Friday, June 20, 2008

Greece!

Hello World!

Sorry I haven't written in ages. Sometimes I don't write when I'm a bit down. But luckily in this instance I've just been lazy - well actually maybe not lazy, maybe busy - which is just the opposite really! I don't really spend much time at all just sitting down doing nothing when I could be blogging. Yeah - I've definitely been busy!

So I'll start at the most recent exciting thing! Darren and I went to Greece. This took a lot of organisation and I did a fantastic job if I do say myself. 2 flights, 2 train trips, 2 ferry trips and 3 hotels! We flew from London to Athens which was a LONG journey. We left Donny around 5pm on Friday and arrived at our hotel in Athens 5am! And despite that I still couldn't sleep when we got there - excited I think! At 7.30am we got up to explore the city and try and beat the crowds and heat! We didn't really beat either but the crowds weren't too bad really. We have a lovely photo though of me at 9am already too hot! Here's just a couple of Athens photos (we have hundreds) - Darren has lots of photos on his bebo and I'll put some up too sometime probably.





Then the next day we went over to the Port to pick up our ferry tickets for Ios, then had half a day looking around Piraeus (the port town). We mostly just walked down this incredible market that went alongside the metro line for kms! It was narrow, stalls either side, jammed packed with people - and pickpocketers! We had to get pickpocketed once on our holidays and it could have been worse, we only lost 35 euros - and managed to have a laugh about it.

The ferry to Ios was... boring. It was a fast ferry and as such you couldn't go outside, and had allocated seats more like an airplane. But it was a good chance to sleep and 5 hours later we arrived in beautiful Ios. Our hotel was fun - filled with young people (mostly Americans) and had welcome shots that night at 10pm. Darren and I had dinner in a lovely restaurant with a great sunset view, then went up to the hotel bar for strawberry daquiris - yum! At 10 there were the welcome shots, and at 12 we headed down to the hotel owner's club. It was unbelievable how alive and busy everything was - this was a Sunday night - I guess that doesn't matter in Ios!

We had a lovely night out but I didn't sleep in much because when I woke up it was just too beautiful. At 10.30 we headed down slightly worried we'd missed the hotel breakfast - but it hadn't started yet and wasn't looking like it would start anytime soon, so we grabbed some from a restaurant - I had delicious yoghurt, fruit, muesli and honey mmm then we headed to the beach!



The beach was gorgeous! The sea was the perfect temperature to cool you down, but not so cold you didn't want to stay in. We spent the whole day there! Just reading and relaxing. We had souvlakis for lunch - I was looking forward to what I hoped was going to be my most authentic souvlaki experience - but they came with french fries in them! So I'm afraid I'll have to rate the Kebab Queen on Greers Rd slightly higher!



The next day brought another day at the beach - this time the Port beach, and walking around the Ios Port before heading out that evening to Santorini.



I think I'll write about Santorini in the next update as I don't have any photos to go with that yet they were on a different memory card.

So what's been happening in my life since then! Well Susannah and Cory arrived to visit when we arrived home so we spent the weekend with them! It was also lovely and I think I'll also write about that later with photos to match. And now I've just had a week at work, have a fun run this weekend, Bridget arrives from NZ on Monday and Wednesday we're off to Dublin, Friday we're back again, Sunday Bridget leaves for Hungary, and Sunday my parents also arrive!

Phew!

I hope everyone is well, and I hope you don't have to wait too long for my next blog!

xxx