Today we woke up in our own time and traveled to Heraklion by bus, which took a few questions and ensuring we knew what bus was what. But for Heraklion, it was pretty easy, as it is the capital, though we figured it might be a little trickier finding the bus back from the capital to our smaller region of Hersonissos. When we got to the bus terminal, it took a few more questions to get the right bus to Knossos Palace, but all in all it was generally uneventful (or at least, not such that I took it down in my notebook or took photos).

Knossos Palace itself was both interesting and disappointing. It was interesting since quite a lot of it is still there, staircases, labyrinthine corridors, and ruins all about. But disapointing because a guy called Evans seemed to make it up as he went along while explaining and reconstructing it. Okay, I’m being unfair, but still… Anyway, it was pretty hot and we found a couple nice places with a breeze to rest between bakings.

Staircase to nowhere…

After we saw all there was to see there, we made our way back to Heraklion to poke around. We looked for a place to have lunch and were accosted by someone who really seemed to walk our business, but we declined and wondered a bit more, and ended up at the place next door, which was slightly embarassing. Also, it was here that I first encountered someone who didn’t seem to speak english, which is unfortunately since I think he was asking for change.

We made it back to our hotel successfully and went to the beach again for a swim, but further along where it wasn’t quite so rocky. I went in again, but we didn’t stay in long, because soon our feet were being attacked by little fish we didn’t encounter before. They didn’t seem to do damage, but it was a bit disconcerting to be standing there for a second and suddenly you feel something nip at your calves. Alicia screamed a couple of times, which I have to say really carries on the beach, and then left the water and was disinclined to return. Laura and I stayed out in the deeper zone where the fishies seemed to avoid. But I did get nipped on my own way back to shore. When we had gone to the beach today at all, we had paid the 5 euro deposit for towels, but on our way back, we were told off by the clerk there that we couldn’t just take towels like that… nooooo, if we took towels, they could only be returned on the day we check out. Oh well, we had already ’scored’ fresh towels once so far, take that hotel.

That evening I need to charge my camera. I had done so on the cruise ship, where they had both the Greece sockets and the one I’m more familiar with. But sadly, I figured on the ship they only had the one type of power, namely the European kind. This was sad because I had brought a power bar which I thought could already take that power since I had used it on the cruise ship. My charger itself can handle both power types, but not the shape of the plug. And with the experiment on the cruise ship and the power bar, I thought the power bar could too, stupidly.

Polarized grounded plugs be damned

So while Alicia was in the shower, I wanted to charge my camera. She had a fully-fledged power transformer, and Laura brought a plug (but not power) adapter. Since I didn’t want to wait, I opted to plug my power bar into Laura’s adapter, and then both of us could charge from the power bar. So I plug the adapter into the wall first, good, now I’ll plug in the power — snap… and the lights go out.

I hadn’t plugged the powerbar all the way in, so when I heard that noise, I recoiled and that unplugged the powerbar. I wondered in the dark back to the door so I could open it for some light. Meanwhile, Alicia was calling out “uh, guys?” since she was now showering in darkness. I opened the door and pulled the keycard (which cuts power). Luckily each room has it’s own fusebox, so I found the one we’d tripped and switched it back, put the keycard back in, and the lights came back on.

Neither Laura nor I wanted to try plugging in our chargers through her adapter (though I’m sure those would have worked, just not my stupid powerbar) so when Alicia was done, she broke out the transformer and for the rest of the trip we had to rotate our use of it (since each charge up used up the recommended duration of time to use the transformer in a single sitting). Stupid.

After dinner this night I believe is when we went to the bar and asked for Raki, which is a popular drink on Crete, and cheaper than Ouzo. It seemed to me very similar to Ouzo, except the stuff served to us was not diluted, as it was clear. Even the bartender tried to gently dissuade us from having it, but we wanted to try it. We each took a shotglass of it and swigged it back. It just burned, but of course my stomach and throat had been in turmoil anyway, so maybe the burn was exaggerated. We paid, and also tipped, and the bartender spontaneously offered us another for free (well, we assumed, those situations are always tricky, he seemed to insist that we try more and that the second one is better.) In the end only Laura and I accepted to have a second, and it burned just the same. I guess I should stick to water and Mythos.

To be continued

Today was our first Cretian excursion, known as Unknown Crete. We headed down to the bus pickup point we had identified the day before, and we were nicely early. There were some other people there, waiting for other tours, but no buses had been by to pick anyone up. We learned eventually that the pick-up times were more to give you an idea if it would be AM or PM rather than actually nail down the approximate minute or indeed hour they’d pick you up.

The Stop Sign is in english, no wonder it doesn’t work

But eventually a bus came and the three of us, and only the three of us, gleefully bounded to the door and boarded it. Our tour guide was a lady by the name of Stavroula, and she was quite amusing and easy going and we generally liked her. She kept us entertained until our first stop, which was the village of Archanes. Our bus seemed comically immense compared to the tiny streets we traveled through, and then when we all got off the bus, I felt as if we were a plague descending upon this tiny hamlet. There were very few people about as we walked around, but I pretty much went off to find a bathroom at this point. We didn’t stay long, and soon reboarded the bus.

Our next stop brought us to an ancient winery, of which little seemed to remain. I kept trying to take artistic shots down the ruined corridors of the structure, but they were pretty much crap. We then went to an actual winery where we were to have a tasting. We first had to watch a short video about the wine, olives and oil produced here, and it seemed more like a product placement than a historic film. It did have a hilariously bad opening theme with the visual of a woman from the past being pursued by an archeologist, she carrying a wine jug, wearing a dress with insufficient opacity, and generally sounding like it was going to descend into bad porno territory any minute. The actual wine tasting was alright, but I resisted purchasing anything. We tried 3 wines, the “Minos Palace Appalation D’origin Peza White”, the “Minos Palace Appalation D’origin Peza Red” and the “Minos Medium Sweet Wine”

We then had a traditional greek lunch at a large taverna. They said they offered both fleshy and vegetarian meals. I didn’t bother announcing my pseudo-vegetarianism since I was just going to be content with whatever I managed to eat, but one of the people we had befriended was a vegetarian. Martha and Brenda they were, and British, but then again, virtually everyone else on the Crete tours we went on fit that category. When they asked for the vegetarian option, it turned out to be just more of the same vegetarian thing that all the flesh-eaters were having as a side. It’s like serving steak and potatoes, and the vegetarian option is just a plate of potatoes. In any case, I just ate that myself, which were peppers, tomatoes and dolmades stuffed with rice and such. Alicia ordered a coffee near the end, but had to chug it since the bus was about the leave (we were nearly the last if not the last to board).

Our last stop was a pottery shop where I failed to resist purchasing anything. I bought myself a little bowl with a blue crackly glaze in the bottom of it, which I found several more examples of at virtually every shop I visited after that point, alas. But at least I finally had something for my Wall of Memories that is one of my memories. The guy making the pottery was, of course, and expert, and could churn out a new vase in about a minute.

This bowl is the representation of my trip, may it be filled with candy

We were dropped off at the pickup spot, and walked back to the Hotel. We went for a swim by the beach again, and this time I finally went in myself, but didn’t submerge my head so I didn’t experience the joy of my eyes stinging. But from a bit I tasted, I was surprised how concentrated the salt was, but then again, I had never been in the sea before. It was very rocky near the shore and it actually hurt quite a bit stepping on them trying to get out of the water. The trouble was that the sand itself were like very small pebbles, so when you stepped on them, you tended to get sucked down.

I didn’t take notes after this, so presumably we went to dinner and at some point slept. The next day we were to head off to Knossos Palace via Heraklion, the capital, by ourselves by bus.

To be continued

We disembarked at Crete and made it to our bus. Not everyone from our package (presumably most of the people if not all of them on the same bus) were staying in the same hotel, as we had picked a slightly more economical option, so not many people got off at our hotel with us.

The traffic in Crete seemed more restrained in terms of what traffic was willing to do, but we were shocked at the new experience of a huge bus driving down the narrowest of streets. The final turn to our hotel was amusing, since it was too narrow for anything else to get past, and we actually had to back up quite a distance at one point to let other vehicles pass.

Hersonissos Maris, 4 stars, 3 of us, 2 pools, 1 keycard

The Hersonissos Maris was a 4 star hotel, and it lived up to that rating in our opinions. It was built like a small village and we found photographic scenes on the hotel grounds itself while waiting for our room to be ready. There were two main pools, but we found that no one seemed to actually enter them, they just sat in the recliners around them and contemplated the pools instead. Some of the rooms had private or shared mini-pools, which is the type of decadence that really appeals to me.

When we checked in, we chased our bags being driven to our room by a guy in a golf-cart thing and took our key. The room was very nice and pretty spacious. It had a double bed for the girls (two singles pushed together with a common headboard is as good as a double) to practice their ‘just-friends’ spooning, and a separate single bed for me. There was a balcony, but the doors weren’t particularly good at staying closed, and in the night we were forced to put a chair against the doors to keep the wind from blowing them open. The bathroom seemed incredibly large compared to the cabin bathroom, but came with it’s own twist: you couldn’t flush toilet paper down the toilet, you had to throw it in the trash. It took a little bit to get used to that, but took absolutely no time to return to the old behaviour once we left the islands.

Other than the toilet, there was another interesting quirk with the hotel. We were only given a single key, which was attached to a fairly bulky plastic card. This card (and thus the key) had to be inserted into a slot near the door, and this seemed to be a kill-switch for the room’s power. Once you pulled the card (to leave), the lights, TV, and incomprehensibly, the mini-fridge, would all lose power. However, we later discovered, this didn’t apply to the air conditioner for some reason.

We had a Transat meeting to discuss excursions. We had already decided the ones we wanted to do, but then we were thrown a curve-ball: they changed the days for a couple of them and created conflicts for us. One we initially wanted to do was a Crete Jeep Safari, but that one was relatively expensive, and required one of us to drive the Jeep. Alicia doesn’t have her license, I have mine but never drive, and Laura didn’t want to drive. We initially inquired about whether someone could drive for us, but it wasn’t looking very positive, so we bailed out of that one and signed up for a similar tour, by bus, called Unknown Crete. One of the ones we wanted to do was the Knossos Palace but the conflicts took that out, so we decided to do that on our own. The other excursion we signed up for was the Spinalonga Island tour. In the end, it was a good thing none of us decided to try to do the Jeep tour and have either Laura or me drive, since we didn’t think that, being 4×4’s, would be standard, and neither of us are able to drive stick.

First order of business was to go for a swim, so we went down to the beach right across from our hotel, it was pretty rocky, but still picturesque. I decided not to swim at this point, but was content to guard our belongings. There were some people there bathing topless, which sounds exciting at first, but as the average age of the people around was something around double our own age, you learned to keep looking at the pebbly beach. We returned the towels we had rented from the front desk and reclaimed our 5 euros each.

It may have been cold for the locals, but canadians have no qualms

Later we decided to adventure around the town. We first went to ensure we knew where our pickup would be for our excursions, since it was to be near another hotel instead, presumably due to the bus fun in getting to ours. It was around this day that my dehydration was really starting to set in, and since the water here was undrinkable as well, I wanted to source bottled water. We stopped by the snack bar, and they said 1.50 euros for a small bottle, which Laura asked and the attendant confirmed, was not a good deal. We looked in a couple of shops as we went, including a place very near to the hotel. When we asked how much for bottled water, the look we got back was baffling. They said they had all sorts of water at all sorts of prices, and the exchange was taxing enough for us to decide to move on. Eventually I found a place selling six 1.5 liter bottles of water for 2.50 euros, which was a very good price, so I loaded it in my backpack. This was a bad move since my feet were already sore, and we ended up looking around town for what seemed like forever. We even happened to pass by the store on the way back, so karma could rub it in that I needn’t have walked around with the huge weight on my back. Alicia was out of Halls to combat her cold, so we found a pharmacy during our journey and she bought 4 packets of Fisherman’s Friend, since that’s what they had. A single package lasted her the rest of the vacation.

When we got back, we settled down, threw water into our lukewarm fridge, and went to the buffet for dinner. I wasn’t overly impressed with the selection, mostly because I’m a very picky eater. They didn’t serve anything to drink freely, not even water like on the cruise ship, so we began the pseudo-ritual of getting coke, which came in 250ml glass bottles, which was neat, but cost 2.20 euros, which was less neat. That dinner was the first one where, when asked for our preference for seating, we asked to be out on the patio area, and that stuck with us for the rest of the trip, even when we preferred to stay inside. As much to the wait staff as to the other vacationers, we were pretty recognizable.

After that we showered and got ready for bed, watched some BBC world news describing the increasing financial meltdown, and fell asleep. We needed to be up the next day for our first excursion, but not too early this time.

To be continued

We arrived in Rhodes probably early in the morning, I didn’t take many notes for this day. We signed up for an excursion to the Rhodes Acropolis and walking tour of the Old City. The Acropolis staircase was listed as 300 steps, and we feared for the worst after the staircase at Patmos, but for whatever reason, it was pretty easy going.

Please sir, don’t pay to ride me, my back can’t take it

After the Acropolis, we got dropped off at the Old City and walked through it, but there wasn’t much to see. I didn’t even take many photographs. The tour ended and the girls wanted to go swimming at a beach that was listed as 20 minutes away, however it took us around 40 to get there, after a wrong turn and a walk along a strip of land bounded by water.

I was in a pretty grumpy mood for the day, which I later attributed to my growing dehydration. Virtually everywhere we went, including the ship, we couldn’t drink the water, and we’d have to buy bottled, and I was having a hard time staying hydrated. Once we made it to the beach, we found many emplaced beach chairs and umbrellas. We, with some incredulity, thought that they were set up for the benefit of the tourists… until a guy came along asking for money. Later the girls wanted to get blended drinks and went off to a nearby bar-stand for daiquiris, and came back with drinks costing 9 euros, which is around 14 dollars canadian at the time. I just had some water, thankfully.

This better be the best daiquiri ever… *slurp*.. it wasn’t

After the beach we went back to the ship for dinner, and later on went to the casino again to use the internet kiosks they had set up there. We had to swipe our boarding cards so it could charge us. They charged per download-minute, so once you loaded and page and sat there, it wouldn’t just keep charging you. But even with that, the bandwidth for me to load up hotmail and then send an email to my parents cost 2.02 euros.

We were to have another early morning the next day, as that was when we were to disembark for Crete, our first island we would be staying at for longer than an excursion. So once again we went back to our tiny cabin for another rocky sleep.

To be continued

We had to wake up quite early this morning, as we hit Turkey at 6:30 and excursions would be starting shortly after. We were actually doing two excursions this day, the first of the ruins of Ephesus, and then later one on the island of Patmos. We had originally planned just for Patmos, but Hugo, our Transat guy on the ship, convinced us to do Ephesus too, thankfully.

We got up and had breakfast and then had to go through Turkey’s customs office, since we had left Greece. The armed guards were a nice intimidating touch. We went to the 3rd settlement of Ephesus, the first two having been lost. The ruins themselves were impressive, and Laura and I took a number of photo’s. Alicia couldn’t as her camera was presumed stolen at this point. One amusing ruin at the site were the toilets, which were a pretty social affair.

It must suck getting stuck in one of the corner seats

After the ruins, the ending of the tour was dumping us at a carpet salesroom. Specifically the two loop variety which is apparently an investment, and for the kind of money they are asking for, an investment you probably shouldn’t actually walk on. The head salesman was quite smooth with the pitch, claiming to be from Toronto and thus would not try to pull one over on us. We got a free beverage with our 20 minute commercial, and for a millisecond I was thinking of getting a very small silk carpet. The two other kinds were of no interest to me, I only wanted silk, and for one the size of a napkin cost over 800… I forget if that was CND or Euros, probably Euros, but eithr way, far more than I was willing to spend.

After that we headed for the Kusadasi Bazaar, where we were told ahead of time to haggle, no matter what. I kept that scene from Life of Brian in my head when I bought a fridge magnet for my mother. I didn’t go for a particularly good deal, they wanted 3 euros, I said I’d pay 2 and got it. I think Alicia did a better ratio with a necklace she got.

No comma means it’s a funny sign

The shopkeeps would be hanging around their shops, trying everything to get you to stop. For the girls, they had calls for jewerlery and such, but for me, they kept claiming to have clothing my size. “Sir, Sir, I have your size”, apparently that’s where all the clothes that fit me are hidden, Turkey. But I didn’t stop, since I already had enough crap in my suitcase, didn’t need more.

We returned to the ship around noon for the shoveoff for Patmos, and that excursion was pretty much a dud, and remained our Gold Standard of crap up until Athens. I can’t remember exactly what the problem was, I think the tour details were just uninteresting and overly based in religion, but as the only interest in the island is due to it being where St. John wrote the book of revelations, I don’t think there was a way out of that. But I think it was the bit where the tour guide told us about the magic healing powder they found in place of St. John’s body was where my mind checked-out.

Look at this weird powder left here in place of the dead guy,
Hey, I have an idea, let’s try rubbing it on our wounds.

I don’t even have many photo’s from Patmos, which is a shame since we had to walk up quite a number of stairs to get to the site, which tired me out quite a bit. The worst part about the stairs was that most of them had a grade, which to me seems to violate the purpose of stairs. After the tour we wondered for a bit, but it was getting cold so we took the overloaded tender boat back to the ship.

And I forget if it was just after Turkey, or after Patmos as well, but this is the day that Alicia recovered her camera. She asked our cabin steward if he had seen it, and he suggested checking the lost and found. And lo and behold, it was there. Alicia wasn’t sure when or where she could have left it, but no matter, it was back and intact, so that dark cloud was gone. We went for our 9pm dinner reservation that we had to make the day before, and we were seated on our own near the kitchen. During the breakfasts, they would direct us to tables, frequently with other people we didn’t know, but for the dinner, it was just us.

We decided to hit the small casino on the ship for a while. The girls played blackjack, while I opted for the socially-withdrawn slot machines, and lost my 15 euros in short order, and after watched the blackjack play out and had a drink. We again had another early night because we would be arriving at Rhodes the next morning and had an excursion to wake up for.

To be continued

I haven’t been on a flight since I was but a little boy, only the one way from Florida to Toronto, after a trip to Disneyland having gotten there driving. I was reasonably concerned about flying, not about the flight itself, but everything else, like the baggage check, metal detector, and also whether I could fit into the seats on an airplane these days.

I met up with Alicia the morning of Day 1, as Murad was driving and picking up from there. I had packed the night before, one duffle bag with the clothing, and my backpack as a carryon. When we made it to the airport, we put our checked luggage into the system and claimed our physical tickets, and then had several hours to kill, so we went to Coras for breakfast. I was concerned about leaving the airport, since I figured once you were in, you were supposed to stay in, but I guess security is the point of no return. So after breakfast and spending most of the rest of my Canadian money, we went back to the airport and through security.

I get pretty paranoid about that stuff, so I put my belt and wallet and watch in my carryon in the hopes of not setting off the machine, and it didn’t go off so I guess I don’t have some previously unknown metal plate in my skull. Of course, we still have the rule about liquids and gels, where any such substances need to be small containers worth, and together fit into a clear baggie. At first I thought I didn’t need to even deal with that issue, until I thought of my little tub of lip balm, which I figured was gel-like enough to be part of that rule, so I baggied it as required, but it didn’t end up ever being a problem.

The boarding of the flight went smoothly, the three of us were all together in one of the 3-seat sections. The flight was empty enough for Alicia, the poor one in the middle, to go to the next section of seats in the center section in our row. Despite that, I was still massively uncomfortable. The flight lasted 9.5 hours, and it was quite tedious. We had 3 movies shown, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Vantage Point and Bucket List. After that, they showed various programs that did nothing to alleviate the boredom, including a show on truffles. None of this helped to drown out the incredibly obnoxious guy who sat near us.

Once we finally landed, the day started again as the flight left at around 3pm and took 8 hours, it was now 7am in Athens. Then we had to go through customs, and this was if anything worse than the flight. First we were herded onto a bus without explanation, and after a few false starts in trying to close the doors, were herded onto another bus, and made it to main terminal. Once at the passport line, it seemed to take forever, and there were only a couple booths open, out of the many that stood empty. As we started to get closer, it seemed someone wanted his family/tour group to all go through together, and about 30 people cut into the line a few people ahead of us. Though there was a lot of grumbling, no one seemed to challenge them on this. We got through the booth without incident, but feeling as if we were running late. We collected our baggage and found an Air Transat representative, who directed us to another one on the far side of the terminal, who then directed us to a bus where we affixed tags to our bags and got on the bus.

We spent an entertaining half hour making it down the to cruise ship. Entertaining because the traffic in Athens is shocking compared to what I’m used to. People would drive on what we would traditional call The Shoulder, and motorbikes would weave between cars in a way I can only describe as crazy. We made it to the ship docked at the port, called Aquamarine, and went onboard. Once there, we had to surrender our passports, which I thought was odd since you’re not really supposed to do that, but I followed suite. We got Boarding Cards which we had to scan when embarking or disembarking the ship, presumably to ensure they weren’t leaving people behind.

This is pretty much the entire room

The cabin was some kind of small. With the 3 of us, it was hard to arrange ourselves so people could move around. The whole room was basically an aisle leading from the door past the bathroom to the beds, one of which was a bunk-bed. If an airplane bathroom had a shower, that’s about how big the cabin bathroom was. It was a little before noon at this point, and we knew we had some safety announcement to come. The emergency procedures sign in our cabin told us to put our life jackets on for the thing, but no one listens to me. I put mine on, badly, once the test alarm had sounded. We proceeded to our lifeboat location where they ordered us by weight most likely in rows and then criticized our lifejacket fastening abilities. I think they put me at the back because it was clear that the jacket would never fit and it would be easier if they let me drown, but I figure I’m probably more buoyant that the lifejacket.

After the drill, we went for lunch, but we weren’t sure what was included and entered a pub and asked for the menu, and they gave us the drinks menu. After Alicia asked some other people, it turned out we just go to the buffet for food, and so we did and had lunch. I was starting to feel tired, and at 1pm we had our first meeting with Hugo, our Transat agent on the Aquamarine. We got some basic information and booked some of our excursions, the first of which was the Mykonos island excursion, which wasn’t really, it was just free time on the island. It would take some time for us to reach the island and so we went back to the cabin for a bit to rest. A while later, Laura and Alicia went to explore the ship further, but I was still tired and opted to stay behind and sleep.

When I was woken due to our arrival, I felt utterly terrible, which is usually how it goes for me when I take naps. We met in the main lounge to be called for us to leave the ship. Mykonos was our first island, and not part of an organized excursion, so we just wondered around. There was enough english around to keep us from thinking we’d have a problem, but the place is still a maze, made worse by night falling while we were there. We got a bit lost admittedly, and Laura asked a scary guy for directions. I honestly couldn’t understand much of what he said, but I did hear him call Laura a “Beautiful lady” in his very gravelly scary-guy voice. We escaped the maze and had a snack at a little taverna near the port. It was there that we had our first shots of Ouzo, little glasses filled with a milky white substance that smelled very much of black licorice. And it tasted like it too, that and burning. After that we went back to the ship for dinner.

Imagine a Large Scary Man here

Dinner that night was a-la-carte, but later we were to have the usual all-you-can-eat buffet of generic food that was not greek at all, and so the food at the taverna was our authentic-greek food memory for the next few days. We got seated with a couple who were from Montreal, the guy guy speak english, but his wife only a little bit, so he often translated the more difficult statements we made. It’s always fun when people ask what we do for a living, since most people aren’t quite sure what Grid Computing or Enterprise Workforce Management is. When we returned to the cabin, Alicia started looking for her camera which she didn’t bring with her to Mykonos, and wasn’t able to find it. After tearing her belongings apart, we figured it had been stolen. We had ‘bought’ the key to our little safe in the room (with it’s alarming stipulation of that if we didn’t return the key the midnight before the date of departure it would cost us 100 euros) but we had only put our money and such in there. We could only figure the cabin steward had taken it, but it seemed too obvious.. in any case, it put a little dark cloud over the trip.

We got ready for bed early that night since we had an early day tomorrow, since we’d be arriving at Kusadasi, Turkey the next day at 6:30am and the excursion would start shortly after. Alicia took the bunk bed, thankfully, since I would probably have broken it and killed whoever slept under me. The ship was starting to rock back and forth rather noticeably at this point, but I managed to fall asleep quickly.

To be continued

We recently returned from our trip to Greece, and there are numerous stories to tell. I’m planning my own write-up of events, day by day, as based on memory and on notes I took at the time. I didn’t take that many notes, so I’m sure lots of stuff has fleeted in the mean time, but I’m sure the others will write disparaging comments on the entries with additional details.

My initial invitation for the trip was in late May, where the original group was Alicia, Laura and Chez. As the months went on, Chez eventually had to bow out of the planning. After some more planning discussions, we finally booked in early July, with just myself, Alicia and Laura. The travel agency didn’t bat an eye at booking a triple, and as we discovered, the accommodations were nearly, but not quite, ideal.

The booking of the trip cost nearly $3,000, plus we each brought some extra money along. I got 800 euros, wherein each euro cost around 1.5 dollars at the time. I came back with about 250 euros, which I’ll sell back.

The trip was 2 weeks, from September 28th to October 13th. This entry will contain a table of contents for the entry for each day in the journey, and be linked as each entry is actually written.

Day 1 – Flight, Cruise ship boarding and Mykonos Excursion
Day 2 – Turkey, Ephesus Excursion, Patmos Excursion
Day 3 – Rhodes Excursion
Day 4 – Crete landing
Day 5 – ‘Unknown Crete’ Excursion
Day 6 – Knossos Palace
Day 7 – ‘Spinalonga’ Excursion
Day 8 – Fast Ferry, Santorini landing
Day 9 – ‘Santorini Bus Tour’ Excursion
Day 10 – ‘Volcano Tour’ Excursion
Day 11 – Return to Cruise Ship
Day 12 – Athens landing, ‘City Tour’ Excursion
Day 13 – Shopping and Sightseeing
Day 14 – ‘Cape Sounion’ Excursion
Day 15 – Flight home

In general, it was a good trip. I found it pretty tiring, both at the time, and even now, but I think I’m just jet-lagged. And on the plus side, Alicia, Laura and I are still on speaking terms, which wasn’t necessarily a given. Everyone had a good time, and many a photograph was taken.

Not pictured, Greece

Greece Greece Greece