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Published: August 30th 2007
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Greek Isles
How beautiful is this, in Mykonos our first day at sea. Gee the title says it all guys! I'm here and I bet y'all are at work mwahahahahahaha ... oops sorry I didn't mean to say that aloud *grin*
Okedy dokedy flew into Athens from Prague and checked into a hotel for two nights before starting my Contiki Greek Cruise trip. I very cleverly thought I would book into Pireaus because that is the Port area of Athens where all the boats take off from and very carefully of course read the information about the hotel which says that it was 20 minutes from the Acropolis so first full day there I head off for a walk to see the sights and chill out in Athens for the day .... walking .... walking .... walking ... THREE AND A HALF HOURS LATER!!!! mwahahaha my hotel was actually 20 minutes from the Acropolis by METRO (which of course I checked when I FINALLY got my sorry self and sore feet back to my hotel room. hehe so great start to my greek adventure and I was soo missing the foot massages from Asia about now.
The greek isles tour was with Contiki and there was like 57 people total on our
Life saving drill
Me & room mate Myriam doing our life saving drill thing on the boat - don't we look sexy!! group but only 4 days so didn’t really get a chance to meet everyone. I mostly hung out with my room mate Myriam (who is from Montreal) and some friends I made, Ellen and Marie are from New York (which is awesome cos now I can crash with them when I am there yay!) and Peter and Nicki who are actually from Perth so was very cool. It was pretty much a perfect way to meet people and have someone in charge helping out during the cruise so pretty happy I went through Contiki for this one.
First day we pretty much checked on board on boat and then went to organise our drinks package (the most important thing really!) - it was great. You paid 18 Euro per day and could have any soft drinks, water, coffee, tea and a whole range of alcoholic drinks included. There were some drinks not included but you only had to pay a surcharge which was like 1 or 2 euros so sweet as! Don’t worry guys, I ensured I got my monies worth every day too! Hehe
That afternoon we arrived at Mykonos which is actually an island I had
Our Boat
This is the boat called Cristal one of the Louis Hellenic Boat Cruisey things. It was pretty new and really nice. been to before but it is really pretty and awesome and all that. The streets are really cool because they were designed to confuse pirates (apparently that used to be a problem before about a billion cruise ships starting infesting the waters) so the streets are narrow and windy and like a labyrinth really. It was neat. Ok I could take quite a while raving on about how great the Greek Isles were but here is a run-down.
Islands visited
Mykonos
Kudasi (unsure of spelling but it was somewhere in Turkey)
Patmos
Rhodes
Crete
Santorini
The cruise boat was just terrific, really nice and relaxing and they had activities if you wanted to (or if like me) or else you could do nothing. I did check out the beauty salon and got a foot massage but it was pretty expensive so only got the one (darn it!) but still really nice. There were activities at night like the Captain's cocktail party, disco, elegant dress or if you wanted you could just hang out by the pool bar until the bar closed at 1am and then head up to the disco after that until 2am when the drinks packages
Mykonos
Mykonos is a gorgeous little island with the white buildings and blue painted accents. Just beautiful! finished so obviously a sign it was time to go to bed!
Oh little story about Santorini, this island has a volcano in the middle of it which blew up and formed like a ring separating the island. It used to be one piece but now there is the outside, water in a ring and the middle which is the actual volcano. The water here is really deep as well from the force of the Volcano so is up to like 400m deep. One of the options here was to go climb the Volcano which I did, it was kind of interesting and all that. Only problem was because the water is so deep, the boats have no where to dock and obviously can't drop anchor so they keep moving and they are only allowed here for like 4 hours so we didn't really get a look at the town, just basically went up and then waited in line for ages to get the cable car down. I am sooo going to come back to Santorini sometime (actually this is my second time at the Greek Isles and I think it is terrific and will probably plan a trip
Us on board
These are the cool friends I made - we hung out alot together. Ellen, Marie, Peter, Me & Nicki. anytime I am over this way - just awesome).
Ohhh another interesting fact that Contiki and Louis Hellenic DON'T put on the brochure is that one of their boats sunk in April in this area. Apparently the captain hit rocks or something and the boat took like three or four hours to sink but because the water is so deep they can't really do anything about it. My tour leader Hayley was on board that boat with a contiki group so they lost all of their luggage and everything. There were two people from the ship unaccounted for but there was a bit of a story with that one because it was a father and son who went missing but apparently the wife left the island straight away after it sunk with a lot of money so my guess is it was a bit of a scam really instead. Pretty exciting tho' (although very glad it wasn't my boat cos really that would interupt with the drinking time wouldn't it!)
Anyways we had like four nights at sea and then back to Athens where we had a bit of a look around, one final Gyros for lunch (soooo
Yay for the drinks package
The five of us pretty late at night enjoying our all inclusive drinks package :-) yummy) and then said goodbye. From here I fly out to Rome. Really nice to have a little relaxing holiday in the middle of my big holiday .... mwahahaha bet you're STILL at work!
.................................... ok sorry.
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Sally
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... but was it the LOVE boat???