Where: Athens, Mykonos, Santorini, Rhodes
When: July 2009
Highlights: Acropolis, Santorini
Greece & Turkey were my 2nd big international trip, and I had high expectations for our flight, which were quickly dashed. We flew on Delta, and my suffering began early, at the safety briefing video. The video format is actually a lot better than most flight safety videos, but I just have 1 question – robot or botox?
Anyhoo… I had a great time on Qantas, and was expecting the same service and entertainment, and I was greatly disappointed. They showed some movies on big TVs, but we didn’t have our own Tvs, good thing I brought along some entertainment. Husband refuses to read and defaults to annoying me when he is not entertained. So I packed him the Nintendo DSI, Sudoku, a book (I’m not giving up yet), and some movies on our Ipod.
Our flight also departed late, due to strikes at the control tower in Greece. We arrived a few hours late to Athens and met our arranged car to take us to our hotel.
ATHENS
Our hotel was gorgeous! It was called the Athenian. We were exhausted, but had booked a private tour, which we were already late for. So we dropped our bags, had a quick bathroom break and headed on our tour. I only mention the bathroom break because my first experience with a “european” toilet was quite memorable. I got in the bathroom just fine, but when I went to flush I had no idea how. So I looked around and eventually found a button on the wall that was divided into 2. Ok, not so bad. I then washed my hands and attempted to exit the loo. Attempted is indeed the correct verb. I could not figure out how to operate the door knob. I turned it, and pushed it and pulled it. Nothing. I was starting to get concerned. I eventually found a small button above the knob that unlocked the door and I was freed. This experience made me realize that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore!
Ok, on to the tour.
We hopped in the bus that was waiting for us at our hotel, and headed to our first stop. On the way, we drove by this neat statue in the middle of the road -
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Our first stop was the 2004 Summer Olympics track
We then went to the Acropolis. You have probably heard of the Acropolis and the Parthenon, let me, if I may, explain to you what they are. The Acropolis means “high city” in Greek and is a sanctuary dedicated to the goddess Athena, and its construction was said to have started in the thirteenth century BC. BC!! Temples were built upon the acropolis, such as the Parthenon, which was built in the fifth century BC.
As one would assume, this site involves a lot of walking, up-hill! But it was worth it! The view was truly breathtaking. It is up above the city, and here is a view near the top.
They are restoring it, and large pieces are missing, and can be found in London and New York museums. =(
Heres the Acropolis exit sign.. I love the greek alphabet… so pretty!
We also took a city tour, and saw a “changing of the guard”. It was interesting.
That ended Day 1 tours. We returned to our hotel. Here is a picture of our hotels elevator. I thought it was really cool!
We were all exhausted and opted to have dinner at our hotel, which was phenomenal! The restaurant was on the roof, check out the view!!
And there was a harpist. What an amazing meal!
The next day, we had another tour, and we drove about 30 miles south to Poseidons temple ruins. Heres a pic of it from far away.
We then were taken to a winery. We were all really excited to taste their wines, but we were all sorely disappointed. It was all bad, in our opinion. I have never been to a winery before where we didn’t like even 1 wine. They even served us flat champagne. Awesome.
We got back and wanted to walk around a bit and buy some stuff. I love Athens, especially how a new city can be intertwined with an old city. Heres a good example –
We toured around the city, riding around on their local metro to various locations, including other ruins, and market places. The metro was really nice and clean, and it had ruin displays inside. We had dinner plans that night at a local restaurant, and we took the metro there and walked a bit as well. Our first tour guide had told us about Athens stray dogs. They are everywhere. They have food and watering stations for them as well. That was about all our tour guide told us, but upon doing some research it turns out that the conditions of the pounds were terrible, and an activist group documented it and the Mayor ended up being charged with mistreatment of animals, and so all the pounds disappeared. I got that info from this guys Athens Blog.
So I brought up the stray dogs for a reason. We were walking to dinner, and a stray dog was tagging along. He was just loping along behind us, wherever we went, he went. So we came to a cross walk at a very busy intersection, where a median divided 3 lanes of traffic on each side. The signal instructed us to walk, and we started across the street and the dog came with us. We only made it to the median and stopped and waited again for the sign. At this point, cars are starting to drive by us, and our stray dog goes bezerk! He starts circling us, and attempting to attack the cars that drive close to us, snapping and barking. Oh geez… we were very concerned this was not going to end well. The people driving by just honked at him and shook their fists at him, but he didn’t stop. We were signaled to finish our walk across the street and he ran circles around us, herding us to safety. He then trotted off. I guess his job for the day was done.
The next day we headed to port to catch our cruise ship. That night we sailed to Mykonos.
MYKONOS
Gorgeous! I plan to retire in the Greek Islands, and sell white and blue paint.
We took an excursion to a small island close by, called Delos Island. According to mythology, Apollo was born on Delos. They have some amazing ruins, and a little museum. 
It was July, and blisteringly hot, so I was eager to get back to Mykonos for some shade and a cold drink! We took a boat back to Mykonos and started walking around.
The island is made of little passageways like this, apparently originally built to confuse intruders who would come by boat. They would get disoriented, and drop their loot and flee back to their boats. It was really fun exploring! We also had an amazing drink at a local bar. We returned to the ship for a special dinner on the deck, it was our 1st anniversary!
SANTORINI
Imagine opening your window shade and seeing this -
Yea.. I know! Totally unexpected and totally magnificent! See the top of the island, far away, with white peaks. That is not snow, that is the village of Oia.
We planned an excursion to take a boat to an island that had an “active volcano” and swim in hot springs. It turned out that the active volcano consisted mainly of warm rocks and some steam, and the hot springs swim was more of a luke-warm swim in slimy water. So after that fun, we headed to Santorini to see what we could see! The towns are at the top of the island, and as you can imagine, its not very easy getting there. You have 2 options of getting from your cruise ship to Fira, the capital. A gondola, or a donkey ride or hike up about 600 steps. See below – the zig zag lines are the donkey trail, and to the left is the gondola. We opted for the gondola.
Husband really wanted to get to Oia, so we went to the bus stop, and just missed our bus. Crap. So we took a taxi! And made it to Oia, in all of its amazing beauty, and took a ton of pictures. We also bought some dessert wine, and a few other items.
We didn’t have much time to hang out in Oia, so we hurried back to the middle of town and were able to catch a bus back to Fira. We were hot and tired, and made our way back to the gondola to ride down. The only problem… was that we spent all our cash on getting to Oia and the few items we bought. The gondola does not take credit cards, and there are no ATM machines to be found. Soooooooo remember when I said there are 2 options, gondola aaaaand donkey stairs? Right. We had to climb down 600 stairs to get back to our boat. It was swelteringly hot, but we literally had no other option. We started down, and it was much worse than I thought. The trail was a covered in donkey mess, making it both slippery and smelly. We were on a mission to get down, and were passing donkeys laiden with tourists. Once in awhile we stopped to pick up someones item they dropped, or push their donkey that was refusing to take another step. We did eventually slip and slide our way to the bottom. I was hot, smelly and miserable. But it makes for a good story, right?
We made it back to the boat, and they always hand out green tea wet towels as you get back on, and that was a nice relief.
Next stop is the Greek island of Rhodes, our last stop in Greece.
RHODES
Rhodes was a pretty laid-back destination. We walked around.
Saw a castle.
Went shopping, where I attempted to buy cough syrup and found out that there are no active ingredients in their “cough” medicine, just honey, basically.
We also had an exciting lunch. Apparently we ordered a special dish that involves a celebration where sparklers were placed on our large plate of food and set afire with flags and bells waving about. We then experienced Das Beer Boot. We stayed awhile enjoying beer boots on an outdoors patio. There was no photographic evidence of this, so I grabbed this off the net for your viewing pleasure.
Rhodes was the end of our Greek Getaway, but this trip isn’t over. Check out the rest of our cruise in Turkey Here.
~Maine Girl
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