Sunday in Athens. Today is the day, it seems, when all Athenians take to the street to shop, walk, chat, gossip or sit in a café and drink coffee. Everyone is out doing something. We sleep in a little after our late night and wander up to Omonia Square to ride the Metro to the bottom of the Acropolis and the uphill walk to the Parthenon and the other remains of the ancient site overlooking the city.

The Acropolis is something we all learn about in school and it is truly impressive to be actually on the site. We climb the hill and navigate on our own. Poor directional signage down below leads up the long way but we eventually reach the ticket office and climb the last 100 meters and enter from the west, by way of the Propylaea.

We move around the site with the thousands other tourists and spend most of our viewing time around the Parthenon. The Acropolis has a wonderful on-site museum with many of the artefacts from the site itself on display. There is also an incredible 360° view of Athens from up here.


From left: the view from below; the Parthenon


From left: the Porch of the Maidens; the Erechtheion; the Parthenon

We stroll back down the hill past Sunday café coffee sippers and end up in the Monastiraki area for lunch in the incredibly busy Sunday flea market. Cheap and cheerful Greek food, a bottle of water and the passing hustle and bustle is what is on the menu. Sore feet mean we opt for the subway home and after the requisite naps, we meet Derek for dinner in Kolonaki. We all feel like pizza tonight and spend a couple of hours talking and eating the “Kolanaki Special” before ending up back at our hotel and sleep, sleep, sleep.

Thank you Derek and Michael for taking some time to show us around Athens. We hope that we can repay the generous favour some day.

Our last day in Athens and only one more day in Frankfurt before continuing west and home. It is almost 5 months to the day when we left Toronto, flying towards the sunset. It seems strange that we have already circumnavigated the globe and are still heading west only to fly east in two weeks to continue our journey.

The first half of this incredible journey has been wonderful, humbling, eye-opening, and in many ways encouraging and hopeful. The most difficult part, both physically and emotionally is completed. We have seen friends and family in California and New Zealand; met wonderful, new friends and experienced future potential in Australia; shopped in Singapore; received gentle and proud welcomes in Bali; savoured the always present “land of smiles” that is Thailand; India, Oh India!; and finally to Greece and Turkey, where modern life sometimes clashes with the ancient.

I can’t say that we are somehow better people or that we have changed in some monumental way by the luxurious and somewhat romantic ability to travel for longer than a typical vacation, but we have seen and experienced some unique and very interesting things that perhaps we will never see again.

We start off with a very low-energy approach to the day – we sleep late and then enjoy a leisurely breakfast, which is, as is normal in Asian and continental European hotels, included in the price of the hotel. Breakfast in Turkey was always delicious, but always the same: fresh white bread, cherry jam and honey, tomato and cucumber slices, feta cheese, hard boiled eggs, black olives, and çay or instant coffee (called nescafé, as in much of the world). Today we come to breakfast and find all of the above, plus fresh-squeezed orange juice, yogurt, stewed prunes, dakos salad, fried and scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, sliced processed meats, many different cereals, many different cheeses, many different breads, many different jams and a huge bowl of Nutella free for the taking. We savour the experience (and skip lunch as a consequence).

After breakfast we head off to an internet café, to update the web, catch up on some emails, pay some bills and do a bit of research. We find a very nice place, with a bit of space to spread out (which is unlike most internet cafés, where they cram you in as tightly as they can). Greg updates the web while I go off in search of the Herald Tribune, and, having found it, sit reading it as we both sip cappuccinos. Somehow, 3 hours pass, quite pleasantly.

We decide that the Parthenon will have to wait until tomorrow, and spend the afternoon sitting on the terrace of our room, 6 floors up from the chaotic traffic, reading and enjoying the sunshine.

About 9 p.m. we head out for dinner, walking south to the Monastiraki area. When we arrive, we find many interesting looking cafés, and we spend at least 30 minutes walking around, checking menus, before we decide on a place – its menu is Greek, but with a bit of a twist, unlike most of the others which seem content to offer the usual fare. The meal is excellent.

At 11:00 p.m. we meet up with Michael, a friend of a friend, who has told us that there is no point in going out any earlier in Athens. He brings along another friend, Derek, who is also visitng Athens. We start at a quiet café on one of the many pedestrian-only streets. After a quiet hour, we head to a disco in Gazi, the converted gasworks area. We are definitely early – there are only a few people there when we arrive – but shortly after the place begins to fill, and soon it is crowded. Soon after, the smoke gets to us, particularly the cigar smoke, and we head out to another club, a taxi ride away in Makrigiani, behind the Acropolis. This place is going full bore when we arrive, and we stay until about 4, when we decide that it is time for bed.

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Turkey has been wonderful, beautiful, inspiring, angering, frustrating; in other words, all of the things that make a voyage interesting. But all good things must end, and it is time for us to return to Greece, on the start of our journey back to Canada for our brief visit at home.

Best of Turkey:
Best restaurant: Amedros, Istanbul
Best archaeological site: Ephesus (Greg); Mt. Nemrut (John)
Best non-archaeological site: the Ayasofya, Istanbul
Best hamam: Park Hamam, Istanbul
The bread, always fresh and abundant
Where we will go again: Istanbul, Fethiye, Kas, Antalya
Everywhere we went in Turkey, there were security checks – when we went into hotels, when we went into museums, when we went into bus stations. It was actually very reassuring.

Books Read:
The Man-Eaters of Kumaon; The Temple Tiger & More Man-Eaters of Kumaon; and The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayeg; all 3 by Jim Corbett, who created Corbett National Park, where we went on safari when we were in India.
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We arrive in Athens to find a beautiful early summer day. The city is in full-scale construction mode – hotels everywhere desperately trying to open in time for the Olympics, sidewalks and roads under construction, buildings everywhere shrouded in scaffolding. Today is the 1st day of a 4 day weekend, and the traffic is chaotic – according to the Montreal-born cabbie who drove us in for the airport, worse than normal because of the holiday. The ride from the airport is quick and efficient over brand new highways and a series of tunnels through the Athenian hills. We quickly come to a bumper to bumper stop when we hit the city limits and it takes well over an hour to make our way to our hotel, in Omonia. A bit off the tourist track, we hadn’t been able to find a room in a better location because of the holiday weekend. But the hotel, when we finally arrive, is recently renovated, offering all mod-cons.

Maybe because we had heard so often how horrible Athens is, and thus have no expectations, we are actually favourably impressed, except of course for the traffic. The air, which we have heard so much about, is actually cleaner and fresher than any air we breathed in Asia or even in most of Turkey. The scale and pace of Athens feels somehow right, and, probably because the Olympics are only a couple of months away, the city feels clean and modern in the way of the best European cities.

Totally without planning where we are going, we go out for a walk and end up strolling through Kolanaki, the very chic neighbourhood that climbs up the side of Likavitos. When we get tired of strolling through the streets there, full of beautiful people sipping coffees in street-side cafés and shopping in designer boutiques, we wander past the Parliament Building and Syntagma Square, over to the Plaka, and find a taverna for dinner.

A perfect way to spend our first day in Athens.

Happy Mother’s Day!

The cobalt blue shutters of the hotels and small pensions are being cleaned and painted in anticipation of the blitz of tourists hotly anticipated to arrive on Mykonos. Canvas is being scrubbed and hung as shade against the pervasive Mediterranean sun. Pools are filling and lounges unfolded. Everywhere there is activity. It is already the first week of May and things are only now beginning to open for the expected charters and cruise ships. We still remain on limited selection of food on menus in the restaurants and some of the more popular bars and night spots open for an hour and then closed again quickly. Sticking a cautious toe in and testing the very cool waters.

We have been chumming around with Neil from London and Uwe from Austria the last couple of nights. As always, we are told by the owners and managers of the restaurants and bars that “it is still early, the season has just opened.” I get a feeling that they are trying to convince themselves that there will be a season. Not that there is any indication that there won’t be. The manager of our hotel tells us that everything was up and running in April last year. Our pool hasn’t even had the last bit of winter debris swept out from it. Maybe this is just the Greek way. Wait until the very last minute to get things done and then scramble 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to get it all ready.

We have all agreed that this seems like the perfect time to be in Greece – warm sun (when there is some), cool evenings for walking, a lovely breeze from the ocean. If I was coming from North America for two weeks of balmy beach weather and glorious sun tans, than perhaps I might not be so content with the weather and the lack of crowds and tourists. But I have already had my beach holiday after all.

We say goodbye to Greece tomorrow as we head to Turkey for 19 days. Our tour is an organized one and we will be spending those days with people that we hopefully will connect with.
We aren’t sure of what to expect in terms of internet availability while we are in Turkey so please bear with us.

The sun shines brightly this morning, and the day turns into one of those magnificent late spring days that you never tire of. We spend the morning walking around town, down alleys and lanes, lost but who cares?

At lunch, we sit at a café overlooking the harbour, watching the ferries and cruise ships come and go. We read the International Herald Tribune, full of news about yesterday’s bombings in Athens and the effect they may have on the Olympics. As close as Athens is, it feels a million miles away – nothing can interfere with the beauty of the day.

A couple of hours later, paper read cover to cover and coffees drunk, we resume wandering the town. Then it is back to the hotel for naps and books. A wonderful, relaxing, soul-nourishing day.


Mykonos

John and I have already discussed the guilt associated with doing nothing except staying in bed, reading a book or writing in our journals. Even when you are in a place that is extremely beautiful, albeit cool and rainy, you have to fight the feeling that you must be doing something to enjoy the mystery and allure that is your destination of choice. Missing the beach, not grabbing some sun or lounging by the pool (if they were filled!), all are things that have to be managed on a daily basis.

And so it is with these feelings that we awake, put on our woollies and rain jackets and greet the Greek day. No chance of sun today through the thick cloud cover. The rain is persistent and consistent. We head into town and seek out an internet station to respond to email and update the site. We are starting to organize family and friends time while we are home for the first two weeks of June. It is already looking to be a logistical nightmare. Lunch is a Gyros and Greek salad, sitting bundled-up at one of the local Mom and Pop fast food places that abound.

The afternoon is spent in bed, listening to music, napping, reading and watching the photos our laptop screen saver randomly chooses for us to reminisce over. Our time-ignorant rooster occasionally reminds us that it is time to get up.

BBC World and CNN tell us that 3 small bombs have gone off early this morning in Athens exactly 100 days before the start of the Olympics. We feel for the Greeks with an already over-stretched and late schedule of building and infrastructure to clean up. They now have additional security issues to deal with.

There is no talk of the morning’s events in the bars and tavernas as we head out for dinner. It appears Mykonos is focused on the approaching warm weather and anticipated tourist dollar.

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The morning has arrived with a high, flat cloud cover, much different from the clear, sunny brightness of the last two days. I awake feeling much better although I still have some stomach issues. The ferry is scheduled to leave the new port at 11:10 and we don’t have much packing to do since we really didn’t unpack when our bags arrived. Our star bag porter arrives and further impresses us by carrying both big bags back up the gazillion steps to the lobby and then through the cobbled streets to the taxi stop. Well worth the €5 tip, I say.

Our ferry is on time and we are travelling on the fast boat this morning. Four hours to Mykonos instead of 6. Our trip is uneventful and we arrive in Mykonos with a group of 25 students from Virginia studying the classics. Pandemonium ensues as we realize that we are all staying at the same hotel and management hasn’t sent a big enough bus to transfer all of us. Two trips and a car ride later, John somehow gets to the head of the line for check-in and we are given a quaint room with a small patio and a lovely view overlooking Mykonos Town, no more than a 5 minute walk up the hill from the town centre.

We share our view with a local slice of Mykonos flavour. An elderly gentleman’s green garden, not yet planted, his ground preparation at a snail-like pace; an over-zealous rooster who cannot tell time and his friends, the barking dogs. Further up the hill, some young Greek “guys”, tight jeans, mirrored sunglasses all, Honda motor bikes. Under-employed. And of course the standard Greek grandmother, probably the saintly wife of the green gardener, her scarfed head protected from the hilly wind. I watch with fascination and try to figure how they all interconnect. Other than the occasional burst of blue sky, the weather is cool, overcast and rainy.

We completely unpack. This is the first time we have done that since we left Bali. It is cool and seems like fall to us. I am actually enjoying it; John finds it “cold”. Long pants and long sleeves.

We walk into the labyrinth of streets and alleys that is Mykonos Town and quickly get lost. We pass Diesel and DKNY shops huddled beside kitschy Greek souvenir shops. High end clothes with low end junk. Smutty T-shirts abound. Taverna’s and hole-in-the walls selling cigarettes and worry beads. The occasional white-laced window, someone’s home, anticipating the warm weather to open up and welcome or curse the tourists. Lots of dirty-aproned old women in slippers sitting on stools, watching and waiting for summer to begin. We keep heading to our left and eventually end up by the water in Little Venice for a quick beer (2 small beers = €12!!! Another huge change from Asia).


View from our hotel, Little Venice, Typical Mykonos


Mykonos Town

Even this early in the season people don’t eat until later so we do the 10 minute glute work-out back up the hill to our hotel and grab quick naps and extra layers of clothes and head out about 8 o’clock in search of supper. I, in particular, have noticed how a change in diet can affect your physical well-being even in a 24 hour period. Gone are the spicy paneers, alloos and tandooris of 2 days ago, replaced by olive oil and feta cheese. Roast chicken and moussaka are the predictable and reliable foods on the menus here. I generally love Greek food but after India and Thailand, it is very boring. No heat and, in particular, no variety. But it quickly takes the form of comfort food in this familiar but strange cold climate and we gobble it down with a .5 litre of the house red. Just enough to wet our whistles. We wander a bit and stumble onto a deserted bar called Katarina's, named in honour of the first female ship captain in Greece, managed by Darren, a wonderful guy from Toronto, who is full of useful information about life on Mykonos. Then we watch the full moon lunar eclipse from the small balcony at Katarina's, overlooking the bay.

It is late when we wake – almost 12 hours of wonderful sleep. Sometime during the night our bags arrived from Athens.

Greg: What has also arrive in the middle of the night is a case of the flu for me, announced by an incredible case of heart burn that wakes me out of my sleep. We have no luggage and therefore no Tums and no Alka Seltzer to deal with this intense pain in my stomach and throat. I roll onto my back and elevate my head to try and stop the reflux. I think I fall back to sleep for a minute or so when all of a sudden I start to violently cough and quickly realize I’m about to vomit. Fast forward. My stomach is cleared and the pain is gone but I am slightly feverish and realize that my lower back and legs are aching like crazy. I fall back to sleep. In the morning I feel worse than the night before. Head-achy, no energy, lethargic. John heads up to breakfast and I stay in bed until 10. I feel guilty about contemplating spending a beautiful, clear sunny day in Santorini in bed so I get up, pull some clothes on and we wander out into the town.

For a couple of hours, we wander around the town. It is easy to be here. It is early in the season (our hotel opened for the summer only the day before we arrived), and while there are tourists, there aren’t that many.

Greg, who was here 25 years ago, points out to me some of the things that have changed. As we walk around the rim of the caldera, where almost 3,500 years ago most of the island collapsed into the sea in one of the biggest volcanic eruptions of all time, the views change quite remarkably at each corner.

The day is intensely hot in the sun, but the minute you go into shade, it is almost cold. We stop for lunch in a restaurant overlooking the caldera, and are glad that our luggage appeared, because we were able to dig out sweaters, and we need them. After lunch, back into the sun, we peel them off and are glad to be in shorts and t-shirts.

It is a day to do nothing, and that is what we do. We spend a quiet afternoon, napping and sitting on our balcony, watching the sea.

Greg: I am in bed at this point, feeling somewhat exhausted from the couple of hours up and down Santorini’s fabled stairs. I did not have much for lunch and am not terribly hungry. I doze with the shuttered window open to the caldera below and the incredible view from our balcony. The sun streams in across the bed and warms the blanket that is loosely covering me. I still feel some guilt about being in a beautiful Greek town and not being able to indulge in its beauty. John heads into Thira village and buys himself some worry beads and to check email. I spend pretty much the rest of the day and early evening this way. The spectacular sunset arrives shortly after 8 pm and I pull on some clothes to indulge in its beauty. We head up the steep, gazillion-million steps to our hotel restaurant and lobby. I am seeking comfort food; some chicken soup or warm broth and a slice of bread will do me just fine. This is not to be. Most of the hotels and restaurants have only opened for business on May 1and are still primping, painting and cleaning up after the winter. Our restaurant is one of them and has a very limited menu until the season really gets going. I settle for pasta and take maybe ten bites before I call it quits and head back down to the room and bed. I dose up with multivitamins, some aspirin and some effervescing large dose vitamin C and herbal immune travel boosters our friend Larry gave us before we left Los Angeles (thanks Larry). I try to get some sleep. Tomorrow we are heading for Mykonos.



Ahhh…Santorini

Stay tuned…this story does have a happy ending.

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Finally, we are allowed to enter the terminal. All goes smoothly – although our flight from Athens to Santorini is on a different ticket than our flights to Frankfurt and Athens, Lufthansa checks our luggage through to Santorini, and tells us we don’t need to even think about it until we get there. Although we will clear customs and immigration for the EC in Frankfurt, we do not need to pick our luggage up – it will automatically get loaded onto the plane to Athens.

The red wine in the lounge tastes delicious. Most of the planes to Europe leave about the same time as ours, and the lounge is full. Many people talk on their mobiles – we wonder who they’re talking to at 12:30 in the morning, a number snore loudly.

An hour before the flight, a Lufthansa rep comes into the lounge and asks us to go down to the gate – there is a huge line for security, and there has been a gate change. We get through the process of exiting India, and get to the gate just as they start the pre-boarding.

Once on board, we find that Bill and Danielle are sitting right across the aisle from us. From Seattle, we sat with them in the lounge at the Lake Palace in Udaipur, talking into the wee hours of the morning, before we went to bed and on our separate ways the next day. We express surprise at the coincidence of seeing them again, and compare notes on our experiences. We ask each other, and we leave unanswered, the question of whether either couple will come back to India.

We decline the offer of dinner, and are soon sound asleep. Greg nudges me at about 5:30 Frankfurt time (6 ½ hours from takeoff, not a bad night’s sleep considering everything): the flight attendants are serving breakfast.

Everything goes as smoothly as possible – we make our connections in Frankfurt and Athens easily. There is a convenient place right in the Athens airport to buy a prepaid SIM card for the mobile – only Bangkok and Athens, so far, have been this organized. The flight to Santorini is in a small prop plane, big enough for 40 or so. The views of the islands as we fly over them are exquisite.

We are the last people waiting at the baggage carousel. Although we’ve made it easily, our bags have missed one of the connections. The baggage agent expresses dismay that Lufthansa checked our bags through from Athens – they shouldn’t have done that, she tells us. (I reckon that it was time – we have averaged 1 flight every 6 days so far in 2004, and this is the 1st time we’ve had any trouble with our bags.)

The first thing we notice on the drive to the hotel is that everyone is driving on the wrong side. After 4 months in NZ, Australia and Asia, it looks so strange to see cars driving on the right.

We get to our hotel, and as promised, we have a balcony overlooking the caldera. The weather is perfect – a beautiful spring day, mid-20s, windless, intensely hot in the sunlight. We smile – we have the only things we need: a great view, and a bottle of duty free vodka. Tomorrow will be for worrying about things like luggage – the rest of today is for enjoying the view, and getting a good night’s sleep.


We’re surprised by how late the sun stays in the sky – it doesn’t set till after 8. For almost 2 months we have been in areas close to the equator, where day and night are roughly equal all year long. It is nice to have the sun lingering in the sky.



Enjoying the view from our hotel

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