Day 42 We left Crete on Thursday morning by ferry back to Piraeus. *forgiveme...there aremanychallengesonthiskeyboard...likethe spacebardoesn\tworkandthingsarenotasthey arelabelledorusuallyare !as youcan see(. That took 7 hours.Then a fivehour wait forthe midnight ferry to Samos.wehad a cabin//pretty basic but managed to sleepabout8 hours The triplasterd14hours\the last four ofwiich we couldseeTurkeythrough the heat haze.Then another 2 hours toKadasiamdhalfan hour by mini bus away fromtheEurotouristcentre tothislovely regionalmarkettownnear the ancientsite ofEpesus.Sorry. this is deplora [View Full Entry]

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Day 38- Wednesday It is almost the end of our Greek sojourn. All too short, of course. But this was really just a preliminary visit for both of us. Hopefuly there will be more.Tomorrow begins the journey which will take us to Turkey. We have been just organising this all stage by stage as were were not really sure how things would be, given that this is high summer. That has not really been a problem at all for us, other than that prices are higher. So on Thursday we take an 11 hour ferry ride back to Piraeus where, after [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday we had to leave Santorini. Our package gave us a transport down to the ferry terminal about 5pm. On the way, attempting to communicate with the husband/ owner of our rather nice "Holiday Beach Hotel" I realised the answer to my musing yesterday of why all the womwn we had spoken to immigrants married to local Greek men (and whty the Greek mothers had allowed their sons to marry foreigners) . ...Of course the German, Polish etc women anre multilingual and readily add Greek to their list . That then excuses the middle-aged entrepreneurs from knowing more than the most [View Full Entry]

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Day 37 It is so hard to keep track of time and dates. Today is Monday, I think, and we are off to Crete this evening. About three hours by boat. We have just spent the final two nights of our island hopping package on the famed Santorini. It truly is quite spectacularly amazing, with the towns perched precariously on the cliff tops. Today there are six cruise ships anchored in the bay below. One gets the impression if another shipped arrived and off-loaded say another 500 passengers into another 10 huge buses the whole show might overbalance and topple into [View Full Entry]

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Day 34 When you have heard high praise about certain places all your life it is difficult to describe your first response. You actually feel ashamed to have to resort to cliches and superlatives as though you are the first person to have ever been there. The Greek islands are just like that. Amazing! I asked the owner of the delightful restaurant where we dined this evening about the holidaying Greeks who are everywhere, and he explained that most of them are Athenians . He realised that we are from Australia- assumed Melbourne, as it is the second largest Greek population [View Full Entry]

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Day 34 When you have heard high praise about certain places all your life it is difficult to describe your first response. You actually feel ashamed to have to resort to cliches and superlatives as though you are the first person to have ever been there. The Greek islands are just like that. Amazing! I asked the owner of the delightful restaurant where we dined this evening about the holidaying Greeks who are everywhere, and he explained that most of them are Athenians . He realised that we are from Australia- assumed Melbourne, as it is the second largest Greek population [View Full Entry]

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Day 33 After three delightful days on Paros, our time came today to move on. We took the noon ferry to Naxos, only about 45 minutes away, round the other side of the island. Quite a different atmosphere. A bigger island, with more of a "town" like feel. The main town seems to have developed round a medieval Venetian castle. Many more boats at the marina, including private yachts and smaller cruise ships at anchor, all interspersed amongst local fishing boats. Our island hopping package had given us vouchers for a delightful small hotel. A driver in a van met us [View Full Entry]

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Day 32 Another restful day on Paros. We seem to be somewhat out of step with others on the island. There is a major siesta from about 2.30 to 5.30 each day when nearly everything closes. Then everyone comes out refreshed to promenade and talk and eat until midnight (we are told) . Yesterday we had a rest but did not sleep so we went to bed at 10 and didn't wake up till the church bells woke us at 7.30am. This morning we set off early by bus to travel about 10 kilometers across the mountain in the centre of [View Full Entry]

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Day 31- Tuesday Yesterday, as I hope you all have noticed, I finally managed to add the photos because I finally found myself in an up to date internet shop with appropriate connections. So no message, just a backlog of photos, most with rather trite captions as I was in a hurry. As an aside...another trap for novices...we had booked our very nice and highly convenient hotel at the base of the Acropolis from the tourist agent at Athens airport and paid with a voucher. 85 euros! which we thought was expensive but couldn't be helped. We were so pleased with [View Full Entry]

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(Oh dear! I really don't know anything much tonight. it has taken me half an hour to get this far. Every internet cafe is different. IT OFTEN TAKES THREE LOG ONS TO EVEN GET MOVING. iN aUSTRALIA WE TAKE THE INTERNET FOR GRANTED. See even the punctuation is wacko here. the lasst place, the two girls across the road running the internet room up three flights of stairs could not even speak english. when i asked them to help me change it to english they tried "www.iglish.com" all i wanted to do for the last few days has been fix up [View Full Entry]

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