Portaria and the Centaur's Walk

To we began our drive up north towards Litochoro. It was not the best of starts and there were many things to whinge about so let me get those out of the way! None deal breaking except for maybe one...

• The first taxi driver we hailed refused to take us to the car rental place. He wanted a fare to the airport. 
• Said car rental place opened 30 minutes late because an employer no showed and no one else had a key apparently
• Car rental attendant rather then being apologetic, was difficult! She took forever to get our rental going despite not being anyone else there. She then insisted that we had to have a credit card for a hold in the driver's name that is NOT Amex. Later this turned out not to be true, she just didn't want to have to pay the Amex fees
• Once on the motorway, we discovered that the AC was not working! All it did was blow hot air even when off. All our googling, manual reading and pressing/twisting all the buttons we could did not help. This WAS a deal breaker.

We pulled into McDonald's for much needed food (we were hangry which probably didn't help). Upon calling the car rental company, we were given instructions to try for the AC, which sounded like performing a chicken dance. We were told to turn on all the lights, then leave only one on (I don't even know what that meant Mal did it), turn the AC onto full heat for 5 seconds, and then switch it to cold. It worked! They have obviously had this issue before...Oh in case I hadn't mentioned the name of the car rental place - Carwiz. It was half the price the next closest competitor...so make your choices with great consideration! 

Our stop in McDonald's did soothed some tempers, and a good chicken burger for breakfast was enough to change our disposition. Our long drive north was fortunately mostly on motorways which made it easier to adjust to driving a car on the other side of the road full of crazy drivers. Jonah noted with amusement a passenger on the back of a motorbike travelling at 120km/hr on her phone. We must have also paid a gajillion euros worth of tolls. I'm sure we went through at least 10 toll boths! There were ample rest stops though, which were clean and had petrol, toilets and cafes/restaurants. The petrol stations here were still serviced with attendants which was nice. 

How is it possible for only 1 employee and manager to have a key...the other employees were locked out as well

Ah the golden arches, a known comfort

Even the ordering system is the same

We didn't realise that Margarita was a celebrity chef, not a cocktail based burger

Finally off with a working AC!

We stopped at the cliffside village of Portaria, with the Centaur's walk to mark the first of our "walks" in our next leg. Unfortunately it was all underwhelming. Parts of the walk was pretty but it was short and a big chunk was on road through a village which really was not that picturesque. We didn't feel that it was worth the 10km of winding road all the way up and then all the way down. However we didn't a stop somewhere to stretch the legs. 

From Portaria, it wasn't too long to Litochoro, a very pretty village at the at the base of Mount Olympus. We stayed at Xenios Dias Hotel for the night, which was fortunately close to the village's main carpark and right in the middle of the village. We bought ourselves some gyros for dinner and enjoyed it at the park accompanied by stray cats enjoying the views of the mountain. 

Nice cafe next to the start of the walk, but it was deserted like the rest of the village

The entrance to the Centaur's Path

The legend is that this was where Chiron walked

We were not sure if the water was drinkable

Occasional glimpses of nice views

Walking on the narrow winding roads

Tolls, tolls and more tolls!

Litochoro, our hotel is on ground floor of the shorter building. 

Mount Olympus

Our room. Compact but very clean

Again clean bathroom

The view from our balcony

Pork gyros

Pleasant end to the day