Hotel Phaedra Athens

... down the country and as we all started to sit down they were asking us where we were from. There is one thing I can't stand about Irish people and it's generally the reason why I avoid them like the plague when I'm away. It's the narrow and small minded, begrudging mentality that we seem to have and it always seems to manifest itself between people from the country and people from Dublin. It's a 'them vs. us' syndrome. No sooner had I said that I was from Dublin but the sniping ...

... women in the back and we're off at speed into sleeping Athens. We let our lady friends off at another taxi stand downtown and then set off again through some of the narrowest streets and darkest alleys I've seen since Debrecen, Hungary in 1999 on a similarly lively cab ride. A good mugging seems imminent, but I'm disappointed once again as we pull up in front of my hotel. I check in, get my card key and ride the ...

... Bob figures the freighter was drawing about 12 feet of water. We went back to the ship and marvelled at how they got out of the harbour. There was a yacht (a very nice one) parked behind the cruise ship so I was concerned on how he would get out. He had no problem...went straight sideways for awhile and then backed out of the harbour! I have trouble backing up my car never mind a 1000' ship! I was very impressed. Kind of like turning around in the Bahama harbour!

Today we spent the day on Santorini Island. First we had a short tour around the island and a visit to the little town of Oia (pronounced eeya). I wish we'd had more time there. The last part of the tour before we got dropped off in Fira town was to a winery where we tasted three kinds of wine - white, red, and a sweet dessert wine. All were very good. He also served cheese, tomatoes and something wrapped in grape leaves. Fira town ...

... t want to discuss it afterward and didn't want people to worry about me, but now I'll describe it. I was walking back to my hostel after dinner, through a fairly busy area in the city center called La Candelaria. I'd even purposefully taken a busier route since it was around 7:00 and getting dark. When I was just a block away from my hostel, I cut down a street that was just a half-block long or less, and pretty broad, with busy streets at each end. However ...

... even they stood a fair chance of coming out like snow huskies.

It must be a pretty common thing for tourists to end up poking around here looking for their way to the Acropolis as there were numerous small, hand-painted signs in peoples’ terraced gardens pointing us in the right direction along the tight and twisting passageways, and after getting onto a wider road and following a perimeter fence we found the front entrance.

The bad news was the bloke on ...