Panniers full of food from a shopping spree yesterday, we cycled away from Patras under bright blue skies, lazily spinning our legs as we watched the coming and goings of everyday life in Greece. About 8km into our ride, Tara realized we'd left her passport at the hotel's reception desk. Whoops!

We barely batted an eye at the inconvenience, so enamored were we with our surroundings. A quick trip back through the outskirts of town to retrieve the important document and we were on our way again.

Our ride this afternoon was reminiscent of our first days in Italy for me. As we left our noisy hotel for the second time, I was filled with a deep sense of contentedness. The combination of having a new country to explore and magnificent weather to do it under is exactly what I was dreaming of when I naïvely decided we should bicycle around the world more than two years ago.

Though there is surely more rain, wind, and cold before us, for some reason it felt to me as though a new chapter in our journey had begun today. Technically untrue maybe, but it feels as though winter is finally behind us!

Halfway into our euphoric ride, we reached a particularly beautiful spot overlooking the ocean and decided to stop for a snack break.

Continuing our ceaseless crusade to become better photographers, we've been reading articles by Ken Rockwell lately. Here are a links to a few that I like a lot: Simplicity, What Makes a Great Photo, and FART First for Fantastic Photos.

So, while we enjoyed our oranges and bread, we fooled around with the camera a bit too.

Here is Tara eating an orange and checking herself out in the camera lens as I work on getting closer to the subject of my photo.

Here is the view from our midday rest break:

…and one more of Tara with an itch :)

Nearing the end of our day the secondary road we'd be riding somehow managed to merge into the interstate without any obvious alternatives. Rather than turning back to hunt down the turnoff we must've missed, we decided to push on in the hopes we'd find a suitable exit nearby to pick up the winding coastal road again.

Not more than two kilometers down the freeway we spotted a perfect stealth camp high above us, accessible only by a rocky dirt path just behind the guardrail we were riding next to. We quickly agreed it was too good to pass up; it certainly looked more favorable than continuing down the shoulder!

With great effort, we heaved our 100+ lb bikes over the barrier and then worked together, pushing them one by one up the hill to a concrete slab overlooking the city below.

Once there, we set about our normal nightly routine. I made camp while Tara prepared dinner: a hearty salad full of carrots, onions, cheese, and slices of hard-boiled egg, topped off with carefully hand-roasted garlic croutons. A very tasty end to a truly excellent day!

One thing no amount of practice will help: our Nikon D60's lousy low light performance. Here is a shot I groggily took in the middle of the night after a bathroom break.