Greece: a retrospective

Okay, long time no blog, but we're back and should be up-to-date in a few days. Because we're so behind, beware that we will be pretty cursory with the text and will probably rely heavily on Phil's excellent photos (which is probably more fun anyway, especially when they don't take like 5 minutes each to upload).

Greece was amazing, but a bit of a shock coming right after Ethiopia. Happily, it was generally a very positive shock - goodbye injera, hello greek salad - except for the small matter of cost. Suddenly the price of, say, a cup of coffee sky-rocketed from $0.30 to $5.00 - and a sandwich from our hotel in Athens was about 18 euros (needless to say, we gave the food there a miss).

We really enjoyed our time in Athens; we checked out the sites, drank many glasses of house wine and a few beers, and noodled around the shops. It was great to decompress after Ethiopia and generally enjoy being back in the first world.

We met up with Maria and Neil (Phil's parents) on our way out of Athens and over to Porto Heli where Maria has a cousin with some very delux accommodation and amazing hospitality - a huge thanks from the two of us to Mary and Christos for all that they did for us during our stay. We had a wonderful time and really hope that we'll be able to repay their hospitality at some point.

From our base on the mainland, we checked out some amazing sights and towns, including Epidavros, Mycenae, Hydra and Spetses.

We headed back to Athens to catch our first ferry to Mykonos, the party town of Greece. Mykonos is a lovely town with some great food (and some very creepy waiters, well one anyway) and it's one of the few places I've been where night becomes day because of the intense lighting they shine on the streets at night. The only way to tell the difference is crowd density and the number of drunk young 'uns.

From Mykonos we hopped over to Santorini, maybe the most dramatic island ever when you first approach it by sea. The town is built on an expired volcano, up some very sheer cliffs. We did a full tour of the island, checking out a number of the towns and even walking around the smoking caldera during the intense midday heat. But the best of all was enjoying some very tasty meals and some stunning views.

After a few days on Santorini we hopped over to Greece's largest island, Crete. We did a cruisey little road trip, visiting Iraklio, Rethymno, Hania, Spili, and Agia Galini, enjoying each of our stops for different reasons, but enjoying each of them nonetheless. Sadly, we parted ways in Crete with Neil and Maria heading home and Phil and I continuing on to Rhodes to spend a few days enjoying the cool old walled city.

Even though it seems crazy to jump over a whole month of fantastic travel in a few lines, I trust the photos are worth a few thousand words (at least). A huge thanks Maria and Neil without whom we would have had a much different, and much less enjoyable trip. Another great time on the road with the four of us - hopefully we'll be seeing them in the very near future...