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Update April 12th - Below is another reason we are going at this time of year: Our backyard on Masters' Sunday (April 12)

Monday April 13th - Flight to Athens
In the low season, there are no direct flights from Montreal to Athens. We are flying British Airways leaving at 10:35pm on Monday evening with a 2½ hour layover in Heathrow, London's terminal 5. Because of the time, difference, we land around 10am and leave in early afternoon. There is another 2 hour time shift to Athens, so we will only arrive at the Athens airport at 6:35pm. Our plan is to take the Metro into town as our hotel is an 8 minute walk from the Acropolis Metro station which is only one station away from the line coming from the airport. The entire ride and walk should be under one hour. Note (19/03/2015) We changed our hotel to one near the Syntagma Square Metro Station. This station is on the same line as the airport and the hotel is 50 meters away from the station. It's also the central hub of public transport in Athens.

We booked our flight using BMO Rewards as we changed our AirMiles Mastercard to the World Elite Mastercard a year ago. With the initial signup 'gift' of $300 worth of travel credit and the $800 I accumulated over the year, the entire flights for both of us came to exactly $500. The flight would have cost just over $1600. The good thing about BMO rewards is that if we had $500 more travel credits, our flight would have been 'free'. No taxes or booking fees.
Here is what it would have cost using AirMiles: 11,400 points plus taxes of $1,254. The 11,400 points represent $1,200 in AirMiles cash so the total cost would have been over $2,400. This is ridiculous as you can book a flight through skyscanner.com for $1,585 without using any AirMiles.

We had originally booked the Acropolis View Hotel in Athens for 3 nights. However, we found that the Metro transfer and subsequent 8 minute walk uphill with our luggage would be a little tough after our long flights. Also, the Acropolis View hotel room we reserved did not have an Acropolis view but a balcony looking across a narrow street at apartment buildings. Instead we booked the Amalia Hotel which is right across the street from the National Gardens and very close to the parliament buildings and of course Syntagma Square which happens to be the place where most demonstrations occur in Athens. The May 2010 riots turned very violent and would have prevented us from getting to our hotel. Hopefully, the restlessness won't happen while we are there but if it does we will have a birds eye view.

Tuesday April 14th - Heathrow Airport
The first leg of the flight was fine except that the British Airways Boeing787 seat configuration is awful. I put my laptop under the seat in front of me and there is not enough leg room to actually get at it. This plane is relatively new but it's possibly the most cramped I have ever been in a plane (even Air Transat). The fact that it was 80 degrees the entire length of the trip didn't help either. I can't imagine how a 6 foot person would feel in these seats. When we did our online check-in from home they offered an upgrade to slightly larger seats but that would have cost $630 for just the first leg. At $100 a hour, it's a little steep. They also offered exit row seats for $190 dollars. It's something to think about for the next time. The crew must realize how bad the seating is as when you ask for wine, they give you 2 bottles a person and they come back later and give you another one. They may as well have shot us with a tranquilizer dart especially that we had spent an hour in the airport lounge in Montreal drinking for free.

We have 2 hours to kill in Heathrow now and we are ready to be cattle for another 3 hours to Athens. The time difference from Athens to Montreal is 7 hours. That means if we watch the Canadiens in the playoffs, the games will start at 2am. I think we will PVR them and watch while we are having breakfast.

Still at Heathrow and just went to the bathroom. As I am relieving myself, a man stands at the only urinal next to me. As I walk away to wash my hands, through the mirror, I see the guy still at the urinal. I can't get over how much that from the back he looks like Jimmy O'Neil. The reason he looks so much like him is that he is Jimmy O'Neil. He, his wife Linda and her mother are coming back from South Africa after a 3 and a half month 'holiday'. I will post the pictures when we arrive in Athens and have settled in the hotel. If you don't know Jimmy, he's Mike's brother originally from Laval West now living in Ontario.

Tuesday April 14th - 9:00pm

Arrived and checked in to our hotel. As we freshened up, we went on the roof of our hotel to get our first glimpse of the Acropolis. It was awe inspiring. The Metro ride here went smoothly and the walk to the hotel was about 5 minutes. If you are ever in Athens, the Metro is the way to go. 8 Euros each way but we asked for the 3 day unlimited transit pass which cost 20 Euros. That means for the extra 4 Euros you can take public transit anywhere in Athens. We will be walking a lot, but every once in a while we will take shortcuts to get to places faster.

10:45pm - Just got back from a long walk through the Plaka. Lots of restaurants (or tavernas) and some people just starting to eat supper after 9:00pm. We will rest very well tonight as we are beat from travelling and the 7 hour time difference. The plane from London to Athens was way better in the way of room at the seats. We are not looking forward to our London Montreal flight back but that is in 29 days.

Wednesday April 15 - 6:00pm - Athens

Today we walked and climbed. We are leaving the Acropolis for tomorrow so we decided to walk around and up Lycabettus Hill. It was quite the climb but worth every inch for the view that you get of the city. It's only 20° but if it was any warmer, we would have needed a shower when we got to the top. Going down was a lot easier. At the top is a tiny church called Agios Giorgos Chapel. From there we walked downward and got a feel for how the locals live by walking their many small and narrow streets.

We also visited the Acropolis museum after grabbing a beer and a small bite to eat. I really just wanted to sit down. We were back in the room by 3:30 for a little rest and deciding what we were doing for the evening.

According to our fitbit we walked 16.18 km today. Much of that was uphill.

Thursday April 16 -1:30pm - Athens

Last night we had supper at the Maiandros restaurant. We selected balcony seating on the 3rd floor where we had a view to the Acropolis. Paul had a sausage dinner and I had a chicken souvlaki. This was all accompanied by a litre of white wine. We met a couple from Sydney Australia and two young ladies, one from Sweden and the other half American and half Brazilian. They are high school students in an international school program living currently in Greece for 6 months. Their last posting was in Costa Rica. What an education - right? On the way home from the restaurant we walked the streets of the Plaka, full of life and energy. We stopped off at a corner store and bought wine, beer and water. A last drink for the day in our room and we were ready for a good night's sleep.

We went for an early breakfast and then quickly watched the hockey game that we taped at 2:00 am our time. Go Habs go! We were not impressed by the whole Subban debacle. Lack of discipline on Subban's part, way faked by Stone and badly called by the refs.

Took the metro to the Acropoli station. Purchased our tickets for 12 Euros each and began the walk up to the Acropolis. Quite amazing despite the scaffolding and crane used for renovation.  Very few people when we started our visited but groups were packing in upon our departure. Chatted briefly with a couple from Quebec City who are spending 5 weeks visiting Greece. Visited a few other sites of ruins that were included on our ticket. Saw ruins, cats and turtles. Shared a club sandwich at our hotel resto and had 500ml Heineken beers served in iced steins. Freshening up and then will head out to Piraeus (the port area). We will take the tram to get there.

Thursday April 16 - 10:15pm - Athens

After a little rest in our room, we decided to make use of our unlimited transit pass and head to the shore near the port city of Piraeus. Around 3:15, we head off  to get the tram which is literally, 40 feet from the front door of our hotel. As we head outside, all the streets in our area are blocked to traffic except police. It doesn't take use long to realize, the the tram is not making it to our stop which is the terminus for the tram. So we decide to follow the tracks to the next stop. Still no tram. We walked 3 more stops and still no tram. We finally decide to take the metro at the Acropolis station and after one stop, they announce that they are connecting to the tram, which has been blocked for its last 5 stops. Long story short we finally make it to the South east shore of the sea and eventually to Piraeus which is the port where all the boats leave for the Greek islands.

We finally get back from Piraeus using the train and Metro this time and we are back in our hotel by 6:20. The streets are all still closed and deserted. Just as I am setting my mini tripod to take a picture of us on the barren Amalia street, they reopen it to traffic. Within 30 seconds, it's business as usual. So much for a quiet before dinner drink on our balcony. We then turn on the news to see what was happening. It was a protest walk of over 5000 people to demonstrate against the government stopping a Canadian gold mining company (Eldorado) from spending 700 million Euro to expand their operations. Here is the article. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to view it from our rooftop as we were away for the entire time. After another rest, we set off to eat in the Plaka around 8:30 and found a little restaurant, where we ate alone as we were off the beaten track a bit.

Once we got back, we started to get ready to pack up for our early departure in the morning for our flight to Santorini. We definitely walked our way through Athens. We both have Fitbit bracelets that count your steps. Since Tuesday, when we arrived, we have walked 40kms, 33 of those in the last 2 days in Athens. The exercise almost makes up for all the Feta cheese I have been eating, but not quite. Next update, Santorini, where the weather is supposed to sunny for the next few days, fingers crossed.

Friday April 17 - 12:15pm - Firostefani, Santorini

We have just checked in to our hotels on Santorini. Only 1 word can describe our suite, WOW! We are here for 5 nights and we had decided that if we splurged on this trip it would be here. This place is definitely worth $200+ a night. In high season, our suite is $350US a night,, that is IF you can get it. There are only 4 suites in this hotel. There will be more on the hotel later.

The flight here was painless. The rush hour Metro to the airport was a little bit of a challenge and it was way longer than our flight. When our Air Aegean pilot announced that we had reached our cruising altitude of 17,000 feet, his very next sentence was that we were starting to descend for the Santorini airport. Our in the air time was 25 minutes. Today it is cloudy and windy on Santorini and only 17°C. That's why we are not in a rush to walk the 2 hours to Oia (pronounced ee ah) as it is on the cliff side and it will be nippy. We are figuring out what to wear and waiting for a few clouds to dissipate.

Friday April 17 - 10:00pm - Santorini

We are back!!!! We left our hotel for just after 2 to walk to Oia (remember it's pronounced ee ah as in ia). I took just over 3 hours because we stopped to take in the scenery. It was around 13 kilometres and everything but flat. Oia is THE place on Santorini to watch the sunset. We found a place with called Sunsets. We were tired and just wanted a beer. The location made everything double the price but after walking we were ready to sit. The problem was that the sunset was almost 2½ hours later. The beer was 5 Euros for a small bottle but it was good. We sat for over 3 hours and watched the sunset. Apparently, in peak season, it takes 1 hour to clear the narrow streets of Oia. You will see in the pictures how many people are there on a cold and windy day and multiply by 10 for the real tourist season. You might also notice that the majority of people Asian, my guess would be mostly Japanese. Anyway we will definitely relax tonight after walking 55kms in less than 4 days.

Saturday April 18 - 6:30pm - Santorini

Today was a good day. It started with breakfast delivered to your room every morning with your selection from the night before. Normally you would eat on the terrace, but the wind was way too strong to even consider it. So strong that we could hardly keep the door from flying open as we would unlatch it. Other than a great breakfast, we watched the Canadiens beat Ottawa in game 2 of the quarter finals. We have it PVR'ed and I have internet access to it from my Slingbox. When we started watching at 8:00am, it was 1:00am back home, so we skipped through commercials and intermissions to watch it in about 90 minutes.

After breakfast, it was time for me to pick up a rental car. That's when I noticed that the temperature seemed to be MUCH warmer when away from our cliff side accommodation. I had to walk about 8 minutes to the town of Fira, Santorini's main town. After a lengthy registration with the Avis clerk (all was already done online, but they had to transfer all the info to handwritten paper), I was on my way. The clerk also tried to up sell me everything from insurance to a pre paid full tank of gas. Back home, they have stopped being so aggressive in trying to make money, but that practice seems to be alive and well here.

Anyway, now I had to drive back to the hotel, which probably took me as much time as the walk. One, because I had not driven a stick in about 7 years, and two, because there is no way to make a u-turn on any street in the towns on the island. I finally got to our hotel parking lot which is the municipal parking of Firostefani. Not once on that trip did I have a chance to reach third gear.

Knowing that the wind was going to make the cliff side uncomfortable, we took the car and headed to the eastward side of the island. It took me a little time to convince Myrna that she did not have to wear long pants but she soon realized that I wasn't lying about the two contrasting temperatures. We had a good And cheap meal in a fishing port and really enjoyed the heat on the protected side of the world. When we got back, I had a good nap in the hot tub that is set at exactly body temperature. We are now relaxing and deciding on the evening plans.

Saturday April 18 - 11:00pm

The wind seems to have died down finally and as we left our hotel we were treated to a wonderful Santorini sunset. I now agree with many people that the Oia sunset is overrated as the sunset over the island in the caldera is just as nice. Santorini is the remnant of a huge volcanic eruption from 3600 years ago. It was a single island and when it blew, the center (which was the top of the mountain) colapsed into the sea and is now just a tiny island in the middle. The rest was flooded by the sea. Some people claim that this is where the legend of Atlantis started. What is left is a crescent with cliffs of almost 1000 feet that look down into the caldera. This satellite picture from Wikipedia really shows what remains and you can imagine what it looked like before the eruption.

Most of the cliffs have a western exposure thus arguably making it the sunset capital of the world. To be frank, we have seen spectacular sunsets in many other parts of the world including watching one from the dam on the way to Laval West. Nevertheless, according to George, our hotel manager, tonight's was one of the five best of the year. He was even taking pictures of it.

Once the sun had said its goodnight just before 8:00pm, we were off to Fira to one of George's recommended restaurant for dinner. The restaurant, Argo, did not disappoint. Fira is only a 10 minute cliff walk from our hotel and the path was well lit for our return trip.

We are not sure of our plans for tomorrow, but we will kick off the morning with a 9am breakfast without hockey.

Sunday April 19 - 6:00pm

Today we visited 2 little towns on Santorini. The first was little town called Megalochori. It may have been Mega at one point but now it's a little quaint village. It was interesting to walk through, but when we had walked around it, I decided to drive down it's main street as I knew that it was a street. Myrna was not pleased with my decision and I had her video the drive. The file is a bit too large to post but it will be featured in a video when I get back or if I find a fast enough internet connection I will put it on YouTube. You won't believe that they let cars drive through this village.

Next we were off to Pyrgos, which is a pretty little town 5 minutes from Magalochori by car. It's on a hill with the Kastelli on top where we had a drink. We then returned to the main part for a light lunch. Our plan was to continue on to Ancient Thira but it closes at 2:30 and it's closed on Mondays. Therefore we have to postpone our journey to Tuesday. We then came back to the hotel via the shore road beside the airport runway and drove on Monolithos Beach. A funny (or scary) thing happened around there. At one point I was going in the wrong direction so I did a u-turn. As I got back on the road there was something scraping the road like my muffler had fallen off the clamps. I immediately turned on a dead end street to look at what was under the car. As I went to open the car door, at least 5 dogs ran up to the car and surrounded it barking little a pack of rabid Hyenas. Needless to say I wasn't getting out of the car so I backed up onto the 'main' street and whatever was dragging had fallen off. There were a lot of nervous giggles in the car following that adventure. I say I was scared, because the last thing on my mind was to get the camera out to film the event.

Monday April 20 - 8:30am

Had a great supper last night in Fira at a restaurant called To Ouzeri. We were in the sheltered area thankfully because mid way through our meal the wind came up so strong that the open area was inhabitable. The wind was from the east which I think would be rare here. Because it was from the east our cliff walk back to the hotel was completely sheltered and didn't fell that cold.

This morning we are ready to have breakfast and watch game 3 of the playoffs. It's 1:30am back home so it should be finished unless it's in quadruple overtime and if so I only extended the recording of it by 2 hours. Not sure what we are planning for today as we are still in the basement part of our suites and have really assessed the weather yet.

Update - Weather's fine, Breakfast good as usual, and watched the Dale Weise show, Go Habs go!!!!!! We are heading out. 11:00am

Monday April 20 - 4:00pm

Went for a little toot up to the highest point on the island. Good view of the surroundings but a little misty. Myrna didn't like the drive up and it reminded her of the time we drove up the mountain in Whitehorse, Yukon but it was paved. We then bought wine from the Santo brewery then we headed to the opposite end of the island via the east coast to a little fishing village in Ammoudi bay. We had a beer and a snack. I asked for grilled calamari. It was basically the entire squid cut into chewable (not) pieces. I made believe I was on the Amazing Race and tried to eat as much of it as I could but I took the penalty instead. We came back to the suite as the wind had died down enough to sit on our deck. It was very hot in the sun, and I had a surprise visitor as you will see in the pictures.

Later on, we will be going to a secret place to watch the sunset. Hopefully no one else will be there but we might be able to stay longer than anyone else as we have headlamps and two flashlights or torches as they would call them here.

We also just received an urgent email for the ferry line that our boat from Santorini to Crete is cancelled due to technical problems. Saturday's and Monday's were cancelled also. I think that they might not have enough people make it viable. Instead, they said to show up at the port and they would bus us to airport and provide the flight. I wrote them back and asked them if we could go directly to airport since the trip would take 3 times as long the other way. We will be able to go directly to the airport giving us an extra hour in Santorini. The only problem is that we prepaid a hotel in Heraklio for our first night and it is near the port not the airport. Just waiting for an answer on when the plane arrives in Crete. Answer 7:30pm on a charter.

Monday April 20 - 11:00pm

We hiked to Skaros Rock tonight for the sunset. It was quite the hike from our hotel. Only 3600 hundred steps, but not very many on a flat surface. The effort was well worth it however. The sunset was great, the wine was great and other than being completely exhausted the exercise was great. We didn't climb to the top of the rock but to the church on the other side. Apparently, there is a way to the top of the rock but it requires a little more skill. We may try it though but I would drive closer as it takes 20 long minutes to get to the start of the rock hike. Not sure what we have planned for tomorrow, our last full day here, but definitely Ancient Thira and maybe relaxing on the deck.

Tuesday April 21 - 10:00am

If you read this yesterday, you may have realized that I had the wrong date for Monday. Today is the 21st and our last full day in Thira (which is the real name of Santorini in Greek). We are headed off to the ancient Thira which is a drive in itself. You may have noticed that there is a new section in my photo album. It is for videos because every time I would sort by date, the videos would go to the beginning of a section. This way they will always be in the same place. I did a time lapse of the sunset using my iPad yesterday. It's in 2 sections because I ran out of space. Looking at the weather for the next few days, it doesn't reach 20° which is good for hiking but not so good to lie around. By next Wednesday in Crete the forecast is up to 27 degrees and sunny. That will be very warm for hiking.

Wednesday April 22 - 9:00am

Our last day in Santorini which is the name given to this island in the 17th century in honour of St. Irene. No real sunset last evening but a sky full of cloud that played with the light of the sun. We were wondering what to do for supper on our last night here. As we were trying to decide, George, our hotel manager comes to our room with a gift, a beautiful cheesecake covered with strawberries and white chocolate. That kind of settled our supper plan as we had eaten lunch at almost 3:00pm. We stayed in our room, had our cake and ate it too. It was quite decadent and it would have been really good with our wine. The only problem is that the bottle fell over on the ceramic floor and the bottom broke out of if. I managed to salvage one glass out of the unopened bottle. We settled for some coffee instead and watched last week's American Idol.

Today we have to bring the car back by 3:00pm and since no one has booked our suite today, they are allowing us to stay here until we get our airport transfer at 5. Needless to say that in peak season we would have have to leave by 11am check-out time. Our stay here at Santorini has been amazing and Allure Suites could not have been a better choice for us. The personal care taken by the staff is unbeatable. We would stay here again in an instant. For the next 20 days, we may have to deal with the reality of European standard rooms which may be 1/8th the size of our suite and certainly not with the view to which we have been accustomed.

One of the pictures you will see in the album is the moon from last night. Right beside it you will see a star.  I don't remember ever seeing as a bright star that close to the moon. This star is Aldebaran or Alpha Tauri as it is sometimes called. If you are into astronomy you can read more here. I am not into astrology, but Aldebaran is the brightest star in the Taurus constellation. Both Myrna and I are Tauri, which would explain a lot of things. Myrna is an ascending Taurus as her birthday is tomorrow while I am on the last days of Taurus very near Gemini. She is the 2 days from the start of Taurus and I am 2 days from the end. The Greeks have a lot to do with Zodiac, so since we are here and the skies will be ripe for viewing in many places, we will briefly believe in astrology and let the stars guide us through the rest of our voyage.

The next update should be from Crete although we might have some spare time later on today while waiting for our airport transfer.

Wednesday April 22 - 11:00pm - Heraklion on the Island of Crete

Made it here and manage to get downtown by public bus (only 1,20 Euros each) then we walked to the hotel. It's nice but a bit strange, Don't have time to post any pictures as we just got back from supper and are really tired. We pick up our car in the morning and head for the country side. Not sure where yet. Stay tuned.....

Thursday April 23 - 10:00am - Heraklion (Biggest city in Crete)

This morning we are headed out of the city. Unfortunately, the culture shock of going from the peaceful beauty of Santorini to the heart of a city is not very palatable. Heraklion looks alright and the downtown core where we ate last night was nice but we have to pick up our car this morning and head out. We probably will be back to explore Heraklion in 9 days before we have to catch our afternoon plane back to Athens for our mainland stint of Greece.

I have posted some pictures of the view around our hotel (They may not be there yet as I am realizing that our internet speed is also not what we have been used to). Not quite we have been experiencing for the last 5 days. We are heading east right now to Agios Nikolaos to get away from the big city. Hopefully the internet is faster there.

Thursday April 23 - 3:00pm - Agios Nikolaos

Arrived at our hotel on the east side of Crete in the Latishi Prefecture. Our 3rd floor room is facing the sea on a beach in a bay. It sounds like a Seal song. We are here for the next 2 nights. Parking is on the street so the car will not be moving until tomorrow morning when we head inland to the birthplace of Zeus.

Friday April 24 - 9:00am - Agias Nikolaos

Remember I told you that I rented my cars here from Avis (through Costco travel). The main reason I did that was that through my pre-trip planning there were warning about some Greek rental car agencies would pass off cars that were not in good shape and would give road side assistance should something happen. Anyway I thought renting from Avis would avoid some of this. I was sort of wrong thinking that dealing with Avis would somehow be better and I will certainly call and/or write to Avis to tell them my concerns. Other than trying to sell me all the coverage with car rental in Santorini all went fairly well. When picking up my car in Heraklion things were a little different. First of all, there was the hard sell for full coverage was on even after telling them that I was fully covered by my credit card and I also pay extra on my personal car insurance to be insured when driving rental cars. I also opt out of the prepaid gas which would cost over 80 Euros to bring the car back empty. Now that the contract is printed out, they make me sign 4 copies. 2 for them and 2 for me. One in English, and one in Greek 'for the police' they say. That's fine, except for one thing. They make me initial a clause that say that I am libel for 14,000 Euros plus 23% if the car is totalled. That's $24,000 for a Toyato Yaris that happens to have 72,000 kilometres on it. There is no other car in the downtown office and this even takes 15 minutes to arrive (probably from the airport). I begin to  argue about the fact that $24,000 is way more than the car is worth. Suddenly, the Avis rep's English gets very bad and she can't understand what I am trying to say. I try to phone customer service back home but it's early morning and they are not open for another 6 hours. I reluctantly take the car and I am a little nervous about driving it through the narrow street of Heraklion. I am also a little nervous about the rest of the trip since I know some of the roads I am going to encounter in the mountains. Update. I finally looked at the car. It's a Toyota Auris not Yaris. It fits our 2 suitcases and our backpacks in the trunk so no one can see in. The one thing however is that it says Avis on it in about 5 different places. May have well have signs all over it saying 'Tourists on board!'.

Bottom line - There are many reputable Greek car rentals agencies that include ALL insurance for the same price I am paying with Avis. If I had to do it again, I think I would go the Greek rental route with lots of research ahead of time. I will update you when I contact Avis back home.

Friday April 24 - 6:30 pm- Agios Nikolaos

We had a great day today. We went to the Lassithi plateau which was an incredible drive up to over 1000 metres and down into a large flat area where the ground is very fertile. There was also snow capped mountains. We drove up to the Dikteon Cave where they say Zeus was born but I think that is a myth. The cave itself was alright but the history around the cave is something else. On our way back we took a different road that took us to some amazing places.

We then headed to Plaka which is right across from an island called Spinalonga. It' a tiny island with a fortress on it. From 1903 to 1957, it served as an isolation site for lepers. First lepers from Crete and then all of Greece when Crete became part of Greece. A photographer could spend hours on that island. We took about 90 minutes and I climbed to the top to get some fine shots. We then had a beer in Plaka before heading back to our room at the Palazzo. We have to plan the next few days as we are leaving here tomorrow for the south coast and are not really sure where we will end up.

Saturday April 25 - 5:00pm - Agios Gilini

Finally found out what Agia and Agios is. It means Saint as we stayed in Saint Nicholas last night. Agia is for a female Saint. We woke up this morning and tried to watch part of the Habs game but it was too painful and I sneaked a look at the final score. 5-1 loss ouch. Anyway we wanted to head out to the south coast of Crete using the south coast roads. My arms are tired from steering the car through all the switchbacks. We booked a place in advance through Booking.com. It's on a hillside away from town so we stopped in at a super market to grab a few things for supper as we are staying in a fully equipped apartment for one night. Although Google maps said it would take 3 hours, it was more like 5 with all the stops. It about 20 degrees outside as we sit on the deck but less than 10 km away there are snow capped mountains. A lot of snow as they have had a rough winter here. This probably means that there is no way that the Samaria Gorge is opened before we leave Crete. We do have alternate plans for hiking though. One is a 22km seashore hike to or from Agia Roumeli which is the end point of the Samaria Gorge. The other is Imbros Gorge which is a few kms from our next two days layover which will probably Hora Sfakio. We haven't booked yet but we are only staying here in Agia Gilini for the one night to relax away from everything.

Saturday April 26 - 7:00am - Agios Galini

Had a great night's sleep thanks to no wee-fee in the room (that's how they pronouce Why-Fye here). You have to go outside to not lose the signal and the mosquitoes were out so we were in bed early. Also, being in the middle nowhere here, this is the least English channels we had on TV, One snowy, hard to watch Sky News station. We watched the Greek news for a few minutes, so we know about the earthquake in Nepal and the last minute meetings to keep Greece in the European Union.

Today we are going on what is supposed to be a 2 hour drive to our next destination. This might not happen as I like mountains and we might take a detour around and over a mountain pass which will add an hour to the ride at least. We are only 12 nights into our 29 night stay but I have posted only a fraction of the pictures. Nevertheless, I see that at this point, there are over 400 pictures posted. That may be fine for the people who visit every day but it will be too many for the casual visitor. In the weeks following the trip, I will try to make a Best of Greece album along with some videos that I cannot post because of the limited wee-fee.

Sunday April 26 - 1:30pm - Hora Sfakion

We have arrived in The ferry town of Chora Sfakia. They spell everything many different ways here. It's murder trying to find a place on the GPS. Anyway, I don't think we could have picked a better destination. I was a little sceptical about this town because there's not much written about here and our hotel doesn't even appear on Trip Advisor. The water here is the bluest we have seen yet. We are eating lunch now and going on a little hike in Imbros Gorge to warm up for our 22km seaside hike tomorrow. Pictures to follow.....

Sunday April 26, - 7:00pm - Hora Sfakion

We just got back from a hike in Imbros Gorge. Instead of walking the entire 8km and having to take a 20 Euros taxi back to the top, we took the gatekeeper's advice and walked down 4.5km and walked back up. It's not the Samaria Gorge but it was beautiful until we had to come back up. I think we did the 9km hike in about 2½ hours. On the way back, we had the scare of our lives. The gorge, being a gorge, is very steep. There are goats grazing above your heads in many places. At one point, we heard a noise and a rock about the size of a volleyball came straight down within 8 feet of Myrna. We hugged each other and the wall where there was a little protective overhang. We gathered our senses and we still had about 40 feet to go through the chasm. As we started to walk again, another avalanche of baseball size rocks fell in front of us. When it stopped, we ran for our lives. About 30 seconds later, we heard another series of falling rocks but we had cleared the steep part by then. If was an experience that we will never forget. The root word of gravity could have come into play today but we are still in one piece. Tomorrow's 20km+ hike may seem easier if no goats or falling rocks are involved.

Monday April 27 - 8:30am - Hora Sfakion

Another sunny day in Southern Crete with a high of 23°. We are preparing for our hike. Originally, I had planned to leave early in the morning and try to make it to Agia Roumeli to get on the 5pm ferry back to Sfakion however, if we missed the ferry in Ag. Roumeli we would be stranded there as no roads lead to there. So we decided to take the 10:30 ferry to Roumeli and hike the 7 to 9 hour walk back. There is one town, Loutro, that is 10 miles from the start where we could get a cab if we were too tired to do the last 2 hours. The problem with that Loutro is a hour away by road which would probably make for a fairly expensive taxi fare. Below is the E4 trail route with Agia Roumeli being the end of the Samaria Gorge which is closed and may not open on May 1st because of the bad winter they had here.

Tuesday April 28 - midnight - Skafia

We got back to our room at 8:00pm and did not have the energy to update this as we went right to bed after what was a scary 22km hike. We will explain in the morning but we are safe and in bed and resting.

Tuesday April 28 - 9:00am - Hora Sfakia

Ok, Time to explain what happened yesterday on the hike to hell. Just to recap our original plan was to take the 10:30am ferry to Ag. Roumeli and start walking back to our hotel. Now firstly the ferry is supposed to arrive at 11:30 because that's its scheduled departure time from Ag. Roumeli. It arrives at 12:05. No biggie. We buy an extra water bottle and a large apple which will be a good decision in the end. We start on our merry way and walk along the shore. When we start, there is a sign that describes a trail that goes by the beach trail and veers off to the left somewhere after the Church of Agia Pavlos (Saint Paul). This trail has never been mentioned in the stuff I have read online but I take a picture of it for future reference. To make a long story short, I don't want to end up on this yellow trail, so I assume that the right fork to stay on our trail is earlier than it is and we follow footprints in the sand that look like part of the trail. This is at 2:00pm which is not even 2 hours into our walk. Still walking the beach, the trail which is not a trail starts looking treacherous until we get to a place where we can't even try to pass unless we can time it between crashing waves. Rightfully, Myrna is not liking this at all and I finally realize that we are not even close to the trail. We start walking back and weigh our options. Option one is to try to go back to Roumeli to catch the 5pm ferry back. We have less than 2 hours to get back in what has already taken almost 3. If we miss the ferry, we are stranded in Ag. Roumeli and have to stay overnight and wait for the noon ferry the next day. That doesn't seem to be a good option. At this point, we are lost, tired and scared and I am scouting place for helicopters to land. We both have our cell phones, so that's a little comfort. At the top of a cliff, I spot a telephone pole. Hoping it's a sign of life, we start heading up, when Myrna spots a rock on top of a rock. This means people have been there another little climb and we reach the original trail and the yellow paint that we hadn't seen in over 90 minutes. We are back on the trail to Loutro. Our detour, has taken the last leg of our trek off the books so our only goal is to reach Loutro by the time the ferry leaves there which is supposed to be 17:40. What we don't realize at this time is that Loutro is still 3 hours away. It just seems to be around the corner. Well it isn't, and we decide that when we get to Loutro, we will pay a king's ransom to get either a boat or car to get us back to our hotel. The other thing we don't know, is that the most technical part of the trail is coming up. Actually it did not even look like a trail and after 5 hours of walking, climbing down a rocky cliff face with a 100 foot drop didn't seem very safe. Fortunately, this is the only place that we saw anyone else on the trail and together we figured out a route among the rocks. Still no Loutro in sight and way past the ferry departure time. We finally get to a little restaurant to buy 3 more bottles of water and ask for directions because nothing is clear at this time. Anyway, when we finally get to Loutro, lo and behold there are people waiting for something on the wharf. The ferry was 90 minutes late. The girl at the ticket booth said boats are always late. Praise the lord for Greek time. Anyway we made it back to the room at 8pm, took showers and immediately crashed. You won't see that many pictures of our hike because we weren't in picture taking moods after our lost adventure.

We are now off for 3 nights in Chania for a well deserved rest in a luxury hotel and a place to do laundry at the half way point in our adventure.

Tuesday April 28 - 6:00pm - Chania (pronounced Hania)

We checked in to the Casa Del Porto hotel around 1pm after our 90 minute drive over the mountains. It probably took longer to find a parking spot than the drive. We used Booking.com this morning to book this hotel and it mentioned free parking. Good news - bad news situation. Our hotel is right on the port with a great view of all the action which also means no cars allowed therefore we had to park almost a kilometre away and carry our luggage through the pedestrian part of the port. The whole area's parking is restricted to residents, so now we are debating if we will ever move the car. Actually we have to move it at least once in order to visit the west coast beaches that Crete is famous for. We are paying quite a bit for this apartment with a view but it's costing less than getting a helicopter rescue on the south shore.

Wednesday April 29, - 9:00am - Chania Old Town

Didn't have the best sleep in the world last night. One reason maybe that we both had Cappuccinos after nine at an Italian Restaurant. Yes, a nice pizza, after 2 weeks of Souvlaki and Mousaka, we needed the break. The other reason is Scotch. No, we didn't imbibe a fifth of Cragganmore 29 but a young Scottish lad certainly make us lose sleep. Remember that our wrap-around balcony also faces an alley with a couple of bars. It was a bit rowdy in the afternoon but I knew the young kids drinking would pass out by 8:00pm and right on queue they did. Then around 1:00am, Braveheart showed up with his buddies. The shirtless Braveheart started shouting in the street at someone in the Cheers bar, Yes, a probably unlicensed use of the Cheers trademark. He went on for about an hour while his friend was trying to calm him down and make sure the Braveheart (BH) would not get back in the bar. Finally, his so-called friend, gave him a knockout punch and left BH lying unconscious in the street bleeding profusely. He ran away but kept looking back to see if he would come to. After about 2 minutes, he ran back shouting 'call an ambulance'. By that time, BH was just waking up with a badly broken nose. The police eventually came, but the friend waved off the police saying BH had just been drinking too much. For the next 45 minutes, BH and the friend had an loud conversation in a language I could not comprehend, drunken Scottish. I have a hard enough time with sober Scottish. Finally by 3:30am, BH was resigned to the fact that he was going to have the worst hangover of his life (probably not). Good news, the part I did understand is that they will both be on a boat tonight leaving the island. Hopefully they won't be replaced by some other hooligans and Cheers will only host customers where they know their names.

Update 11:00am - Still in our room

Myrna is feeling a little under the weather this morning so we are taking it easy. Her stomach is a little upset so I went to the pharmacy to get the Greek equivalent to Gravol. It ends up that in some countries, according to drugs.com, the ingredient in Gravol (Dimenhydrinate) is only approved for veterinary use. After describing Myrna's symptoms to the pharmacist who thought I was the sick one, she said to take something called Elkostop. Of course, without internet access and everything on the box and inside in Greek, I assumed she was giving me the right thing. We will see but until then we are sticking close to the hotel and delaying our trip to the beaches probably until tomorrow. Now that the car is parked on a free street (fingers crossed), I don't mind leaving it there for an extra day.

Forgot to mention that the girl at our hotel arranged for our laundry to be done. Our apart-hotel had only 3 rooms so they don't have their own facilities. This morning, she brought back 2 huge bags of clean clothes. 18 Euros which is 6 Euros more than what we paid for our laundry in Cinque Terre, Italy in 2008. We had double the quantity this time around.

7:00pm - Myrna is still in the room

We will probably venture out to walk around the town. Today was supposed to be our beach visiting day but it was so windy that it would not have been enjoyable. The glass bottom boats took the complete day off because of the wind. Myrna's is back to 80% but is not in a shape to chance having a meal so we will see what we do for supper. The wind is still howling outside so it might not be a long walk although as soon as you get away for the Old Port here the narrow streets are not really affected by the winds. Chania is a beautiful little town but not all the buildings are in great shape. Of course some of them are 500 years old so that would explain it but some are just suffering from the Greek economy.

At the halfway point of our vacation, it was a good day to rest. Tomorrow we will be going west and south to the beaches even if the wind is not favourable. Who knows if we will ever be back this way again.

Thursday April 30th - 9:00am - Chania

Myrna is feeling better this morning, not 100% but back enough to go explore the west coast. The wind also seems to be co-operating so far as it has died down compared to yesterday. The best beach in Crete is supposed to be Elafonissi Beach which is about 90 minutes from here when you count getting to the car and getting out of the city. No fights outside our room last night but our bedroom door being within 60 feet of 3 bars and a Scandinavian disco, there was some sporadic loud noises until 3:00am. At 6:45, you could hear the beer barrels rolling down the alley been replenished. We were happy being in the heart of the action in Chania but we didn't realize that this is the city that never sleeps, along with its visitors. The good news, Braveheart seems to have left on an invasion of another island.

Thursday April 30 - 11:00pm - Chania

A fairly good last day in the Chania Prefecture before heading back east to Rethymno. We drove down to Elafonisi Beach and then back to Chania later in the afternoon. The wind was still fairly strong and it actually felt cold on the beach although it's so shallow there that the water was warm. We came back and walked around Chania before our last supper here. There seems to always be something new to discover here. After supper I told Myrna I wanted to walk down our little alley to see what was going on at Cheers. This is when we found out that there are not just 3 bars within 75 feet of our bedroom door. There are 6. We went into one that was pretty nice with real loud music after the bouncer wanted us to visit. We said that if we were 40 years younger we probably would have stuck around. Cheers was the only bar that nothing was going on at. I am getting out the heavy duty earplugs for tonight because I think the action will be heating up again in our alley.

The dinner we had was very good at a restaurant called Taman. As usually they gave us complimentary Raki at the end and Myrna still can't stomach it. You will see in the pictures. Tomorrow is our last night in Crete and we are staying in Rethymno. This time we got a place with parking nearby and we can easily walk into the old town. Our plane for Athens leaves at 2:45 on Saturday so we will have time to do things on the way to Heraklio Airport. We have already checked in online for our flight. We were assigned row 19, so it will be a good flight.

Friday May 1st - 1:00pm - Rethymno

We have checked in to Palazzo Vecchio in the Old Town of Rethymno which is the 3rd largest city in Crete. Like Chania, it has a Venetian influence. There is also Turkish essence as Crete was under Turkish rule for 400 years. We were upgraded to an apartment and it will give us a little room to pack for the plane tomorrow afternoon. We are off to explore this little town that seems to have streets narrower than Chania.

Friday May 1st - 6:00pm - Rethymnon (Yes another way of spelling it)

This little town is actually very nice. We both said we actually liked walking through its streets as nice or even nicer than Chania. The only drawback today is the the fortress is closed as it is a holiday here. May 1st is a holiday in many parts of the world. We had lunch in a seaside taverna and then walked through the entire town. We are getting ready to go back and visit after a little rest. As you can see by almost all the pictures, there is not a cloud in the sky. So far, in 16 days here, we have had rain for less than 5 minutes. In Crete, all we have seen is blue sky. The wind however has almost always been around on the islands. And speaking of weather, let's hope that Lightning has already struck enough times this year. Go Habs Go!

Sunday May 3rd - 7:00am - Somewhere West of Athens

Haven't been able to access in the internet as we are staying in our worst accommodation yet. Where is motel Fabreville when you need it? Actually it's not that bad and I already knew that is wasn't going to be that great as I had read the reviews a month ago. We booked it because it was in a convenient location just over an hour west of the airport on the way to the Peloponnese Peninsula. The hotel is literally in the middle of nowhere but right on a beach. The wind was howling here again last night. The hotel has no vacancies because it was a Saturday night so luckily it was booked way in advance. We were supposed to arrive here around 5:30 but we got here at after 7pm.

The reason we were so late is that our plane out of Crete took off at 5:00pm instead of 2:45. They had to change planes in Athens on the flight down to Crete. They kept announcing short delays but I could see using the website planefinder.net that our plane was still in Athens so I knew they were lying. Anyway, they told us we could get food from the snack counter for free but we had just had some ice cream from there. We took 2 sandwiches and a drink which came in handy later when we checked into Hotel Hell. Actually it wasn't bad except that I couldn't get the girl to reboot her router because she said the problem is that too many people were accessing the wi-fi. It wasn't working at all for me. That would not have been a big problem except that we had no idea where we were going today and where we were staying. Other than a few notes I have from guide books we borrowed, we didn't bring them with us and we rely on the internet for all our 'planning'. Anyway, last night we left the hotel after eating our airport sandwiches (which were actually pretty good) and went in the closest town to look for internet access. No luck, the towns around here are dead and probably have never seen a tourist. The closest building to this hotel by road is about 6 kms. In the middle of the night, I heard my iPad receive an email. This must mean that the internet in our hotel was working. I immediately got up and research the days activities and a place to stay. With the speed of the internet here I won't have time to post pictures until later tonight when we are staying in Nafplio. Until 3am I had never heard of it either but it's about a 2 hour drive from here which means at least 5 since there are things to see on the way including the Corinth Canal and one of the best historic places to see on the Peloponnese.

Sunday May 3rd - 7:00pm - Nafplio

Pleasantly surprised with our choice of town for the evening, Nafplio. The town was the capital of the First Hellenic Republic and of the Kingdom of Greece, from the start of the Greek Revolution in 1821 until 1834. Nafplio is now the capital of the regional unit of Argolis. On our way here we stopped at the Corinth Canal which technically makes the Peloponnese Peninsula an island. It was built in the late 1800's and is an amazing work of engineering. There are no locks because the sea is on both sides but it saves ships a lot of mileage. It is still used by many large ships but it is fairly narrow so there must be times when you can only go one way. After Corinth we headed down to the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus with was built in 400 B.C, and 'renovated' by the Romans adding another 21 rows. It can seat 14,000 people and the acoustics are perfect. It is said that you can strike a match in the center of the stage and you can hear it from any seat. We then made our way to Nafplio which was less than a 30 minute ride. The city has an impressive fortress and if you want to walk to it, there are 999 steps. We didn't attempt it (we may in the morning) but we did walk around the city and up to the Palamidi Castle which was impressive in itself. Actually we found a secret elevator to the castle by chance. It was really for a hotel but we took it up to save some time. To get to our hotel, our GPS took us a narrow street for about 500 feet on an uphill dead end. Too narrow to turn around, Myrna had to guide me back down the street in reverse and avoid cars and brick walls. We succeeded without a scratch but we immediately parked the car as soon as we got a parking space. We are not moving it until tomorrow. We had a large lunch that finished after 3 so we won't be eating supper.

Another interesting event going on here in the port is some kind of boat exhibition. Actually, the smallest 'boat' was probably 60 feet and there were at least 40 of them on display all flying Greek flags. The minimum price was well into the millions so there was a small fortune on display. Whoever owns or buys these monsters has not heard of the austerity measures of Greece.

The things we want to see on the Peloponnese are fairly far apart and although we had originally planned to stay 2 days in each city to explore an area, we may only stay one night in a few places in order to get to see more. Unfortunately this means a lot of pictures so you might get bored. We are uploading them in case we lose some of our memory cards.

Update (at end of hockey game) - We are still trying to figure out our next 3 days. Also just saw the result in the hockey game. 3 Power Play goals for Tampa. Discipline boys, don't let me go back there. We want to see some hockey when we get back.

We only have 3 days left on the Peloponnese because we are booked in Meteora on Thursday and Friday. We didn't want to visit Meteora on the weekend and I reserved the hotel before leaving home. Meteora is at least 5 hours from Olympia which is long for us as we stop a lot. I will try to post a map but going more south from where we are now means longer drives. We quite like Nafplio so in the morning, we may decide to stay here one more day and head to Olympia tomorrow. Stay tuned for the suspense.

Here is a map of what we've done so far. Ignore the time that it says there because that is without stopping. I should have done the map thing in Crete as that would help follow.

Monday May 3rd - 8:30am - Nafplio

After much contemplation, we have finally decided what we are doing and where we are going. We booked a seaside hotel near Kalamata which is about 3 hours south west from here. It lengthens our driving somewhat, but we will get to see Sparti (Sparta) on the way. We are not leaving until around 11:00am however as we have decided to conquer the Palamidi Castle's 999 steps up and eventually down before we get the car and check out of our hotel. We just had a great breakfast here. The fresh orange juice I had, had so much pulp in it that I thought I was eating oranges. Myrna hates pulp in orange juice, so she really hasn't had much of it. I am amazed on how many orange trees there are in Greece, especially right on city sidewalks. Some have hundreds of ripe oranges hanging but there are so many leaves on them that you can't really see them.

Going to Kalamata today means that we will have to drive back north west to Olympia tomorrow. We initially were going to go to Ancient Olympia before the tour busses arrived but instead, we will try to go at closing when everyone is gone. There is no real interesting town near Olympia so we will stay one night around there and head north east through Patras on the way to Meteora the next day. This will be to try and break up the 6 hour drive into 2. Remember, in Greece, a 6 hour drive is more like a 12 hour drive unless you use the toll roads which have 130km an hour stretches. I was going 130km/h on a road on Saturday and I got passed by 2 cars going at least 170. Our VW, starts to shake when I hit 130.

Update - We did it! - 999 Steps up and down plus around the promenade - plus many ups and down in the Fortress. The views were great and the fortress itself is in very good shape. We squeezed ourselves into the prison entrance and into the dungeon. Yuk, if we had places like these for our kids for their time outs, they would never disobey their parents! Off to Kalamata.

Monday May 3rd - 4:00pm - Just south of Kalamata

Just checked in to our room by the bay. It''s a brand new hotel which opened less than a year ago. We don't have a sea view from the room but just a few steps outside there is a bar with a view. There is also a bar across the street that belongs to the hotel. Our included breakfast in the morning can be served by the beach, on the patio or in our room. There was only one room left when we booked through booking.com and it happened to be the 'accessible' room. The shower is the entire bathroom. They even had indoor parking but I had to hold my breath to get our VW Golf into it. This hotel has a full restaurant and bar so we parked the car and we have decided to take a vacation from our vacation. We are not touching the car and we will be served for the next 16 hours. We drove through Sparti (Sparta) to get here. The drive was nice but Sparti was no party. It's just a town in a valley without much. Kalamata is bigger but doesn't look appealing either. The drive here was quite something as we went through 3 mountain passes. The last one took us to over 1200 metres. You will see by the pictures that it wasn't a straight road. It's now happy hour time....see you soon

WARNING - The following paragraph (in Green) contains coarse language and may offend certain readers. Please do not read it if you are easily offended and move on to the next blue paragraph.

OK - I have to talk about this. You may have noticed that I posted a picture of a souvenir stand with a rack of wooden cocks for sale. Excuse the language, but the word penis seems too dignified in this situation. I am not sure if it's a Greek thing or a European thing or maybe they have them back home, but they are everywhere here. Actually when I first pointed out to Myrna that I had just seen someone selling wooden cocks in Athens, she said she had been seeing them all day. I guess Myrna has an eye for cocks that I don't have (an eye that is). Anyway, they are everywhere in every colour and every size. Some have bottle openers on one end, the ball end, if you are wondering. Some are keys chains. Imagine driving in your car with a wooden cock bouncing between your legs. On these roads, you would get blisters on the inside of your knees or at least a lot of bruising. I mentioned that they come in different colours, some look like Faberge eggs they are so ornate. Some are simply left the natural colour of the wood which seems to develop a nice patina hopefully from the sun and not from natural oils. I also noticed that the larger ones are usually lower on the display and are often the black ones. I am not sure that is done on purpose as to not attract the youngsters or even scare them away or to make sure the display does not become top heavy and falling hard on (excuse the pun) some unsuspecting tourist. Imagine your average Asian with a selfie stick suddenly entombed in a mound of hundreds of cocks and it's the year of the sheep not the rooster. Anyway, something must be done about the selling of these phallic souvenirs. Actually the buying of these wooden dicks should be controlled except for self defence purposes and maybe unclogging toilets. Anyway, as I said in the caption of the picture, send me an email with your order and I will know which one of my acquaintances I shall 'unfriend'.

This blue paragraph should be less offensive. Update 10:30 pm - We have made reservations for tomorrow night. We are heading north west to Olympia. It's only 2 hours from here but we are stopping for a hike at some waterfalls on the way. We had a nice dinner tonight right on the beach. Our hotel doesn't have a full dinner menu going yet so we walked about 5 minutes up the road to a taverna and watched the sunset as we ate. The only 2 other people in the restaurant are in the room next to us in our hotel. This has been a good rest stop and we are energized for our last week in Greece.

Tuesday May 4th - 7:30am - Kalamata

We are on the way to Olympia with a stopover at the Polylimnio Waterfall. Ancient Olympia is one of the stops of which I have been looking forward. After all, being from Two Mountains, playing my first ever organized hockey game in 1965 at Olympia Park, and now playing hockey 3 times a week at the Olympia Arena. And don't forget those countless hours watching the pseudo animated Hercules cartoon and the famous chant of OLYMPIAAAAA! as lightning struck his ring and gave super human powers. Don't forget Newt, the half 'man' half goat that started all the rumours about Greeks.

We are staying in Olympia a brisk walk from the ancient ruins. We will visit either late in the day or as the site opens in order to enjoy the tranquil times when the busses have left or not yet arrived.

Tuesday Cinco De Mayo - 4:00pm - OLYMPIA!

We have arrived in Olympia. Our stopover at the falls was amazing but quite the hike. It was well worth the detour. We stayed there almost 2 hours including the trek in and out. I will post pictures but there is no way to capture the sights and sounds of this place. Since we arrived at our hotel early, we will get the local knowledge on whether we will visit later this afternoon or tomorrow at 8am. The archaeological site closes at 7 and the museum closes at 8pm. We are sitting on our balcony having a beer to try to make the hard decision. We stopped at a grocery store on the way and a large can of beer was 1.07 Euros.

Wednesday May 6th - 9:00am - Olympia

We made the right decision. We decided to visit Olympia late in the day and it paid off. With the site and museum both closing at 8pm, at 5:30 we parked our car with the 4 other cars in the lot and no busses. When we got to the ticket booth, the lady asked if we wanted to visit both the museum and the archaeological site and we said yes. Knowing that we only would be there for 2.5 hours, she said to me 'You are old?' to which I responded 'Very old!' as I knew she she was trying to give us the senior discount. Myrna, not realizing what was happening, was insulted by her remark and also felt that our 90 minute trek in the heat at the waterfalls had made her look like crap, responded 'I am 58'. So I paid 5 Euros for my entrance while she had to charge 9 for Myrna's truthfulness. 4 Euros, the cost of vanity (that's $5.52 Canadian)

Anyway we spent the next 2 and a half hours in awe and almost completely alone on the site and the last hour completely alone in the museum except for the 11 employees making sure we didn't touch anything. I stood at the starting line of the stadium with a spectator attendance of 1 who videoed my 50 yard dash from the starting line of the first Olympics in the 776 BC. Words can't really describe what I felt surrounded by millions of blades of grass cheering me on. I felt an energy that I had not felt before, so much that on take two of my dash (because the first was out of focus), I actually beat my own personal best. If you saw the pictures, the turtle was a close second place finisher.

We came back and had a great supper on our hotel restaurant with very reasonable prices. I had what was listed as their speciality, Chicken in Curry (a Greek standard) that was very good but we ended up splitting a dessert called a Banoffee. It was in my top 3 desserts of all time. It was the end of another Great Greek day and there are only 6 left.

Today is the only day that we are not sure of our destination. We haven't reserved anything yet but we are trying to get closer to Meteora. We will drive north for a while, try to get Wi-Fi somewhere nice and book a room somewhere or nowhere. Off the breakfast now....

UPDATE - after breakfast we decided to confirm a destination. We picked Nafpaktos (or Naupactus depending on where you search). We lucked out on Nafplio so we are taking another chance on a city starting with Naf. We were originally going to go Delphi from here but the feeling we got from Olympia really cannot be topped. If we can't have Delphi to ourselves then we are not going. Also we are a bit ruined out as some sites start looking alike. What these visits have done is piqued our interest in ancient history and we will certainly be researching and reading about it in years to come.

Now that we know our destination for the day, we are not really in a rush to get there as it is only 130 kms away. The only problem we see is crossing the Patras toll bridge. Apparently they have is a list of people that are not allowed to cross it. If they find out that we know Gerry Landry, they might not let us through. (Ask Gerry the next time you see him). If they won't let us cross, there is a ferry which will take a little longer but no biggie.

Wednesday May 6 - 6:00pm - Nafpactos - Back on mainland Greece

We are 2 for 2 on cities starting with Naf. It's not really the city, but the hotel upgraded us to a 4th floor room and a complimentary bottle of wine on ice. We walked around the town a bit but the castle closes at 2:30 so we only walked halfway up to see the view. Though the highlight of the day was as we left Olympia. We saw a brown sign that said Olympia Theatre. Brown signs here mean a tourist attraction. I said to Myrna, Why haven't we seen the theatre here? They talk about it a bit on websites but it plays second fiddle to the 'real' Olympia site probably because it's newer. It's only 2000 years old built by some Romans who happened by. It looks like it's been restored somewhat and probably hosts some concerts in the summer. I tried in vain to research more about it but I am getting hits about the Olympia Theatre in Montreal and the one in Athens and one somewhere else that is showing movies from theatres that are named Olympia. As we we got there the tickets booths were deserted so we just drove to with 5 feet of the theatre.

The next 2 days have been reserved for a while so we will be heading to Meteora tomorrow morning. We are supposedly keeping the best for last.

Thursday May 7th - 8:00am - Nafpaktos

Forgot to mention that it made it into the 30°s yesterday. Today the high in Kalabaka where we are going is supposed to be 32 and 33 tomorrow. We will be climbing to the monasteries in the heat it looks like although we will attack it early in the morning. It's hard to dress correctly even for today's drive as we are going to go near some snow I suspect as we are going over some mountains to get there. It looks like our 4 hour drive could be hampered by some picture taking.

Thursday May 7th - 9:00pm - Meteora

The day didn't really as I thought it would. Firstly, when we left Nafpaktos it was cloudy. After 22 days of blue sky, it seemed odd. It was a little misty. The drive was 4 hours as expected but instead of going over the mountain passes, there the roads are newer here. At one point we went through at least 15 tunnels, some of them 4 kilometres long. The highway was so new that the toll booths were there but had not been activated yet. It was only 30 minutes in the end on winding roads. The highway portions even had speed limits of 130 km/h. Our rental car doesn't do very well over 120. At one point, we must have been going uphill in a tunnel and I couldn't get the car to go over 100.

Anyway, we certainly weren't disappointed when we arrived in Kalabaka. The landscape is unreal and so was our hike up to the top of one of the rocks. It's hot here, in the 30's. Tomorrow is our day to visit the monasteries. We just have to decide which ones and whether we will hike to them.

Update - Noon Friday. The monastery on the right in the picture is now a nunnery. It wasn't until 1925 that one of the monasteries was inhabited by women. The monasteries here dates from the 16th century. Originally there were 24 monasteries on the rock tops. Now only 6 remain. We visited 2 this morning by car. The biggest one and the smallest one (the nunnery). Now we back in our hotel and we are hiking to the most inaccessible one. It's quite a long walk from here through the town of Kalabaka. We are actually in the next town over called Katraki. Meteora is not really a town but means suspended in the air.

Friday May 8th - 11:30pm  Kastraki (near Meteora)

We did the hike from our hotel to the Monastery of the Holy Trinity (we found out later that it was used in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only). To get there was quite a hike. About 90 minutes in the heat and sun. It reached 30 something degrees here again today. This monastery was very simple and not crowded because it is the furthest from any parking lot. We had a beer at a taverna on the way back and were exhausted when we got back to the hotel. We finally went out to eat around 8pm which is early in Greece.

We have decided on a destination for tomorrow. We have booked 2 nights in Volos. We will then have one night left before heading back home. It wasn't easy finding a place to stay for the next 2 nights as it is a Saturday and Sunday. Anyway, Meteora is an awesome place and is not to be missed if you are even close to there.

Saturday May 9th - 8:00am  Kastraki

We are leaving Meteora today but we may stop at Theopetra Caves on the way of Kalampaka (yes, another spelling for the same town). These caves were inhabited 50,000 years ago as proven by a new aging technique called Optically Stimulated Luminescence. This means that there were 'people' in there during the ice age.

After that we will take the leisurely 2 hour drive to Volos and probably 2 hours more to find a parking space. We will then have one more night in Greece and we may have been talked into going to Delphi after all, which will get us close enough to Athens airport for Tuesday.

Saturday May 9th - 4:00pm - Volos

We have arrived in Volos and parking seemed like it was going to be a real problem. We found a spot on the street that allows one hour parking but it only starts on Monday at 9am. Apparently it's free until then. The public parking is 1 Euro and hour with no daily rate and if you park on the port road, it's a 80 Euros ticket because you can't park there. Anyway our first impression of Volos is not great and we are relaxing a bit before heading out to explore. On our way out of Kastraki, we gave Heather, our neighbour in our hotel, a lift to the trail head to the Holy Spirit Monastery in Kalabaka to save the 3 kilometre walk. We then went up to the sixth monastery by car. Since we were there, we ended up visiting it (St. Stephen Monastery) even though I was in shorts. We then went to the cave to find out that they have evidence of inhabitants 150,000 years ago. It was small and we were first visitors of the day at 11:30. The guy had to come up with us to turn on the lights. Although the cave is part of some private tours, the access road doesn't allow busses to go up so there can't be that many people there.

Saturday May 9th - 9:00pm - Volos

After we relaxed a bit in the room with a wall view, we went out for a walk on the waterfront. For the first time in 27 days, there were clouds in the sky and finally it rained for about 10 minutes. That's when we decided we would eat to avoid the rain and we had the biggest laugh of our vacation. We stopped under the roof of the restaurant and we ordered some wine and beer and for the first time during our trip we ordered the mixed grill for 2. When it came, it was a huge plate with pork, chicken, sausages, souvlaki and fries. It was actually pretty good. When the waiter brought our meal, he also brought a little paper bag with our utensils. The knife was pretty small and had a white plastic handle. We both started with a sausage and I was having a hard time cutting through the skin as it was a little tough. Then I took a piece of the grilled chicken and it was really tough and I was having a hard time cutting bite size pieces. Finally I decided to try the pork hoping that it wasn't as tough as our first two samplings. This one was even worse. Myrna says out loud, 'this is the worst knife I have have ever used in my life'. At the time, I was thinking to myself 'how does Myrna have enough strength to cut through this meat?' and 'I am going to break the handle on this knife if I continue wit h this meal.' Just as Myrna was thinking of asking the waiter for new utensils, I said 'do you think we are using the knife backwards?'. Sure enough, the last 10 minutes of our lives had been spent trying to cut meat with the dull end of a knife. We both started laughing hysterically for a good 5 minutes, Myrna showing me the skin of the sausages she had given up on. We have tears in our eyes right now even thinking about it.

After our meal, the street had dried up so we walked the entire waterfront where we could see very dark clouds in the distance. It rained slightly for another 3 minutes but we decided to walk back to our huge room with no view. There is actually room for 4 poeple in this room with a separate bedroom that we are using to store our luggage. We are waiting to see what the weather will be like tomorrow (Sunday) to see what we are doing. There are sailboat trips out of the harbour or we could drive up to Mount Pelion if we take the risk of moving the car.

Sunday May 10th - Happy Mother's Day - Volos

As I said yesterday, we may take a chance to day and lose our parking spot. We will probably head down to the Mount Pelion Peninsula where the water is supposedly warm enough to swim year round. I don't think we will be swimming because the weather doesn't look that promising today (or tomorrow either). After 27 days of constant sunshine, the last three days are a little disappointing. Anyway, the Habs are home for game 6 so not all is bad. We'll be back almost in time for the game on Tuesday night.

Sunday May 10th - 10:30pm - Volos

The weather was actually very good here and got better as the day went by. Don't believe those weather predictions. We ended up going south to a little beach called Afissos and eventually went up to the ski hills. Judging by the size of the parking lots, a lot of people ski around here. We head to Delphi tomorrow for our last night.

Monday May 11th - 2:00pm - Delphi, Delfi, Delfoi and many more ways to spell it.

Just checked into our hotel in Delphi. There are only 4 streets in Delphi but it took about 15 minutes to find our hotel even with the address on the GPS. It's a newly renovated hotel and you can still smell the paint the rooms. It's clean but they bathrooms are still the original plumbing which means aquamarine porcelain. Bain Magique could make a fortune in Greece. It also means there is no place to hang the shower to have a regular shower. I think it's a ploy to get you not to use as much water. So far we have had 4 four of those showers plus one where the thing in the wall had fallen off. We have a nice view over a a bay that is about 10 kms away. The only problem is that rain is threatening. Myrna is out gathering a light lunch to have in the room before we attack Delphi which is at least 1km away at the other end of town. We found a parking space on the street 30 feet from our front door so the car is not moving until it leaves for the airport tomorrow.

Other than the potential rain, the other we are staying in the room for a while is to book our seats on the flight from London to Montreal. If they're available we are upgrading to seats with a little more room. I can still feel the cramped space from the the flight a month ago. You can book 24 hours in advance so we are waiting until 2:45 as it's not letting us in now. Update - Somehow the online check-in didn't work and it said to report at the airport. We will try to arrive a little earlier than planned as to get a better choice of seats. Fingers crossed.

Tuesday May 12th - 9:00am - Delphi

This is it. The only thing left is the drive to the airport which should take about 2 and a half hours. While in the plane and the airports I will write about the high and lows of our 4 weeks in Greece. There's a lot of good here but you can feel the struggle that some people are going through. The day will be long as we got up at 7:00am and we will probably be home by 10pm. Doesn't sound that long, but don't forget to add the 7 hours time difference. That makes for 22 hours of 'travel' time.

Tuesday May 12th - Noon - In the Aristotle Onassis Lounge at Athens International Airport

What a way to end our holiday! With my BMO World Elite Card, we get free access to over 500 Airport Lounges around the world. It's called Priority Pass and we used at Dorval when we left. They don't have an available lounge in Terminal 5 at Heathrow though but I think you can only use your pass so many times a year then you have to pay. Free food and drinks and good wi-fi, What more could you ask for?

Anyway the drive from Delphi to Athens Airport went without a hitch, only 2 hours 25 minutes. The wind when we left Delphi was wicked though and it's still pretty windy here at the airport. We ended up putting 1,819 kilometres on this leg of the trip. We had 2 options regarding gas with this car. They charged us for a tank of gas at the beginning and said that they would credit us if we brought the car full. I decided to take the car back empty. Arriving at the airport, the needle was very low and it read 35km to empty. We got our money's worth out of that deal. We got to the airport at 11:45 for our 14:45 flight. By the time we returned the car, cleared passport control and security we were in this lounge just after noon. Normally, I am not one to like being early at an airport, but 2 hours in the lounge is perfect. Aristotle left a good legacy.

I guess it's time to wrap up the trip into the good and the bad but first I forgot to tell you that we had an interesting experience in a restaurant in Chania. We didn't feel like a big meal as it was late so we went to this little place that looked like it had good pizza. I asked the owner if he had a local wine. He said he had something that wasn't on his wine list but that he would 'surprise' me a wine that he had tried at some wine show. All I told him is don't 'surprise' me with the price. He was a little insulted at my comment and told me not to worry. Anyway the red wine was actually pretty good and he decanted it and let it breathe as any sommelier would do. When we got the bill, the was 27 Euros which was acceptable since the highest price on his wine list was 30. Anyway, I took a picture of the label for future reference and just happened to look it up online. It ended up that he charged us more than 350% of the online price which I thought was a little greedy. We were happy with everything about the dinner except the sour feeling of being taken advantage of. With that feeling fresh in our memory, I wrote a Tripadvisor review of the restaurant. A couple of days after the review was published, the owner answered the review. I must have hit a nerve because other people who had given rotten reviews of his restaurant never got a comment from the owner. Check it out here.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of our trip to Greece

The Good

Food is pretty good everywhere you go. If you don't like Olives, Onions, Tomatoes and Feta cheese you will be limited in your options but the Chicken is good as well as the Pork (Souvlaki)

Beer and Wine - Pretty good and fairly cheap (except at 350% mark-up). Local beer cost the same as Heineken and Amstel but I stuck to local the big 3 Greek beers, Mythos, Alpha and Fix.

The landscape - If you like blue seas and mountains.

Driving - If you like curves and are not afraid of heights, the road in Greece are exceptionally good. Get ready to get passed by people who know the roads

The people - Most people are nice here, the ones that aren't will be written in the bad.

The weather - We had 27 days of sunshine so we can't complain.

The history - If you are into history, there are not many other places that can be this interesting.

Cats - If you like cats, you will see many here.

The Bad

The guy in front of the restaurant who cousin lives in Canada and wants you to eat in their place.

The history - I believe that much of the history is made up. I think they call it Mythology. Myth Busters should do a season here.

Rental Cars - Just hope you get something from this century

Parking - If you find it, guard it with your life.

The heat - We only had 3 days in the 30's but I can't imagine what July and August must be like here.

Beaches - The beaches are good but the waves have not worn down the rocks enough. Only 10% of beaches seem to have sand.

The Ugly

Graffiti runs rampant here and it's mostly just chicken scratch. I would say that maybe 2% as any artistic value.

Stray Cats and Dogs - They are everywhere, the good: not rats anywhere.

Showers that don't hang on the wall - Handheld showers don't do it for me.

More to come and videos

Hope you enjoyed the trip......