Greece Glorious Greece 2

The third port was Santorini, one of the most beautiful islands in Greece and my favourite. The whole island is covered in black sand as a result of a volcano erupting there centuries ago. The houses and villags are all built on the cliff tops so you have a panoramic view of the sea, steep cliffs and white houses. In fact when i first saw the hills from the ship I mistook the white houses dotting the clifftops for snow and wondered how Greece had snow covered mountains. But as we went towards them I realsied they were white houses. 

The ship does not dock at the harbour, but rather at a little distance away so we had to take a small boat to reach the port. There was nothing at the port itself so we could either take a cable car to reach the village above, or a donkey ride up (no!) or do day trips to other islands. We decided to go to the village of Fiao, a typical Greek village. It was a 45 minutes ferry and bus ride and we reached very hungry to this beautiful greek village at the top  of the  mountain. The view was just amazing and we had a lovely lunch overlooking the sea and the hills. Greece surprisingly had tons of vegetarian food  (unlike Spain and Portugal where I had to really struggle to find anything to eat) so I feasted on Greek salad and Spinach pie. We then walked around the village, the girsl played in park there and we admired the view and resolved to come back and spend a week in Santorini sometime in the future (one day is not enough).

We took the bus to the next village and bought some local wine and sun dried tomatoes there- its all grown on the volcanic soil so the wine actually tastes a bit smoky. We finally decided to walk down to the port as there was a big queue for the cable car and the girls did not want to ride the donkeys. It was a tricky walk down, pretty steep stairs and trying to avoid the donkey poo! and the donkeys!! S was a sport and walked all the way down but A insisted on being carried a lot of the time. To be fair, she was quite unwell and on antibiotics so overall she was a good sport about being out so much.

The next day we docked at Kusadasi in Turkey. We decided to head out only after lunch and only for  a couple of hours as it was getting too hectic for A. We hired a taxi to Ephesus (an ancient city, decently preserved) and walked through the ruins. We managed to visit the site of the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world, but there was only a column standing there and we had to imagine the rest of the temple. Historians write that it was one of the grandest structures built and I wish it had been preserved. This trip we managed to visit three of the seven ancient wonders of the world- the Temple of Artemis (Kusadasi, Turkey), the Temple of Zeus at Olympia (Greece, near Katakalon) and the Colossus of Rhodos (Rhodes, Greece) so it was a pretty educational trip. I wonder how much the girls will remember of it though! We declined buying any carpets or leather goods and it was a bit cold to walk around in the town so we got back to the ship pretty early around 4 pm . The girls enjoyed the kids club in the evening and S admonished me for picking her up too early- they had a pirates theme that night and she wanted to take part in the treasure hunt.

The final destination was Rhodes in Greece. We took the Hop on Hop off bus and went around the small town. The sea was a beautiful azure blue and we were tempted rightly to get off at the beach. It was too cold to go into the water but the girls had fun collecting the stones at the waterfront and we just enjoyed gazing into the blue water. It was a long walk to the site of the ‘missing’ Colossus statue and then back to the ship. The hubby did some hectic shopping in the old town and managed to buy all the three wonders of the ancient world across our various stops. They are gathering dust on top of our bookshelf now.

The girls enjoyed the evening in the swimming pool (running between the pool and the hot tub) and I managed to catch up on my book reading. This trip I’ve managed to read two full books and two half books! Am quite happy about that because in between all this rushing to office, getting up early to get thh girls ready for school, coming back and giving them dinner and putting them to bed, my reading and exercising had nearly stopped. I fiished reading Buddha of Suburbia on this trip (very ok book, doesn’t really go anyweher), read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray  Bradbury (interesting and very topical to today’s environment), read The Expats (lovely spy thriller) and half of Lean In (some good insights, but no real game changer).

The last day was in Athens. We saw the Acropolis musuem (had seen the Acropolis the previous week) and spent the evening in the national park with the girls to make up for all the boring historical stuff they had to see! They had fun feeding spaghetti to the goat, fawning over the rabbits and running around in the playground. We had a typical Greek dinner at a local restaurant and went to bed early to catch the early morning flight back to Zurich.

Lovely restful holiday. Back to the old grind now..