European Vacation

I was warned before heading to the island of Ios that it was a party island which didn't have much to offer during the day apart from the beach. By all accounts the island only comes to life at night.

Sounded like fun, although I did have doubts whether it was my kind of island even before setting sail from Santorini. As I quickly found out- no it was not my kind of island. Nothing against the 3 people I was travelling from Santorini as they're all great people, but they only added to the fact that Ios felt like a bad mix between being stuck in the Big Brother house and an underage blue light disco.

After having been out in town on the second night and needing to help one of my fellow travellers back to the hostel as she was too drunk to walk on her own, I decided that two nights was definately my limit on Ios and it was time for me to leave.

Although I make the analogy to the Big Brother house, I was told that Ios actually has a much closer link to Australian Idol for those of you interested in some gossip. I've been told by a couple of people who've experienced the night life on Ios (a little more than myself) that Millsy certainly got a good start on Australian Idol. He was on series 2, I think and infamously slept with Paris Hilton. Well, he's now a doorman for one of the clubs in Ios. Who ever said reality TV couldn't give you the start you need to make it big in the world!

While waiting for my ferry to Paros I bumped into an Australian couple who I had also met in Santorini and who shared my views about Ios. We ended up travelling to Paros together and stayed in a cute little villa called Villa Galini in a small fishing village on the island.

Paros certainly was a change from Ios in that not only is Paros sleepy during the day, there's not a lot more happeninng during the evening either.

The most exciting thing we did on Paros was probably the fact that we had to do some trespassing on private property (a school by the looks of it) to find our way back to the hotel. I realised that climbing over fences was a lot easier when I was a kid. No need to worry though, the police were much friendlier than I had expected them to be and as long as we never return to Paros again, they won't report us to Interpol!

After all that hard work the three of us thought we'd treat ourselves to a nice seafood dinner. So, we chose a nice looking restaurant by the wharf and chose the special of the day- fish fillets in garlic and lemon sauce. In my travels I've eaten in restaurants before where they don't have the menu in English and you end up having to order a mystery meal, that is, point at something on the menu of which you haven't the faintest idea what it is and hope for the best. In this case, the menu was in English and the special sounded mouthwatering enough...

Alas, the looks on our faces would have been priceless when they brought out soup bowls for each of us in which they had emptied a cold tin of Sardines (still in their oil), added some vinegar and chucked half a lemon on top of the concotion. At about 13 Australian Dollars it was the most expensive tin of Sardines I've ever eaten and not surprisingly they didn't taste any better than the No Frills variety you can buy for 80 cents back home! When clearing our plates the owner realised that we weren't satisfied with the meal and tried to explain to us that it was a different kind of fish, with a different taste. I know Sardines when I see them and I'm quite aware of what they taste like and had I known that's what we would get I woudn't have ordered them so no need for the lesson! He did try to make it up to us by giving us half a carafe of wine on the house. At least that went some of the way to try and get rid of the taste, the double ice cream cone I had for dessert did the rest!!

While we were waiting for our boat to Mykonos we experienced home delivery- Paros style...

Although we only ended up staying in Mykonos for one night, it certainly lived up it's reputation as a party island and the most expensive of all the Greek isles. It is beautiful island and given that it's now getting late in the season, it wasn't too crowded either.

I went into town by myself on the night that we were there as the others didn't want to go out. Ended up having a great night. Probably had something to do with the fact that I had a couple of old queens buying me lemon drop martini's as, according to them, I simply couldn't leave Mykonos without trying them- of course I felt it necessary to oblige, couldn't let them drink alone now could I!

Last night we took the overnight ferry to Athens. We had bought tickets for the deck which means it's every man, woman or child for themselves to try and find something that resembles a comfortable enough seat/ bench on the boat, hopefully inside and sheltered from the wind. While others slept in their cabins or their specially reserved seats, we found a couple of seats but ended up sleeping on the hard wooden floor. If I didn't look trashy enough already sleeping on the floor, my eye mask, bright yellow ear plugs and travel pillow certainly finished off the look. Needless to say I don't think it will ever make the cover of Vanity Fair but it did get me at least 40 minutes of uninterrupted sleep in the 7 hour journey- now all I need is a chiropractor and I'll be ready to set of on the next leg of my journey- a leisurley 30 hour boat trip from Greece to Venice leaving at midnight tonight! Whoever said I didn't have stamina!! I really didn't want to take the boat, but at a third of the price of an airfare I figured it was all part of the backpacking experience although I have paid the little extra to have my own seat so I won't have any ugly confrontations where I might have to throw someone overboard to keep my space.

PS: No need to worry, we didn't actually get stopped by the police while trespassing on school property. Instead we made a clean get away without anyone noticing so there's no record of me with Interpol...not as far as I know anyway!

After an 8 hour ferry journey from Athens (on which I did not get sea sick- yay!) I arrived in Santorini on Friday. It's a beautiful island known for the white buildings with sky blue roofs and it's volcano.

It is stunning to look at when you first arrive with the ferry to see the black cliffs and the two major towns of Santorini, Fira and Oia, with their white buildings perched high above.

You can see the town of Fira in this photo. The small island you see in front of it is actually the volcano. The volcano itself is rather boring as there's not really that much to see as it's just like climbing a big, rocky hill. A canadian girl I met was expecting to see lava flowing, I did try to explain to her that she wouldn't want to be near there if that was the case but I'm not quite sure if she understood.

The youth hostel I stayed in was located on Perissa Beach and has probably been the best hostel so far in terms of socialising with other hostel guests. This unfortunately meant that for most of my days on Santorini I was nursing a hangover of varying degrees.

All of the beaches on Santorini are quite cool in that they all have black sand or pebbles. This is a photo of Perissa Beach which had small smooth pebbles. It was great being on that beach as it was much easier to clean them off compared to normal sand. As is always the case in summer, your feet end up burining when you are walking on hot sand, well that's nothing compared to walking on hot black sand!!

This photo is of Red Beach. If the reason for the name isn't obvious by the red cliffs, the sand (this time sand, not pebbles- go figure) also has a red-black colouring.

As you might be able to tell from the picture, it's not a very relaxing beach with hundreds of people squeezed into every free space (I use the term 'free' liberally as the deckchairs do cost 3 euros to rent and if you don't want to rent one, you basically have to squeeze your towel between them keeping your elbows close to you at all times!)

Apart from relaxing on the beach I didn't end up doing much in Santorini which was a great change from the last few weeks of being on the go everyday making my way from one Church or Art Gallery to the next monument!

We did hire a couple of scooters and quad bikes one day to do a bit of sightseeing. I decided on the quad bike given the way that the greeks drive on the narrow roads. Even that was a little scary for the first hour as you have trucks coming towards you or trying to squeeze past you, but otherwise great fun! At least I didn't have any near accidents although I can't say the same for the couple that had the scooter for the day. But, they were only near misses so everyone was able to live to tell the tale. This is a photo of me on the scooter after watching the sunset at Oia, and yes, I knew even before seeing the photo that we must look ridiculous on those things- lots of fun though so well worth it!

They (being those from Oia or Santorini) say that the sunset in Oia is the most beautiful in the world. You can judge for yourself as to whether they are right, either way though, it certainly was beautiful!

This is a photo of the Santorini lighthouse...

From the lighthouse we took a walk around the cliffs where you can see the dramatic differences in colour of the cliffs of Santorini...

And finally, an example of the architecture that makes Santorini so beautiful...

After having extended my stay at Santorini by two nights to make it six in total (enjoyed the beach too much!!) a group of us who have all been travelling alone took a ferry to Ios this morning and are now staying together in a bungalow. Apart from lying next to the pool I really haven't done anything here yet so I'll write about Ios in my next blog!

I've arrived in Athens!

My arrival wasn't without drama though! I had a 7.30am flight out of Milan yesterday morning. After I had checked in, the flight was delayed to 8.30am because of the late arrival of the incoming airplane. I thought bugger but at least it gave me a chance to have breakfast. Then it was delayed to 9.00am, at 9.30am there was an announcement from easyjet apologising for the 3.5 hour delay to the flight (making expected departure 11am!), but they were giving out vouchers for a free meal at the bistro. A little too late for me as I'd just paid for my breakfast! (I did use it though, figured I can't pass up a free meal as a backpacker!) So, I tried to have a snooze on the lounges (unsucessfully) only to check the monitors and notice that the flight was now delayed to 12.00. At this time I began to wonder where the hell the plane was flying in from as easyjet only flies within Europe! Another voucher was offered though I really couldn't stomach anymore food at this time. At 12.15 they then announced that the plane which was meant to take us (which had been sitting in eyesview for the past hour) had been accidentally overfilled with fuel and couldn't be used so another plane was being flown in!!! At this stage I'm thinking what the hell?? They can get a couple of tonnes of metal into the air but they can't siphon out a few litres of fuel?! So, in the end, my 7.30am flight left the ground at 2pm after a 6.5 hour delay with a plane and crew flown in from London! If that experience wasn't painful enough, it was made all the more so by the fact that I had to get up at 3.30am to get a cab and coach to the airport! It goes without saying that I wasn't a happy traveller but at least I had only lost a day of sightseeing in Athens, others on the plane had missed connecting flights to the islands and were much more stuffed than me as they still had to get accomodation in Athens for the night!

The hostel I'm staying in is quite nice and located in the Plaka district which is right at the foot of the Acropolis. The room has airconditioning which, as you find out quite quickly, is a must because it's extremely hot here!! For someone who doesn't actually like to drink water that much I sure was guzzling a lot of it in yesterdays heat!

I started out my sightseeing yesterday by looking at the Acropolis, the symbol of Greece and probably a good place to start as you wouldn't want to be climbing the hill at the end of the day!

When you do finally make it to the top the views are amazing as you look out over Athens. It stretches out as far as the eye can see in each direction and is surrounded on each side by mountains.

The Parthenon was also amazing to look at although you can't walk around inside anymore due to the restoration work being done at the moment.

Everywhere you walk in Athens you can see the Acropolis and Partheon towering over the city- an absolutely amazing sight no matter which angle you are looking at it from (and I'm sure I took at least 2 or 3 shots from each one of them! But I'll show the rest of when I get back!)

This is part of the Erechtheion, and more precisely the Caryatids which are the six women statutes that you see. It's located right next to the Parthenon. The statutes are actually plastercasts as the originals are in the Museum.

This structure is the Odeum of Herodes Atticus which is an arena that is still being used during the Athens Festival, although it's closed at any other times.

(The photo also shows part of the Parthenon- see, just like I said, you can see it everywhere!)

This view is inside the arena from the Parthenon...

These photos show the Temple of Hephaestus which is situated in the Ancient Agora (which is the area in front of it). The Ancient Agora was the marketplace of Ancient Athens.

It's well known that Ancient Athens was the birthplace of democracy, well they say that Ancient Agora is where it occured!

I also had a look at the Temple of Olympian Zeus (or what's left of it rather!) This photo shows the remaining columns. Also in the photo, to the left of the temple, you see part of the Roman Stadium where the Ancient Olympics were held (and if memory serves me right the Marathon finished for the 2004 Greek Olympics!)

Here is a close up of the temple. In its time, it was the largest temple in Greece with 104 columns, 15 of which remain today...