One last Greek adventure...

Our sense of feeling slightly underwhelmed by Mykonos continued the next day, as we woke to find torrential rain streaming down the street outside the hotel. The place isn't exactly set up for wet weather, including our hotel whose outdoor eating area was completely under water... So after a quick, cramped breakfast in the tiny hotel lobby with the other 6 guests waiting their turn, we made a hasty exit and headed for the marina.

It wasn't until we were on the ferry heading back to Athens that we made a final disastrous discovery - Bec's passport, which had been kept as security by the overly friendly, slightly off-putting hotel owner, was still sitting in a drawer back at the hotel!!! In all the confusion over breakfast, it had been completely forgotten. After initial panic at the thought that we'd be stranded in Athens (we were due to fly out the next morning), we tracked down the hotel's phone number and were assured a little too casually that all would be fine. The passport would be on the late ferry to Athens that day, no problems.

Confusion over the exact name and company of the ferry did little to reduce Bec's apprehension, and we spent a less than relaxed day in the capital before collecting the elusive passport with minimal drama at the port that evening. Crisis averted. And we even managed to squeeze in that long-awaited visit to the Acropolis:

Island Hopping: Mykonos

We finally dragged ourselves away from fabulous Santorini to Mykonos, another famous Greek isle. We hopped off the ferry having not booked and wandered semi-randomly around the maze-like town, trying to find the hotel recommended in our Rough Guide. We never did, as we were intercepted by a very friendly (if a little used-car salesman-like) Aussie/Greek hotel-owner who gave us a good deal on a room in his family hotel. Jonathan was a Sydneysider who had a successful clothing business in Australia before returning to the family business, running the Hotel Zorzis. We won't be reviewing our stay here, TripAdvisor does a great job of that, but suffice to say that our stay seemed to reflect our opinion of Mykonos being a slightly-inferior version of Santorini!


After a late lunch spent people-watching and soaking up the sun near the marina, we ventured back into the maze of the whitewashed stony alleyways. Again we were amused to see the locals frantically re-painting the walls and even touching-up the white paint on the pavements, to make sure they were ready for the tourist masses about to arrive for the High Season.
Perhaps it was because we'd "done" all the touristy shops in Santorini, but Mykonos didn't really grab us as a shopping destination, despite the brochure describing it as a retail paradise. I don't know why you'd come all the way to Mykonos to pay twice the going rate for a Swiss watch! And, aside from a row of 5 traditional windmills (which may well have been assembled last week from fibreglass for all we know ;-) there was a distinct lack of traditional local culture in evidence.


It certainly wasn't a bad place though! We watched the sun go down from "Little Venice" over a couple of drinks, and enjoyed some yummy Greek desserts before finally turning in. We could both get very used to being island-hoppers!

It's All Greek To Me

We were lucky in that most of the places we went to in Greece were pretty heavily geared towards tourists, and so most places subtitled their Greek with English - if they even bothered to use Greek at all. But in a couple of places, we were on our own. The thing with written Greek is there's a two-step decoding process; first, translate all the ancient characters into the Western alphabet, then, take a stab at what they're actually on about. Neither of us had a clue about the language - it doesn't seem to have roots back to the languages that we can bluff (French, Italian and German) - so we often failed dismally, but occasionally, we'd hit gold, which was incredibly satisfying.

Often these words were "imported" from another language and were in a certain context (like on a restaurant menu) that helped us. And as we went along Johnny remembered more and more Greek symbols from his nerdy Maths and Physics past that were useful - like:
Π/π - [Pi] - Greek sound 'P' - The ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter
Δ/δ - [Delta] - Greek sound 'D' - The difference between two values
Λ/λ - [Lambda] - Greek sound 'L' - The wavelength of a signal
Μ/μ - [Mu] - Greek sound 'M' - The prefix for "micro"
Θ/θ - [Theta] - Greek sound 'Th' - The unknown angle in geometry
Φ/ϕ - [Phi] - Greek sound 'F' - A second unknown angle
Ρ/ρ - [Rho] - Greek sound 'R' - The resistivity of a metal

And armed with not much more than that, watch how text that previously resembled a page from an Applied Physics textbook becomes simple!:

ΚΡΕΜ ΚΑΡΑΜΕΛ (on a menu)
KREM KARAMEL
Creme Caramel

ΠΟΣΕΙΔΩΝ (on the side of a boat)
POSEIDON

Φοτογραϕια (on the front of a shop selling camera gear)
Fotografia
Photography

Johnny was pretty pleased when he worked out that last one!

Island Hopping: More Santorini

1 Picture = 1000 words, so here's ten-thousand-and-change words on Santorini!

On the mean streets of Fira:

Greek church, Fira:

Ewwww.....

High-tech, Greek Island style at Oia:
The Black Beach (it's volcanic sand):

The Red Beach (it's umm, a different kind of volcanic sand)

Looking back uphill from our room, Fira.

Looking back to Fira from the abandoned monastery at Skaros:

Sunset from Skaros:

Bec atop the volcanic "plug". Skaros and Fira in background.

Island Hopping: Santorini

The next morning at the crack of dawn we were down at Pireaus, Athens' port, hopping on a high-speed ferry to the island of Santorini. Four fast but amazingly-smooth hours later we arrived. What an incredible place! Santorini is actually composed of the jagged edges of a massive old volcano that has been submerged. So the inside of the circular formation is very steep cliffs, while the outside gently slopes down to the sea. The boat arrives on the steep side, and that's where we stayed, perched on the top of the cliff, looking in towards the "caldera".


It's such a stunning location that we started taking pictures almost immediately - we ended up with almost 400. Particularly on our first day, the combination of blue sky, blue water and the sugar-cube-white buildings of the Greek islands made it almost impossible to stop shooting. Here's Johnny in maximum artsy-mode, utilising the complimentary fruit-bowl:


It was a really interesting time to be in Santorini, as "The Season" was about to begin and everyone was frantically painting, decorating and generally tarting-up their hotels and shops. Because there were only a few tourists in Fira (the capital), the locals were really relaxed and friendly, accomodation was still very affordable yet most of the restaurants and shops were open.

It's a tiring place though - being perched on top of a cliff, most of the streets are actually more like staircases, and cars can't get close to most of the town, so you end up doing a lot of huffing and puffing. But most of my favourite places are car-free and this is no exception. The only real problem with the layout is that the main delivery vehicle is hence the donkey. And they tend to leave the occasional reminder of their services right in the middle of the thoroughfare...


Oh, and we made a few furry friends too - the place is a cat's paradise!

Greece Is The Word!

Yep, and it wasn't until we got to the check-in that I found out!

Bec had worked out a brilliant itinerary, using all of the available time to see not just Athens, but some Greek islands too, with a clever combination of booked and "open" nights so we could be flexible and stay longer if we found somewhere great. Which we did - but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'm going to be brutally honest here and say things started out pretty badly. They usually do when there's a 4.30am alarm clock involved. And sure enough, we missed our flight from Gatwick to Athens. But we managed to get ourselves onto a later flight from Luton, another airport on the other side of London. In six hours' time. So after a leisurely breakfast, we headed into the capital, and despite having no real idea what we'd do to kill the time, we actually had a really great few hours. But that's for another blog post.

Many hours later, we arrived in Athens, and made our way across the city to the Dorian Inn Hotel in the Omonia district. We had the usual trouble finding the place - it's easy enough to get to the right Metro station but once the escalator spits you out topside, you're clueless which way to go next. We ended up walking all four sides of the (slightly dodgy) Omonia Square before working it out. And in the meantime, my trusty green suitcase celebrated its 13th birthday by losing one of its wheels, making it about as manoeuvrable as an oil tanker in a sea of custard. But we got there.

The next day we ventured back to Omonia Square, intending to hop onto the Metro and check out all the tourist spots - the Acropolis, (original) Olympic stadium, etc. But the square was completely gummed up with people, and there were tapes and policemen keeping people back from the road. What was going on? Well, although at first I thought the people of Athens were staging a huge parade to usher in my 30th birthday, it turns out that March 25 is Greece's National Day. This parade was without doubt the biggest I have ever seen - thousands of troops, policemen, firefighters etc, including huge rumbling bits of heavy equipment and marching bands.

It went on for at least two hours - wave after wave of people marching in the very peculiar Greek way - arms swinging above head-height - in uniforms, wetsuits, even fireproof outfits and bomb-disposal armour! It was crazy!


Of course on the down-side, everything in Athens, including every tourist site, was shut for the day. D'Oh! So we couldn't get up on the Acropolis. But we could get pretty close:

The Big 3-0

It's been a shockingly long time since the last blog post, but we've got an excuse, honest! For the last 9 days we've been going old-school - no PCs, wi-fi, broadband connections or anything. For God's sake man! - Why? I hear you ask. Because for the last 9 days we've been away on a fabulous holiday to a secret European destination, organised entirely by Rebecca to celebrate my 30th birthday.

She got me to ask for a whole week off work over my birthday, which my legend boss Jim agreed to with no problems. But beyond that she never gave away anything about where we would be going or what we'd be doing. And she even went to the extreme of telling me to pack not only swimming gear, but skiing gloves and beanie too! Deceptive little creature... :-)

Anyway, to give you a little idea of what it was like, I'm not going to tell you where we went. You'll just have to hang on in suspense until the next post. But I promise it won't take as long as this one!

Thanks to all the lovely people who mailed, emailed, phoned and/or text-messaged me birthday greetings and/or gifts, most of which I haven't been able to receive until now. I will be getting back to all of you soon, but thankyou very much in the meantime!

Old Man Johnny.