Blogs from Greece, Europe - page 487

Today we took a traditional sailboat tour. The first stop was Nea Kameni island, the active volcano. A 1.4km walk up to the breathtaking crater where we had a stunning view of its vastness. There was a hole dug, about a foot deep where the stones are hot enough to boil an egg in 20 minutes. Mmm...smell that sulfur. Our second stop was Palea Kameni island where we visit the hot springs. We are informed that to get there we jump off the boat into the cold ocean and swim a short ways to the hot springs. No the guide was not kidding! Everyone that decided to go rubbed the iron rich mud on themselves with the notion that it is great for the skin. This poor American guy got stung by a jellyfish. Amie told ... read more

HEY ALL!!! so here i am, safe and sound. i'm glad you all were able to get access to the blog and are enjoying it so far! if you know neone i've missed that would like it let me know so i can add them in! Athens is beautiful (i like rome better, but hey- what can u expect from an italian?) the acropolis was AMAZING, so crazy that it was built something like 3000 yrs ago! WOAH!! so neway, i'll start @ the beginning. our flight took off @ 5:30ish our time (i dunno where u got 8 from PD) BUT i missed it cuz i was already asleep- i guess that's too be expected when u're too nervous/anxious/excited to sleep the night before (of course i was anxious, i was leaving my bear behind- ... read more

We're on the fabulous island of Santorini. The population is about 2000 ppl according to Lonely Planet and I think that half of the population here must work in jewellry stores and tacky tourist shops. I'm a bit mystified by the number of jewellry stores here... do women get their men to buy them baubles on vacation?? I must admit that I had this misconception that Santorini was filled with these blue-domed buildings. These, I've actually only seen on churches. The rest of the buildings are white-domed but no worries... there seems to be a church every kilometre or so for your phototaking needs. Two things I have to rant about in greece: bikinis and showers. 1st. bikinis. the new fad around here seems to be this new bikini bottom. Its smaller than a bikini bottom ... read more

Geo: 37.11, 25.38We arrived in Naxos on Tuesday morning via a flight from Athens. The plane was only a 50 seater Fokker Friendship (50 year old plane we think!) so a bit scary and the runway at Naxos airport was tiny. We didn't prebook a hotel as it appeared from my research that there were heaps to choose from and that we should be able to barter the price down as peak season doesn't start until July/August. We caught a cab from the airport and took the first place we saw to save us dragging our bags around. There were indeed plenty of hotels, so many that we didn't really know where to start. And most of them are almost brand new or still being built as tourism in Naxos is still in its infancy. In ... read more

Geo: 37.9792, 23.7166We've had a great day today. We arrived in Naxos yesterday from Athens after spending one night in a pretty nice room overlooking the Acroplis. It has taken us a couple of days to get into the Greek way of doing things but now we are into it and having a ball. We spent a fairly relaxing day in Paris strolling along the Siene (river) and checking out the Notre Dame. It was interesting watching the barges cruise down the river and looking in at all the little streets along the way. Not to mention the the fabulous food.I was into a cheese fix after being in Japan which was no problem in France. We didn't have anything in particular in mind apart from soaking up the atmosphere so just spent a bit of ... read more