Many surprises awaited us in Patras! It is not only the main harbor for all ferries from Italy, it is also a beautiful city with lots of history! Our Airbnb is at the old harbor in downtown / oldtown Patras. Extremely convenient to walk everywhere; breakfast, lunch, dinner, markets, stores, people watching, everything! We discovered the Orthodox Church of St. Andrew, where they keep the relics of a piece of the cross he died at, a part of his finger and a piece of his scull. The cross we found, then we stopped searching; I really didn’t want to see any bones…

It is December now and there are Christmas decorations everywhere! Street musicians play Christmas music, people are out buying presents – I love it!

And the food is a surprise too! As usual, we always try to eat local food, Moroccan food in Morocco, Greek food in Greece, etc. of course there is Eataly, there are burger places and Indian restaurants, but we can eat all this when we are back home. Here we want Greek stuff! So last night Ted found a Greek restaurant on the Internet, but when we found it, it looked closed. But a sign pointed around the corner and a stairway had another sign upwards. So we walked upstairs to the 4th floor rooftop terrace, where a Greek party was in full swing. We sat down, ordered Retsina and octopus, Kebap and Greek salad. Then they moved us 3 floors below, where we ate. The waitress told us that the restaurant used to have 3 floors, but now they’re reduced to only 2 floors, the 1st and the 4th floor. The street level is still closed…