25 December '04, Saturday. Merry Christmas to All... There are times when your not with family for the holidays,and today is one of those, but today we tough it up...it's CHRISTMAS DAY and we're having a wonderful day. Yes, we would have loved to be with our family, but we weren't, so we had and did make the best of it. Yesterday we took “Bumble Bee” into the little town next door (1 km away). We were liiking for “camping gas”, which we had been out of for a couple of weeks. Maybe driving into town wasn't the best idea, but I didn't want to hand carry those gas tanks when full or empty as they get heavy really quick. Well Kalambaka is no different than any town or city in the states the day before Christmas... I just think it's the challenge to see how many cars, trucks, and buses can converge onto the streets at once. They have the “advantage” here because of those smaller cars and trucks. The disadvantage to all of us (although they don't show it as a problem), they double park, park on the sidewalk, park in the crosswalks, park at the corners and bumper to bumper. Now get this, we only heard someone honk their horn twice all day !!! No arguments, no hand signals (you know what I mean) and when you want to stop and leave your car...turn on your 4 way blinkers and walk away...leave...THAT'S IT !!! I Love These People... Ok, back to finding our camping gas. Everyone we asked, “do you know were we can find Camping Gas”? Gave us directions to a campground...not good as we had already checked and none of them had any, besides we were all ready camping at one. It just so happened that I saw a truck pumping Propane into a business, so I grabbed one of my tanks and ran to him. He of course didn't have any, but he told me to follow him when he finished and I could get some. He gets into his truck on this skinny one way street and BACKS UP !!! He is running now against trafffic (that is backing against traffic), and the cars were getting out of the way, dodging in every direction imaginable, so I jumped right in behind (front) of him, and followed right through traffic. As we got right in the middle of town he stops his truck (and remember, he's still backing up) and gets out and immediately starts motioning for other cars to stop and for me to swing into this alley...that is were the gas can be found... WE CAN GET OUR GAS !!! It was going to take an hour for us to get our gas, so we went on to find lunch. The sidewalks were even more crowded than the streets. Shoppers were everywhere. Now remember, this is a small town, very small...we were amazed at how busy the meat markets were, and they are everywhere ...people were lined up on the sidewalks and deep into the meat market. Everyone was looking for the same thing... A PIG or maybe a PIGLET to barbeque for their Christmas Holiday Dinner. The “Taverna" we found for lunch had 3 roasting on their spits when we walked in and had at least 6 to 8 more to go. Beside these, every back yard we walked or drove by had their pig roasting as well.