we are in the home stretch. We've arrived in Olympia making our way to our hotel. All right we made it. Hotel Europa. We're in Olympia and it is the end of day number nine. A day of full-on riding in the rain all day but here we are. We made it. Time to check into the hotel. Thank you. Wow.