After 4 nights in Athens we are now leaving for a villa outside the small town of Marathonas, 26 miles north of the city. This is where the Battle of Marathon took place around 500 BC between the Athenians and the invading Persians. I know it's 26 miles from Athens because this is where, supposedly, Pheidippides ran from the plains where the battle took place into the city to announce the great victory for the home side, thereby running the first marathon. The story isn't one hundred percent true but it works in Greece. The villa is managed by a local couple, Stavros and Rosa, that lives right next door and they offered to pick us up straight from our hotel in the centre of Athens. The trip takes about an hour and the traffic is ... read more

Well we are in Athens now waiting for our family to show up tomorrow. I’m super worried they won’t make it in time because of all the snow back home. I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that they won’t make it on time… I just hope they do make it! The ferry ride from Santorini was really nice. BC Ferries should take some notes! It was Christmas Eve while we were on the ship, and very unexpectedly the crew served traditional Greek ginger cookies with champagne. We got into the terminal a little early (11:30 pm) which was super lucky because the metro in Athens only ran until 12:00 and we had to make a transfer. We ended up making the very last metro train headed downtown and rolled into bed at about 2:00 ... read more

Well we finally made it .. Istanbul. We were starting to get a little tired of eastern Europe and have been looking forward to this for a couple weeks. There are few cities like Istanbul, it's at the crossroads between the East and the West and it's history is unmatched. To get here we took an overnight bus from Sofia. That was an adventure unto itself. The bus pulls up to the border at about 2 am where everybody gets off and goes through the usual border hassles. We had to buy travel visas which unfortunately cost 3 times more for Canadians than any other western country (go Canada!). After the required stamps were received our bags were quickly searched for contraband and then we were on our way into Turkey! At the bus station we ... read more

We had another slightly stressful trip on our way to Ohrid, Macedonia. Thanks to another inaccurate Lonely Planet map, we were unable to find the tourist agency in Tirana where we were supposed to buy our bus tickets. No one told us that you can just buy them on the bus! We ran around looking for this place while also trying to exchange our money, as Albanian Leke is virtually worthless outstide of the country. In the end, we were reassured by a couple americans waiting for the same bus that tickets were sold on board. We got in to Ohrid in the afternoon and found our guesthouse. We went out for food but it was starting to get dark so we retired to our room to spend the rest of the night watching Animal Planet ... read more

Country number #20 of the trip and back in the EU.... sort of! Well they use the euro. Montenegro is the world's newest country after a referendum passed in 2006 to separate them from the union of Serbia & Montenegro. We took a bus from Dubrovnik to the town of Kotor, built on the largest inland fjord in Europe. The ride was beautiful as we wound our way down the coast from Croatia. There was an interesting whirlpool-like thing in the Bay of Kotor that looked like an underwater spring. The old town of Kotor was yet another pedestrian-only, walled Roman city (will it never end?). However, this one was quite unique as the wall was built straight up the mountain cliff immediately behing the city. On top of the cliff was an ancient Illyrian fortress ... read more