Paulette

We signed up for a snorkeling tour yesterday.  We put 10 euros each deposit.  “They’ll pick you up at your hotel at 9:45 AM.”  For some reason neither Carla nor I really believe someone will pick us up but we head to the gate and stand by the entrance waiting for our ride.

It doesn’t come and I head back to the office and speak to Fred.  I get in trouble for not booking it with him.  “This would not have happened if I had booked it.”  I stand there and take it.  He’s helping us now by phoning everyone.  He finally gets through to someone who knows about us.  It ends up the morning tour was full.  The dive center had been waiting for confirmation from us.  The tour agent did not complete the arrangements.  They can take us for the afternoon trip and will pick us up at 1:15 PM.

At 1:00 we head to the gate to wait.  There is a truck there and I see Mediterranean on the side.  Our guy is early!  It is a dirty truck and we get assigned two little side seats in the back.  We have to dig for seat belts.  They’ve never been used and they are filthy.  Regardless we buckle up.

We arrive at the office and wait for the rest of the group.  We will be 12 people heading out.   Bobby is a nice girl from Austria.  She will take the snorkelers.  George is the dive master and seems to run the operation.  He will take the divers.  We drive to the dive center just opposite the black beach.

The black beach is small black pebbles so hot that you cannot walk on it even with flip flops.  It’s like walking on hot tar.   They have wooden walkways so that you can get to the sea.  Beaches here aren’t that great.

We get setup with all our gear, fins, mask, snorkel and short wet suit.   We don’t think we’ll need the wet suit but we are told to bring it and we can ditch it when we get to the snorkeling.   We now drive to the port where the dingy is docked.

When we get to the dock, 9 of the group decide they are not going on the trip.  They are traveling together and need to catch their cruise boat at 5:30.  It is already near 3:00 and although George insists he will bring them back early they don’t feel they can enjoy the trip knowing they might miss their boat.

George makes arrangements to send them back.  So now there is Carla & I with Bobby for snorkeling and a young German man with George for the diving.  Worked out for us!

We head out on the dingy.  We see the black beach, the red beach, the white beach.  The names say it all.  We won’t need to visit those.  The dingy ride is fun.  We get sprayed with salt water.  I’m feeling very weathered by this point.

Our first stop snorkeling is at the caves.  There are several different spots for snorkeling the caves.  Due to the waves we can’t go to the best caves but these are fine. Bobby has a full length wetsuit on so we decide to leave our shorties on for the first swim.

Into the water we go.  Between the wetsuit and the salt water we float very well.  The water is cool.  Good thing we kept our wetsuits.   We swim into narrow channels and view the rocks below.  The fish are sparse.  We go deep enough into one cave that everything is black.  You cannot see a thing.  Back out we notice how blue the water is.  We didn’t notice it going into the cave but after the dark you can really see it.

We get back on the boat and drive a bit to our next stop.  Here we are given a croissant (with chocolate filling, yummy!) and some juice.  This is our rest before the next swim.  George and Bobby take the opportunity to chain smoke.  (There’s way too much smoking in Greece for our comfort.)

After our break we head back into the water and swim around.  We see crabs, sea sponge and a few other things.  It isn’t the type of snorkeling I’ve done where you see a variety of colorful fish.  It is interesting though.

One thing we’ve found in Greece is that the water is full of garbage.  We’ve noticed it in several places.  There is garbage floating on top, weeds, plants as well.   I just try to keep my mouth closed as to not get anything inside of me.

Time to head back.  We pass fishing boats and seagulls.  The spray again is wetting us and making us a little chilly.  Back at the dock everything is loaded onto the truck and we drive to the dive center.  We hand in all our gear and wait for the drive back to our hotel.  George drives us back.  It’s been a long day and we are exhausted.

We both jump into the showers and clean off the salt.  That was the best shower I’ve had.  By now we are just in time to watch our last sunset just after 8:00 PM.

We sit outside with a bottle of wine and play Scrabble while Carla takes pictures of the sunset.  We’ve had 2 close games so far.  Carla won the first one.  We tied the second time.  Tonight I get beat - not even close.  I’ll have to practice for next time!

We ask Fred to make us dinner.  Carla takes the meat prepared Greek style with a sauce.  I take the Greek lasagna.  Dorottya, the waitress, brings us a huge Greek salad each, a basket of bread and a fried cheese (can’t remember the name now).  We didn’t order any of that!

Next she brings us our dinner.  My lasagna is very nice and light.  It isn’t the type we have at home.  It is a layer of noodles, a layer of ground beef, a layer of noodles, a bechamel sauce and cheese on top.  It was so good and not heavy.  That’s one thing we’ve notice here is that the food doesn’t make you feel stuffed (unless you eat too much).

Carla’s dish comes and it has meat and peas.  Hmmm, seems they forgot the potatoes.  Next thing we see is a huge bowl with 2 baked potatoes and carrots in it.  There’s way too much food.  We don’t even touch some of it.

By the time we finish eating it is past 10:00 PM.  Again we are eating like the Greeks do.  I couldn’t do this everyday.  I don’t know how they manage to eat so late and then go to bed.

Carla hears an Irish accent and heads over to talk to the couple.  They have lots to talk about.  I listen for a while and then head back to our room to read.  Carla follows a short while later.  We are both pooped.  Tomorrow is our last day in Santorini.  I think we are going to take it easy and relax.

We are hoping to take a tour today so we walk into Fira to buy tickets.  Again we walk about 1 hour before we see the tourist shop that sells the tickets.  The man is very friendly and helpful.  We buy tickets for a boat tour that starts at the old port.  We continue walking until we see signs pointing to where we need to go.

We are it seems miles above the water.  There is a cable car to take you down (looks like a ski lift) but Carla and I want to take the stairs down.  It’s a lot farther than it looks.  We keep walking and walking down the steps and we start seeing more and more poop.  Soon we realize that donkey rides are a different way of making it back up to the top.

We see groups of people going up on donkeys.  At this point we have no time to change our minds nor the energy to climb back up in full sun so we continue.  As we get closer to the bottom the stench is horendous.  At the bottom there are so many donkeys that you have to push your way through.  Disgusting!  We are definitely taking the cable car back up.

We board a nice boat and after about 30 minutes we get off at the volcanic islands.  It is actually 2 volcanoes that merged into 1 island at some point.  Part of the island is huge black boulders while the other half is smaller coloured stones.  The guide tells us the large black boulders came into contact with water while the other side cooled slowly and therefore has more minerals showing.  We spend 1 hour walking up the volcanoes stopping at different spots along the way.

We walk up to the top and see steam coming out at one spot.  It is sulphur and you can surely smell it.  It feel eary walking on the island.  To me it was like walking on the moon.

We get back on the boat and within 20 minutes are at the 2nd stop.  Here you jump into water about 20 metres deep and swim to the hot springs.  It’s not what we expected but we jump in and swim over.  The water is very muddy and gets warmer as we get closer.  Carla has googles and looks underwater and sees a lot of fish.

The swim back to the boat is a little harder.  Not only is the water getting cooler but the waves are against you.  One person needs the life ring to bring them back in.  We do fine.

That’s the end of the tour and they take us back to the port.   We walk immediately to the cable cars and get on.  We are up in the hill in about 20 seconds.  There was no way we were going on the donkey path again.

The path to the port is  long and narrow with many side streets.  Every square inch is a store or restaurant so we shop.  We see a few restaurants that serve fresh fish so we return to one to eat.  We both had the sea bass.  We are asked if we want bread.  I remember to ask if that is extra.  It is he says so we decline.  We don’t really need bread.

I should have taken a picture of the sea bass.  They brought us our plates with the whole fish.  Carla took one look at hers and announced she could not have it looking at her.  We quickly cut off the heads and put them on a side plate and covered them.   It was delicious, light and fresh tasting.

We have a leisurely lunch and then set out to walk back to the hotel.  We want to take the Caldera route which is a path away from the main street.  It takes you through some beautiful hotels and villas.  Some of them look very fancy and expensive.  We stop to take a lot of pictures.  It’s amazing what they can build on the side of a mountain.

The walk is long and the sun is hot.  Carla says it’s like a mirage.  We keep thinking we should be there soon but it is always just over there.  It’s been another day of lots of walking.  I think we are making up for all the food we ate previously.

By 6:00 PM we are back.  Carla jumps in the pool.  I opt for a shower.  We are going to have a Greek salad later and drink some wine we bought in town.  I’m pooped!

Carla and I tie in Scrabble.  We’ve combined the Spanish & Greek Scrabble letters to make an English one but the scoring is a little off.

Tomorrow we’ve booked a snorkeling tour with 2 stops.  I hope the fins they bring me fit!

Manoli drove us into Irakleon to the port.  We caught the 9:45 AM ferry to Santorini.  It is a huge catamaran.  We have reserved seats.  It all looks good.

We soon take off and the motion is wicked.  I get dizzy just thinking of it now.  No fear I took my Gravol before we left.

It didn’t work.  I am soon feeling so seasick that Carla says I look green.  That’s hard to do considering I have a sunburn.  She says I don’t look like myself at all.  I white knuckle it for over 2 hours.  When we get off on Santorini it is hot and I can barely walk straight.  I just want to lie down.

We look for our ride and don’t see a sign with our name so we grab a taxi.  When we arrived at our hotel we are told there was someone there to pick us up.  Oh well, we are here now.  Our room isn’t quite ready but it didn’t take long for her to clean up.  We did arrive before check-in.

We turned the air conditioning on and I unpack a bit.  I’m starting to feel better already.  The room is very nice.  It will be quite comfy.

We head out to the pool and swim a bit.  The water is cooler than other pools we’ve been in here.  It is refreshing though.  We blow up our air mattresses and paddle around.  I spend a bit of time just lounging on it.

We ask the owner if he can make us dinner and he gives us a few options.  We choose the veal prepared Greek style with a sauce and mashed potatoes.  In the meantime we go and change.

We sit by the pool overlooking the sea and the sun is starting to set.  We drink some wine that her friend Shelly arranged for Carla and eat stuffed vine leaves.  Carla beats me at Scrabble.  We played with a spanish version and there were a lot of vowels (which I seemed to only get) and a lot of letters missing (J, K, W, X, Y).  We only notice at the end.  No wonder we couldn’t find any words!

The sun sets into a hazy sky.  Carla takes a lot of pictures.  Fred sends a glass of champagne to everyone to watch the sunset.  As soon as the sun goes down it is chilly.  Carla gets her hoody and my fleece.  We move closer to the inside of the bar area to keep warm.  Now we know why the pool water is cool!

Then Fred brings us our wonderful dinner.  The meat was so tender and the sauce so flavourful.  We enjoyed it tremendously.   I asked if they had any dessert (yes I was looking for a chocolate fix).  Fred says we can have figs from his tree if we want.  So he sends the waitress over to get figs and brings us a plate of them.  I’ve never had fresh figs before.  They are really good!

By now it is getting late and we head to our room.  It’s going to be a busy day tomorrow so we need our sleep.

Carla and I walked into the town of Stalida today.  What we thought would be a 1/2 hour walk ended up being about 1 1/2 hours.  We walked along the road.  We shopped along the way.  We didn’t buy much though.  It seemed to be the same touristy stuff at all the shops.

Soon it was lunchtime and we were hungry and tired of walking.  Carla spotted a place that looked like a restaurant but it had a pool.  We weren’t sure if we could use it or not so we asked.  Sure they said.  Have lunch, jump in the pool stay as long as you want.  We each had a salad and a drink.  The bread was delicious.  We soon learned that when they ask you if you want bread they are charging you extra for it.  I’ll remember that next time.

The pool was warm and we swam then lounged for a bit and then swam again.   After a couple of hours we figured we should start walking back.  Eva & Manoli will be wondering where we are!

We walked back along the beach.  We saw a lot of resorts and play areas.  We each bought an air mattress for our stay in Santorini.  We walked straight back to Eva’s because we were so late getting back.

Although Manoli had an evening planned for us we begged to stay home.  We had been on the move every minute since we got here.  After dinner, Carla and I walked down to the beach for a plunge into the waves.  We shopped a little more - how can you say no to a cute little purse for 3 euros!

Back at Eva’s we looked at her family albums.  We saw her wedding album, her son Anthony’s christening and heard many wonderful stories.  It’s been quite an experience staying with them.  I hope they get to visit us in Ottawa.

Tonight we went to the village of Mohos where Eva’s family is from.  It is about 9KM up from where she currently lives.  They are currently renovating the house her grandparents lived in.  Eva’s parents will move in.

The village is a picture perfect Greek village.  There are cobblestone streets, boys playing on their bikes, men sitting out front watching everyone go by.  We walk towards the village centre and stop at a pub for a drink of Raki (Greek version of moonshine).  Ugh I don’t manage but Carla finishes hers.

We continue down the road and sit at an outdoor restaurant in the village centre.  We are surrounded by shops and restaurants and a church.  It is so beautiful it looks staged.  We are told that a movie was filmed here recently.  I hope to find that movie and watch it sometime.  I wonder how much of the village they will use.

We had the best authentic greek food.  We opted for a variety of appetizers.  We were not disappointed.  Everything was made with fresh ingredients.  We’ll need to do a lot more walking!

Today we went into town to Iraklion.  We went through the market and stopped at a travel agency to pick up our tickets for the ferry to Santorini.

Linens seem to be the good bargain here in Greece.  We noticed nice things and good prices in Athens and now again on Crete in Iraklion.

Mid-afternoon we head back to Eva’s.  Carla and I take a walk along the road.  Their neighbours a few doors down have goats.  It’s that kind of place.  Horses go down the street.  Everyone seems to have a garden or olive trees.

I’m so surprised by the olive trees.  They are about the size of a small crab-apple tree.  There are so many olives in one bunch on one section of branch.  I can’t imagine how many olives they harvest from one tree!

Carla and I then head down to the sea for a swim.  This is my first time in the Aegan sea.  It is so warm!  There are waves and I’m a little nervous so I don’t head out very far.  It is refreshing though.

Imagine living so close to the sea that you can walk down anytime for a dip.

Carla and I have a few hours before we fly to Crete.  We go to the Plakka and shop, shop, shop.  Some of the prices are very cheap.  I have limited space in my bags so I’m extra picky about what I get.  I don’t want to overdo it on the 1st day!

After shopping we head back to the hotel and swim/lounge by the pool.  What a relaxing time!

At 5PM we head to the airport.  Our flight is a little delayed and we arrive in Crete about 30 minutes late.  Carla’s friend Eva is there to greet us.  Her husband Manoli and kids Athony and Maria are with them.  They drive us to their place about 30 minutes away.

They live in a small town called Salida (?) in a bungalow on a hill.  They make us feel completely at home.  Her husband has been preparing food for us.  It’s almost 10PM and they bring out “dinner”.  Carla and I are thinking “It’s bedtime.  I’m really not hungry.”  But we sit down anyway to home-made fish soup, greek salad and Mousaka.  Oh my gosh this is so good.  All of the food is either picked fresh from their garden or bought locally.  Everything is organic.  Manoli used to be a chef and he’s an excellent cook.

This is the start of pigging out…

We took a half day tour of Athens today.  We started off by getting on the wrong tour bus.  A tour guide came into the hotel.  We told her who we were and she told us to get on the bus.  We get the best seats up front.  Everything is going so well.

Then once on the bus she asked for our tickets.  We didn’t have any.  Soon she’s telling us we are on the wrong bus.  They let us off at another hotel and tell us someone will come and get us.  Good grief…

We wait at the hotel and this small van comes with GO Tours on it.  Oh no, we are going on this tiny little thing.  The tour guide checks his list and no we aren’t on it.  Now I’m thinking we’ve missed our tour.  

Soon a big GO Tour bus comes along and they are happy to see us.  We sit behind a couple from Montreal.  We talk to them and they tell us they are getting off this bus and getting on a french tour bus.  We can have their front row seats.  They get off and we grab the front row.  Back where we started.  Things are going well.

We stop at one more hotel and oh my gosh I can’t believe it.  It’s the 2 smoking women from the previous night.  They take the seat directly behind us.  They smell like smoke.  Thank goodness they can’t smoke on the bus.

This tour is a good one.  The tour guide has a lot of information and we stop at the modern day Olympic stadium.  It’s beautiful.  We get out and take pictures. 

Our next stop is at the Temple of Zeus.  We get out to walk around and take pictures.  It’s amazing to see all these old sites.  The marble is weathered.   In the distance you can see the Acropolis.

We then head to the Acropolis.  There are tons of people there.  It looks like quite a task to climb to the top but we are assured that it is not.  We go to the Parthenon first and take that in.  It’s a bumpy terrain to walk on.  You have to be careful of your footing. 

We climb up to the Acropolis.  The view is tremendous.  It’s strange to be in front of this old architectural site.  It’s very windy at the top and dust is flying through the air.   We walk around the back and down areas where most tourists do not go.  It is very arid land with little but trees.

The tour ends here.  We are close to our hotel so we walk home rather than wait for the bus.  We were close enough to most of the sites though to have walked there ourselves.   The tour guide gave us a lot of information though.  He was very knowledgeable.

Carla and I took a bus tour of Athens tonight.  It sounded good on paper.  Guided bus tour around Athens with dinner at the foot of the Acropolis in an authentic pub.

Our tour guide was more interested in talking to the driver.  He had little to say as we drove around.  We stopped half-way at a “scenic spot” for pictures.  It was basically a cigarette break.  It was a dirty spot and the view was not great.

We went to a pub at the Plakka.  It’s an old place with live entertainment.  I think the same people have been doing the same signing/dancing routines for 30 years.  The belly dancer had lots of belly but she was very good.

Our dinner was included in the trip.  We sat down at a long table.  Two women sat beside us and immediately lit up cigarettes.  When the food came they continued to smoke while eating!  Bite of food, puff of smoke, bite of food… 

Carla asked them to please not smoke while we are eating.  They didn’t understand english and one of them thought we wanted cigarettes.  She offered Carla some.  YUCK.  Carla responded quickly and motioned with her hands.  They didn’t get the message and kept smoking.  Others went outside to smoke. 

The food was at best cheap cafeteria food.  We ate quickly and left.  It ends up our hotel is very close to the Acropolis, the Plakka etc.  We walked home instead of waiting for the bus.

This is definitely one tour you want to miss!  We have another one tomorrow morning.  Our expectations are not high.

So all the worrying about the Lufthansa strike was pretty much for nothing.  The planes left pretty close to their scheduled departure times.   The trip from Frankfurt to Athens was a little tense for a bit.  The time to embark passed and there was no plane on the tarmac.  Eventually they bused us around the airport, past the cargo planes onto the runway at the back and we boarded from there.  The one good thing is that it was close to the runway so no taxiing to get going!  Once in the air all was normal (except for the really, really big woman sitting next to me).

I met up with Carla in the airport in Athens.  What a relief to finally be here!  We hopped into a taxi and blabbled non-stop all the way to the hotel.  She did very well at Rescue 2008.  She won 2 golds, 3 silvers & 1 bronze medal.  Way to go Carla! 

We quickly changed into our swimsuits and headed to the pool area.  We grabbed our 1st vacation drink - Mai Tai and celebrated.  The pool water was warm.  The air temperature just perfect.  The pool area is done in tile and marble.  It is all so beautiful.

Tonight we are heading out for a dinner tour of Athens.  That should be amazing. 

So far it’s been easy enough.  Most people here speak English.  Certainly at both airports there are English signs and all the personnel speak English.  Everyone has been very friendly.  I asked the bartender at the pool today if it is customary to tip in Greece.  He said it was.  I asked how much - 10%-15% and he replied 8%-10%.  Nice of him to be honest about what they expect. 

I’m still happy that I did carry-on only.  I’ll probably check the luggage in on the way home but at least I had no worries about the ground crew getting behind.

I haven’t slept since I left.  I’ve lost track of Ottawa time already (helps that I didn’t bring any timepieces with me).  I’m hungry for dinner and it’s dinner time here so I think the jet lag missed me.  I’m sure it will find me on the way home.