Greece.... Greece... where to start...
Why on earth I decided to spend such an enormous amount in Greece I will never know! I think my reasoning was something along the lines of: 1. Hotels in London are so expensive at the moment due to the olympics and 2. There will be heaps to do in Greece!
So on the 31st of June after spending four days back in London, I once again went through the process of booking an Addison Lee to take me to Victoria Station to get the Gatwick Express to Gatwick for my flight to Athens. For some reason this particular evening I decided to double check my booking. Lucky I did because, well, had I gone with my first instincts, I would have ended up at the wrong airport! My flight was leaving from Heathrow!
The flight to Athens was rather boring, and annoyingly I had been moved from my original seat in the first few rows, to right down the back of the plane! (I have such good luck with plane seats). I arrived into Athens airport and pretty much walked straight through to the taxi rank. There was practically no customs, passport control winked at me on my way through and that was that!
I got into a taxi with a very scruffy driver who drove his early 90's model Merc at 170kph to get me to my hostel! I don't know what it is in cabs, but for some reason I feel defiant to wear a seat belt! I don't know if it's too much time in Tuk Tuk's in and around Asia or what it is. But I very rarely wear a seatbelt in cabs, very silly I know, and it's something I'm working on. However, if you've ever been in a plastic upholstered Merc doing 170kph and your'e not at the wheel, let me tell you now, a seatbelt is a MUST! It took one corner for me to go sliding across the back seat and I'm now a cab-seatbelt wearer for life! (CSBW4L). Incredible!
Anyways, he did safely get me to my hostel (the Athens Backpackers) or at least to the street it was on. I was on my own for the lugging my luggage up the street part!
Now, anybody who knows me, and I mean REALLY knows me, knows that I can rough it at the best of time, I've been camping, I've slept under desks on the floor at work, under boardroom tables.... generally I can sleep anywhere! I had decided to book into a backpackers for a one main reason.... to meet other people travelling the same as I was. I had booked into a 6 bed female dorm with an ensuite.
On arrival into the backpackers the lovely guy at the front desk lugged my luggage up a flight of stairs to the lift, and send me on up to my room. As far as hostels go, I couldn't fault this place. The staff were friendly, the rooms were spotless, the bathrooms cleaned daily and were also spotless (until they start getting used!). The only issue was, no aircon! Greece was in the middle of a heat wave, and it was 40 degrees outside with 75% humidity! KILL ME! The first two nights were not the greatest sleep wise, but we eventually discovered the indeed the aircon did work, we just had to ask for the remote! BRILLIANT!
The backpackers has a bar upstairs, and if you go up at about 8.30 and stay for an hour, you can watch the sun set behind the Acropolis, very cool!
There were different ladies every night in my room, all absolutely lovely, all travelling the globe!
Because I had quite a few days before my tour started (Athens, Olympia, Delphi and then 7 Days Greek Islands) I decided to take my time going around Athens and sight seeing!
I did the Acropolis (three times in total), Hadrian's Gate, the Olympic Stadiums, the museums, the restaurants, the markets, the gardens, the zappion, virtually everything!!! It took me all of...um.... three days.... lol I'm kind of glad that I got everything done up front, as I ended up knocked on my ass about 6 days in with a migraine. Which unfortunately forced a change of accommodation to a hotel, and about three days in bed! Okay, it was bed and the pool!
My tour of Olympia, Delphi and Athens was great. We had a wonderful tour guide (Theo) who organised everything for us. Walked us to restaurants/clubs/bars (not that I did the latter) and was all around just awesome! We got to see so much, and by the end I was ruined (pardon the pun!) as were most of our group!
The next part of our trip was the 7 day cruise. On the first part of my trip I had met some wonderful ladies, who were also doing the 7 day cruise. Theo had the bus drop us at our Athens hotel where the next morning we would be picked up by bus and taken to our cruise ship.
The 7 day cruise was part of the contiki that I had originally booked, and I'm very sad to say, that booking through contiki was the largest waste of money EVER. Most of you know that I'm an enormous contiki advocate, and throughout Europe and Egypt they have been wonderful. Greek Island cruising..... what a waste! There was absolutely nothing that I got from my contiki that I couldn't have and wouldn't have done for myself. /end rant.lol
So first stop on the journey was Turkey, Istanbul in particular. Holy crap! What a busy city! There were thousands of people EVERYWHERE! Unfortunately we had some not so correct information given to us by our tour manager, and with a lack of an actual map with street names, getting around, especially through the Bazaar was quite difficult. I think with a good amount of information and a map things would have been a breeze! However the Bazaar in Istanbul is truly a sight to be seen! Thousands of things to buy, millions of colours, billions of people!
We visited mosques, markets, an underground cistern, caught the metro and wandered around aimlessly! Then thank god, we headed back to the ship! When I say WE I mean Camille and I: Earlier in the trip I had made friends with a girl from Puerto Rico named Camille. We were each other's rocks on the ship. I think without her I would have thrown myself overboard! haha It was fantastic as we were both so similar, and had generally had enough of whatever we were doing at around the same time! Ruined as we came to call it!
Next we headed to the Greek Islands! For some reason I didn't take an enormous amount of photos of the Greek Islands, I'm not really sure why. However, travelling the Greek Islands really makes you appreciate how absolutely incredible our Australian beaches are. The beaches off the North coast of Queensland are a million times more beautiful than any of the beaches we saw in Greece or Turkey! So I'm not entirely sure what all the fuss was about!
I had my 27th Birthday sailing into Izmir which was nice, the boat staff were incredible, I had a birthday cake, towel animals on my bed, a birthday seranade and all sorts of things! I also received a giant block of Toblerone, which actually lasted til the end of the trip! lol
The next stop was supposed to be Mykonos but unfortunately didn't make it to Mykonos, as it was too risky to dock with tender boats to transfer, so ended up on a little island called Syros. Syros is beautiful, so clean, laid back and friendly! I would go back in an instant!
We also visited Patmos, Rhodes, Crete and Santorini. I got rather burnt in Rhodes, and it was the first and last time we (Camille and I) visited the beach. Both of us were RED raw by the end of our day, and I'm still peeling! lol Whoops!
The below are a couple of photos from Patmos, and a photo of our ship, the Louis Cristal.
Santorini was lovely, we weren't there very long, just enough to do a tour and then have a little bit of down time wandering around the town of Oia (pronounced eea). The photos from Santorini are below:
By the end of the 7 days (which seemed like SOOO much longer) I was so ready to get out of Greece it wasn't even funny! lol I'm also pretty sure that if I never saw another souvlaki or gyros again in my life I would definitely live! lol
The day we arrived back into Athens, Camille and I had a very cruisy day around Athens, and spent some down time watching movies in her hotel! That afternoon I took a flight to Paris....which is where I am now!
Thats all for now! Sorry for the novel!
SJ x
Why on earth I decided to spend such an enormous amount in Greece I will never know! I think my reasoning was something along the lines of: 1. Hotels in London are so expensive at the moment due to the olympics and 2. There will be heaps to do in Greece!
So on the 31st of June after spending four days back in London, I once again went through the process of booking an Addison Lee to take me to Victoria Station to get the Gatwick Express to Gatwick for my flight to Athens. For some reason this particular evening I decided to double check my booking. Lucky I did because, well, had I gone with my first instincts, I would have ended up at the wrong airport! My flight was leaving from Heathrow!
The flight to Athens was rather boring, and annoyingly I had been moved from my original seat in the first few rows, to right down the back of the plane! (I have such good luck with plane seats). I arrived into Athens airport and pretty much walked straight through to the taxi rank. There was practically no customs, passport control winked at me on my way through and that was that!
I got into a taxi with a very scruffy driver who drove his early 90's model Merc at 170kph to get me to my hostel! I don't know what it is in cabs, but for some reason I feel defiant to wear a seat belt! I don't know if it's too much time in Tuk Tuk's in and around Asia or what it is. But I very rarely wear a seatbelt in cabs, very silly I know, and it's something I'm working on. However, if you've ever been in a plastic upholstered Merc doing 170kph and your'e not at the wheel, let me tell you now, a seatbelt is a MUST! It took one corner for me to go sliding across the back seat and I'm now a cab-seatbelt wearer for life! (CSBW4L). Incredible!
Anyways, he did safely get me to my hostel (the Athens Backpackers) or at least to the street it was on. I was on my own for the lugging my luggage up the street part!
Now, anybody who knows me, and I mean REALLY knows me, knows that I can rough it at the best of time, I've been camping, I've slept under desks on the floor at work, under boardroom tables.... generally I can sleep anywhere! I had decided to book into a backpackers for a one main reason.... to meet other people travelling the same as I was. I had booked into a 6 bed female dorm with an ensuite.
On arrival into the backpackers the lovely guy at the front desk lugged my luggage up a flight of stairs to the lift, and send me on up to my room. As far as hostels go, I couldn't fault this place. The staff were friendly, the rooms were spotless, the bathrooms cleaned daily and were also spotless (until they start getting used!). The only issue was, no aircon! Greece was in the middle of a heat wave, and it was 40 degrees outside with 75% humidity! KILL ME! The first two nights were not the greatest sleep wise, but we eventually discovered the indeed the aircon did work, we just had to ask for the remote! BRILLIANT!
The backpackers has a bar upstairs, and if you go up at about 8.30 and stay for an hour, you can watch the sun set behind the Acropolis, very cool!
There were different ladies every night in my room, all absolutely lovely, all travelling the globe!
Because I had quite a few days before my tour started (Athens, Olympia, Delphi and then 7 Days Greek Islands) I decided to take my time going around Athens and sight seeing!
I did the Acropolis (three times in total), Hadrian's Gate, the Olympic Stadiums, the museums, the restaurants, the markets, the gardens, the zappion, virtually everything!!! It took me all of...um.... three days.... lol I'm kind of glad that I got everything done up front, as I ended up knocked on my ass about 6 days in with a migraine. Which unfortunately forced a change of accommodation to a hotel, and about three days in bed! Okay, it was bed and the pool!
My tour of Olympia, Delphi and Athens was great. We had a wonderful tour guide (Theo) who organised everything for us. Walked us to restaurants/clubs/bars (not that I did the latter) and was all around just awesome! We got to see so much, and by the end I was ruined (pardon the pun!) as were most of our group!
The above is where the Olympic Torch is lit every year.
The next part of our trip was the 7 day cruise. On the first part of my trip I had met some wonderful ladies, who were also doing the 7 day cruise. Theo had the bus drop us at our Athens hotel where the next morning we would be picked up by bus and taken to our cruise ship.
The 7 day cruise was part of the contiki that I had originally booked, and I'm very sad to say, that booking through contiki was the largest waste of money EVER. Most of you know that I'm an enormous contiki advocate, and throughout Europe and Egypt they have been wonderful. Greek Island cruising..... what a waste! There was absolutely nothing that I got from my contiki that I couldn't have and wouldn't have done for myself. /end rant.lol
So first stop on the journey was Turkey, Istanbul in particular. Holy crap! What a busy city! There were thousands of people EVERYWHERE! Unfortunately we had some not so correct information given to us by our tour manager, and with a lack of an actual map with street names, getting around, especially through the Bazaar was quite difficult. I think with a good amount of information and a map things would have been a breeze! However the Bazaar in Istanbul is truly a sight to be seen! Thousands of things to buy, millions of colours, billions of people!
We visited mosques, markets, an underground cistern, caught the metro and wandered around aimlessly! Then thank god, we headed back to the ship! When I say WE I mean Camille and I: Earlier in the trip I had made friends with a girl from Puerto Rico named Camille. We were each other's rocks on the ship. I think without her I would have thrown myself overboard! haha It was fantastic as we were both so similar, and had generally had enough of whatever we were doing at around the same time! Ruined as we came to call it!
Next we headed to the Greek Islands! For some reason I didn't take an enormous amount of photos of the Greek Islands, I'm not really sure why. However, travelling the Greek Islands really makes you appreciate how absolutely incredible our Australian beaches are. The beaches off the North coast of Queensland are a million times more beautiful than any of the beaches we saw in Greece or Turkey! So I'm not entirely sure what all the fuss was about!
I had my 27th Birthday sailing into Izmir which was nice, the boat staff were incredible, I had a birthday cake, towel animals on my bed, a birthday seranade and all sorts of things! I also received a giant block of Toblerone, which actually lasted til the end of the trip! lol
The next stop was supposed to be Mykonos but unfortunately didn't make it to Mykonos, as it was too risky to dock with tender boats to transfer, so ended up on a little island called Syros. Syros is beautiful, so clean, laid back and friendly! I would go back in an instant!
We also visited Patmos, Rhodes, Crete and Santorini. I got rather burnt in Rhodes, and it was the first and last time we (Camille and I) visited the beach. Both of us were RED raw by the end of our day, and I'm still peeling! lol Whoops!
The below are a couple of photos from Patmos, and a photo of our ship, the Louis Cristal.
Santorini was lovely, we weren't there very long, just enough to do a tour and then have a little bit of down time wandering around the town of Oia (pronounced eea). The photos from Santorini are below:
By the end of the 7 days (which seemed like SOOO much longer) I was so ready to get out of Greece it wasn't even funny! lol I'm also pretty sure that if I never saw another souvlaki or gyros again in my life I would definitely live! lol
The day we arrived back into Athens, Camille and I had a very cruisy day around Athens, and spent some down time watching movies in her hotel! That afternoon I took a flight to Paris....which is where I am now!
Thats all for now! Sorry for the novel!
SJ x
No comments:
Post a Comment