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Our local church in Greece
Maybe we could incorporate this into Hillsong? Design for the new city church?welll... our main aim for this part of our trip was to see blue and white houses!! if you have ever seen a picture of greece you will know what i mean... it is those amazing white painted houses with blue shutters and doors overlooking the blue blue of the mediterranean!! basically we had no other plan!! so it was pretty easy not to be disappointed on this leg!!
the other side point was that we had to be in istanbul, turkey on the 12th of may to catch a flight back to london so from athens we were island hopping across to ephesus and then on to istanbul overland!
so we started out from pireaus (port in athens) and caught a ferry out to the island of santorini! an overnight ferry it took about 12 hours!! so being the good people that we were we started off in the class that we had actually paid for... deck!! not as bad as it might seem... it was inside on chairs and tables...kind of like a coffee shop... however there are disadvantages about being indoors in greece... the smoke!! the greeks don't just chain smoke one at a time... i
View from the beach
This is where we were staying. Note the black sand... looks interesting, but is very hot to walk on!! swear that they smoke one cigarette in each hand!! the problem is that they are so cheap and so it all just goes down hill from there!! anyway after about an hour i decided that i had had enough... and dave was very aware that i was not happy!! so he decided that if his life was going to be worth living after the night was out he had better find a better option!! so he went up to the purser and asked if we could go and sit in the class above us which had comfortable airline-like seats and best of all no smoking!! the purser looked at him as if he was mad and said of course you can!! i think that we must have been the first travellers in the history of greek ferries to actually ask permission for anything!!!! anyway... meant that we had a much better night and dave got brownie points from his wife which is the most important thing anyway!!
so santorini... we had arranged a hostel on Perissa, one of the quieter beaches... this meant that the hostel owner came and picked us up from the ferry!! such service we have
Our hostel
Pretty huh? not got since we started travelling!! anyway... the hostel was literally on the beach painted in blue and white with a beautiful balcony and swimming pool... i was in heaven from then on!!
we literally did nothing that day except walk up and down the beach stopping at cafes and eating more food and then going onto the beach (black sand) and sitting on the deck chairs provided for our convenience under beach umbrellas... again i think that we were the only ones sitting under the beach umbrellas in full clothes.... but hey....i can stand to look uncool as long as i don't have sunburn!! so we played cards and read lots of books on the beach and ate lots and lots of souvlaki!!! hard life!!
Dave had seen this photo in the lonely planet which he was dying to take... so the next day we hired a car and decided to find the shot! so we started in the capital Fira which we thought was a good place as any... the annoying thing about this photo is that all of the postcrds have the same image in their photos but fail to tell us where the photo
was taken!! anyway thankfully i finally found a card that said that the photo was taken in a town called oia which is in the north of the island... so having established that we sat down for our staple drink of our trip... the only word that never needs translating... coke! however we decided to go for a coke with a view and sat in one of the restaurants overlooking the caldera (which is what a volcano leaves behind after blasting all of the land around it!!) - basically a big cove of sea with islands in it...very beautiful! well it had better have been a beautiful view because we managed to pay $6.50 AUD per coke!! by far the most expensive on our trip!! 50 cents for the coke, $6 for the view, still I guess you're only here once 😊
after our fantastic coke!! we headed off to oia to try and take this photo!! ... now please remember that we are driving on the right here... and my right and left are confused as it is so i am now trying to direct dave (who is having enough challenges changing gears with his right hand!) driving
Somebody's gate
We saw this while we were lost on Santorini... around this island!! needless to say we got horribly lost and ended up at the bottom of a cliff next to some fishing boats! so we got out and discovered that we had landed at one of the lonely planets must sees of the island!! it was a really pretty cove with blue green water and yellow and red boats straight out of a childs picture book! so we stopped and had lunch... fresh fish!!
eventually we ended up in oia which i for one was very pleased about... just in time for me to have a coffee and sit and relax.... but no... dave was determined to get this photo!!
I must interrupt this tirade to say that oia is simply the most beautiful town i have ever seen!! it literally is all white and blue and sits perched up on the top of a cliff oerlooking the Mediterranean sea!! all of the pictures that you have ever seen of the greek islands must have come from this one town because everywhere you look you can see a postcard! red geraniums falling out of window boxes against a white wall with a cat sitting underneath the window..
Pretty harbour
Another benefit of getting lost... you name it we saw it!! the idea of the white is to reflect the sun so that it is nice and cool inside the houses... this is a great idea if you are inside the houses!! however if you are walking up and down narrow streets and up and down white steps with all of that reflected sun now reflecting onto you ... it is not so fun!! anyway... dave was determined to get the photo so up and down the streets we trudged... taking photos of everything that didn't move and occasionally some that did! i think that we got the photo so dave was at last sated and we headed back to our little home!
We next had to head off to Ephesus, Turkey, but the way the greek ferry system works, we had to go via a few more islands. The plan: catch a ferry to Paros, spend the night, then catch a 6am ferry to Samos, which arrived at 3pm, and then catch the 5pm ferry to Turkey!! Quite simple really!! We were a bit concerned over the 2 hour gap at Samos - Greek ferries are ALWAYS late - but usually by no
THE PHOTO
This is the one that I wanted to get. The wideangle one that I got is not available for now but hopefully will be stunning!! more than an hour, so we figured we were safe 😊
Paros was nice. Thing is, after Santorini, we had this suspicion that everything would be downhill, and it certainly felt that way. Paros was quiet, clean, had some character, but was nothing on Santorini. Ate lots of food and got an early night. Although Dave insisted on getting photos of the sunset, so we sat around for 2 hours waiting for the sun to set. Got about 60 photos. The annoying thing about sunsets is that they take forever - and really, all the action is in the last 15 min!! Even more annoying were all the others who rocked up in theose last 15 min and got all the good photos. Oh well, at least we got to spend time together on some hard rocks facing the ocean 😊
Paros hostel had cable TV in our room - actually all the greek island hostels did - and so we got our political tv watching fix by watching the british election all night as the results came in!! i know i might be the only one who enjoys doing this but i think that it is absolutely
fascinating!! thankfully blair won!!
ok... so very early in the morning we trudge down to the ferry terminal to catch our ferry to samos... remember that we have a two hour window so we don't want to be late!! well... the ferry even arrived at paros an hour late so we started to stress... we then continued to stress for the next 7 hours till we got to samos 30 mins after the last ferry to turkey had left... not incredibly impressed with the greek ferry system!!
thankfully we got to the internet in time to let our hotel in turkey know that we were not going to be on the boat (they were supposed to be picking us up from the port!) so we found a hotel and settled in for a day and night on samos!!
Samos, I think would be lovely if you hadn't already been to santorini however we had and so we were just killing time! we hooked up with another couple who had missed the boat as well and just hung out, drank greek coffee (hot sweet sludge) and ate souvlakis! not a bad way to spend 24 hours but would
have been nice to have more time in turkey!!
the one advantage with the time in samos was more baklava!! i think that dave is now completely addicted to the stuff... dripping in honey and all different flavours... orange, chocolate, lemon... fantastic stuff although not really the most healthy!! I think that we put back all of the weight that we lost in south america since we arrived in the UK and in Greece!
finally we managed to get on a ferry 24 hours after we arrived in samos and we were on our way to turkey... a little aprehensive but i covered my shoulders and we set off!!
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anonymous
non-member comment
Wow!
I am drooling - it's beautiful - so nice to see something that is so different from what we see everyday. And I loved the Ephesus photo's too! Glad I am not a coke drinker - but I'm sure water is nearly as expensive! Tru - Trudy