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Published: February 5th 2009
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Kos
Jay demonstrating the Hippocratic Oath under the Plane tree where Hippocrates taught his pupils. Of course it isn't the same tree, (Plane trees only live for a couple hundred years) but in Greece, myth and history are very intertwined. We've dragged ourselves away from Istanbul and got on an overnight bus that took us all the way down the Aegean coast to the town of Bodrum. We had booked a ferry the following day to the island of Kos but we needed to spend a night in Bodrum. There was potential here for a nice relaxing day in a small beach resort town but instead it turned into a major hassle. There was nobody at any of the hostels or pensions in town. By nobody I mean nobody to let us inside so we spent the first half of the day waiting outside the backpackers hostel until one of the guests finally let us in and we found an empty room (of course in the morning there was somebody there to collect our money). The second half of the day was spent trying to find the travel agency to pick up our tickets as it had moved around the harbour a few times.
Finally the next day we made it onto the boat and headed off for Kos and Greece. The ride was only about an hour and we had the entire day on the island before we hopped
Kos
Ruins in the middle of Kos Town another ferry bound for our final destination, Santorini. In Kos town we explored some ancient Greek ruins before taking a walk along the beach. It was actually warm enough to lay on the beach so we stopped at a little gazebo and relaxed for awhile. It's nice to have 20 C weather in this part of Europe after the freezing cold of eastern Europe.
That night we were back on the boat for Santorini and were met by the people who ran the hotel we'd booked. It was a nice touch as it was quite late at night. The villa was amazing, 20 euros a night for our own room with marble floors and a massive balcony. You can pick up some great deals in winter as there are literally no tourists. We stayed for 5 nights as we were really just killing time until we were due to meet the family in Athens.
Santorini has an amazing history. It's a volcanic island that has been completely reshaped numerous times from volcanic activity. There was an eruption here around 5000 years ago that they figure was one of the biggest eruptions of all time. This eruption created the
Kos
Palm tree amongst the ruins steep caldera where the main town, Fira, was built at one of the highest points on the cliff. It's one of the most dramatic landscapes we've seen so far on our trip.
We spent our time on Santorini either hiding in our room to get away from the stormy weather or going for nice long walks once the weather improved. While we walked there was a pack of local dogs that would follow us everywhere we went. There was a core group that started following us and then everytime we passed another dog they just seemed to join in. At one point we had 12 dogs following us. We named most of them, the leader of the pack was named Michelin as he was the one who lead the chasing of the vehicle tires as they drove by. We got a few glares from the locals for not having our dogs on leashes but there was nothing we could do about it. They would even wait for us outside when we went into the shops.
We pretty much explored the entire island after a few days and we were quite bored just counting down the days until Christmas
Kos
Laying on the beach on the 19th of December. There's a first time for everything. so we were happy to be getting on the Christmas eve ferry headed for Athens. Only 2 more days now until we see the family!
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