1 Picture = 1000 words, so here's ten-thousand-and-change words on 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!
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:
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.
Last weekend our friends Beth and Dan came to stay with us in Bath. Like us, they have come over from Melbourne to live in the UK for a while, but as they are living in London we don't get the opportunity to see them very often so this was a special treat. Beth had been to Bath once before but it was Dan's first time, and luckily the weather delivered one of the warmest, sunniest days we've had so we could show off our town at its finest.
We picked them up from the station in the morning and came home for some lunch and a big chat. Then we headed out for a lovely drive through the countryside to visit Stonehenge, 
one of the most visited and mystifying historic sites in England. While some have labeled it “just a pile of rocks”, it really is the most fascinating pile of rocks we've ever seen. They've been standing there in a carefully arranged circle in an otherwise empty green field for over 4,000 years, and nobody knows who put them there, how they got them there, or most importantly why?! There are lots of theories, ranging from Druids to giants or even aliens. At any rate, it's quite an impressive sight and definitely something to ponder.
Back in Bath we went for a wander, taking in all the famous sights – the Royal Crescent, Bath Abbey, Pulteney Bridge and the Circus (pictured below). We were hoping to catch a glimpse of “our Kylie” who was reportedly staying in the Royal Crescent Hotel for the weekend, but we were out of luck. No sign of Johnny Depp either, to Bec's continuing disappointment – he owns an apartment on The Circus so naturally she's always on the look out! We spent the evening in town, with Amanda and Anthony joining us for some drinks, a Thai banquet and some excellent conversation. The red wine sent us all off to bed quite happily.
Unfortunately Dan had to leave us early on Sunday due to work commitments, but Beth stayed on for a very girly afternoon – a visit to the Museum of Costume which Johnny strangely enough declined, followed by a few hours of serious shopping. Then sadly it was time to say goodbye for now, until next time. Thanks to Beth and Dan for a very enjoyable weekend.
As mentioned in a previous post, the nearby village of Castle Combe fancies itself as the prettiest village in England. So we decided to pay it a proper visit and see whether they can back up their lofty claim...
And after a gruelling examination of the village and its surrounds, we're pleased to confirm that this is one seriously cute village. And if you get bored, how about a round at the golf course - here's the clubhouse - which doubles as a hotel:
Even their friendly doorman (we called him Jeeves) is immaculately-dressed!
Hey everyone, and welcome to March in Bath! Daffodils are popping up everywhere, the days are getting longer and snow is just a distant memory! Apologies for the excessive inter-blog interval, we've both had our heads down getting stuck into work. Both still really enjoying it though!
The other weekend Bec scored us tickets to see Bath Rugby take on the Saracens of London. Now neither of us have a great deal of love, understanding or even vaguest interest in this sport, but as rugby (union) is the winter sport in Bath, and they play at one of the most picturesque grounds in the country, we thought we should give it a go.
Sadly, upon arriving at The Rec with thousands of other Bath fans, we realised neither of us actually knew the first thing about rugby union, other than Johnny's usual bulldust and bluff. So we can't really report on the standard of the game, other than it started out very well for Bath, who got up to 13-0 at one stage thanks to some penalty kicks and then a converted try. Then the rain started coming down pretty heavily and this (in our opinion) pretty ugly game got a whole lot uglier.
It's sometimes difficult to tell with Union, where kicking the ball out on the full is regarded as a clever thing to do, but even our untrained eyes could see that the drop the ball, slip over and fumble wildly strategies were perhaps being overused somewhat. Saracens mounted a huge comeback, using apparently-advanced rugby techniques such as run fast and change direction which confused the Bath players enough to level the score at 13 apiece.
Saracens then moved into the lead at 13-20 with just ten minutes to go. The tension in the air was as thick as the players' ears! Could Bath manage to identify each other when everything was covered with mud? Would someone's collar-bone finally give out in one of those crunching scrums? And where was that ball thing again?
Luckily Bath managed to remember which way to go and ran in a try with just a handful of minutes left, converting to make it 20-all. And there it finished. Our first (and we suspect last) Rugby Union game. Where were the great chants and huge atmosphere of the FA Cup soccer? Where was the skill and athleticism of an AFL match? Oh well, we did have a nice view... ;-)
