Almost a year in the works, we finally have the opportunity to take a real vacation together. In 18 years, Kirk and I have only really had vacations that tagged onto the end of family trips, weddings, conferences, or research trips. We left Vancouver on April 29th 2005 at 8:30pm.
We Made it! Our flight to England was long and sleepless. And when we arrived in Heathrow airport at 1:30pm, we realized that we had over 7 hours to kill! What to do, what to do. How about a trip to Piccadilly Circus on the tubes?! Store our carryon bags at the “Left luggage” centre, change some cash to Sterling, buy a couple of day passes…and we were off!
Enough of that, another plane ride and on to Greece!
We arrived at 2:10 am (Greece time) after 21 hours in transit. A Greek taxi driver was waiting for us and drove us in a most maniacal fashion through the almost deserted streets of Athens into Piraeus and down onto the dock. We found our vessel, the “Pink Elephant” and fell into unconsciousness. The next morning our Charter company representatives (Ria, Poppi, and Sokrates) came down and greeted us…not sure how coherent we were on four hours sleep…but they didn’t take the boat away from us so we must have said something right as we spent two hours going over the boat stem to stern.
Note to self….when traveling 21 hours to a foreign country….try to make sure you don’t arrive during a three day holiday because you can’t buy food! The odd street kiosk and gas station is actually open so you can buy alcohol at Shell…but for food…well, be happy for cookies and breadsticks.
However, on the upside, all national monuments are open to the public for free during holidays…so you can’t buy groceries…but you can sightsee. We hope to actually provision on Tuesday and head out either then or Wednesday at the latest!
Not sure when we will find another internet cafe, this one was tough enough to locate! Hopefully in a few days…until then….. we’re off to the Islands……..