Six ferries, five buses, two bikes and no kayaks

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Kind of feels funny writing about our time on the greek islands (yes, we've well and truly moved on since then, now sitting a few hundred metres from the leaning tower of pisa).

I think I left off as we abandoned our bikes at the hostel in Athens and took a fast ferry out to the little island called Antiparos. Why Antiparos? Well, mainly because a couple of years ago I read an article in the Tasmanian Sea Kayaking Journal about sea kayaking there, so I had got in contact with Kostas who ran the sea kayaking and arranged to hire some kayaks for a couple of days.

We arrived mid-afternoon and it was raining as our ferry pulled into the island, not hard, but just a little. We found a lovely room in a little hotel, third floor with a balcony looking out over the harbour and only costing 25 Euros a night, We then set out to explore the tiny winding streets between small rain showers, or more correctly during the rain showers. The place was virtually tourist free(just how I liked it) and so we sent a text message to Kostas to let him know we were in town (we asked around, but no-one seemed to have heard of him) and then whiled away the afternoon.

we didnòt catch up with Kostas until the next afternoon, and having abandoned hope of catching him in the morning we hired a couple of bikes (1 Euro each for the day) to go explore the Island. The handlebars fell off my bike within the first 300 metres which can be a tad disconcerting, even for the experienced cyclist. In all the daily checks you read about before getting on your bike, none of them talk about checking that your handlebars don't spin around and your front brakes fall off. Undeterred, I hobbled back to the cycling shop, got another one and off we went ...

The Island is only about 10kms end to end, maybe a bit more, and we were assured there were several restaurants along the way (there were, but they were just all closed). It was a hot, windy day and with nowhere to buy any water the ride was absolutely beautiful but god we were desperate for a drink by the time we got back into town. No need to say how cranky a dehydrated Christie can be.

We went down to where the road ends at a town called St George, then came back via a fantastic (though very steep) route past the Islands main attraction - a cave, which was darn near the top of the highest point on the island and was of course also closed, though you only find this out when you actually arrive there. We jumped the fence to have a look (we were hot, tired and a little cranky and wanted to see something for our efforts) but still couldn't see much. We returned along little backroads through farming areas down into town, though grinding into a headwind most of the way. Still, it was a great day, and we ended it with a little ride around the trails around town in the evening, before finishing with a great dinner at a little pasta shop.

It was still too windy to go kayaking on the third day, so we abandoned our plans and headed back to Paros and caught a slow (and much more enjoyable) ferry on to Santorini. The fast ferries don't allow you out on deck, so it's like sitting on an aeroplane, whereas on the slow ferries, you can go grab a seat out on deck and get to enjoy the sites much more.

Santorini was one of those few places in the world that stands up to its postcards. The towns really are perched on top of these steep cliffs ( you should have seen Christie's eye's light up when she saw the lng, twisting, steep pathway down to the old port - all she could see was Boot Camp, eat your heart out). OK, we were there for three nights and didn't get a sunset, but as you wander around the town, eating cheap giros, every corner you turn around is worth a photograph. It's just absolutely what you expect. We tried to have a romantic dinner in one of the expensive restaurants whilst watching the sunset on the first night, but instead we got rained on.

We did a volcano tour on the second day (yawn) and ended up jumping off the tour at one of the towns and making our own way back to our accomodaton. There's something about tours which just doesn't work for me. We did stumble across this magical basement bookshop in Oia or whatever the town was called and picked up a couple more books to read.

We caught an overnight ferry with ANEK Lines on the third night back to Athens, with onwards tickets to Patra and from there a second overnight Ferry to .... Ancona, Italy! Never heard of Ancona? Nor really had we, I can just say that we were tossing up between flying to Rome or catching a ferry to Venice and in the end just decided to go somewhere we knew nothing about ... now that's my kind of touring ...

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