Blogs from Santorini, South Aegean, Greece, Europe - page 37

What about those Wallabies! Consecutive wins. Don't bother yelling down the line about second string Springboks because I've got my fingers in my ears and can't hear a word you're saying. The text messages updating the scores were not encouraging. 7, 14, 17 to nil. But then the mighty Wallabies, oops Penny is giving me that look which means I have to get back to the holiday talk. The Greek Islands were to be one of those hedonistic sections of our year. That's if it's possible to claim hedonism on our budget. Regardless of budget, the islands do lend themselves to kick back to the point of semi comatosed. Naxos and Santorini were the two islands we chose for our week of pseudo hedonism. Naxos touts itself as a "FAMILY" island. A couple of beaches south ... read more

My whole family, reunited in rome...who would've imagined we'd be meeting again in Europe for a family vacation what a treat! Unfortunately they don't have the luxury of time quite like i do. To take in all the sites that Rome offers it was a packed few days, not much of a relaxing vacation like anticipated. Lucky for them, I'd already been and so research and oriantation was a bit easier! It was enjoyable for me to be their tour guide in a sence and give them a taste of my so called backpackers holiday....langage barriers, public transportation, hard pillows, soft beds, mouth watering foods, discovering the unknown, embracing new cultures, feeling lost only to realize you never knew where you were to begin with!!! All part of the every day!! Paying for toilet facilaties ... read more

Santorini started off great. On the ridiculously long ferry ride over (7.5 hours), some Torontonians I met at Pagration Hostel in Athens got on the ferry from Paros to Ios! They were awesome, and we had great conversation the whole way, plus they shared their wine... which is a great way to make friends! Haha. I was sad when they had to get off the ferry one and a half hours before me, but it just gave me some time to relax and watch the moon set behind the ferry. On Santorini, I managed to book myself a palace! It was called Pension George and I had my own room with my own bathroom, terrace, fridge, and television! Plus, the pension had a pool! Lovely. My first day there I took my time getting ready and ... read more

Yikes! We woke up at 9:50am and the hotel reception desk had told us to call before 10am to check on availability and make reservations for the volcano tour. Called reception to see if we were too late, they checked and found out we could get on the tour. We would be picked up from the hotel at 10:45am and returned around 5:30pm. We raced through getting ready and went up and ate another fabulous breakfast with eggs over easy today. The bus came around 11am and took us to Athinos port, but the boat wasn’t there. The tour director came over and told us that the boat we were supposed to be on had a problem and that we would be taking another boat which wasn’t there yet. We were told to go wait in ... read more

Woke up just in the nick of time to leap up and get breakfast at the hotel buffet. It was well worth it though, the hotel put on a huge, impressive spread of food; scrambled eggs with ham, bacon, meats, cheeses, little hot dog things, breads, apple turnovers, mini pitas, chocolate filled croissants (Steve say’s they were extra yum!), fruits, super sweet fruit juices, cereals and yogurts. Whew, I’m sure I forgot something but that was basically it, the only downside was you had to eat in the dining area, if you took the food back to your room or deck there was a 3 Euro per person charge. We planned to go shopping in Fira and decided to go to the Hondos Center , so we parked at the entrance to Fira. We ended up ... read more