Greece!

I realized that I never did finish the final post of last year's Romania trip, but all you really need to know is that Bucharest is not that great, but the trip itself was enjoyable.

What's important now is I am in Greece once more but for an excavation in Mycenae. However, before that excavation begins, I've met with my friend Ashley (she of the previous two years' Porolissum adventures) for a few days of travel in Greece before our separate programs begin.

My tale begins on Sunday, June 26th, which is when I left Toronto for Athens. My flight was at 2:35pm and was non-stop to Athens, landing at 7:10am. It was a pretty good flight, except I happened to be seated near a very chatty group of people and it included one woman with the most penetrating voice. I had an aisle seat on the left side of the plane, and shared those three seats with one other guy, so at least it was nice to not have an extra person there.

Upon landing in Athens, and after going through customs, I boarded a bus for Pireaeus. I think normally it's not a long trip but because I was there in the morning, it was probably rush hour, so there was a lot of traffic, and it took an hour to get to the port city. Once at the Hotel Argo Anita, I was able to check in directly to the room and all I had to do was hang out for a while and wait for Ashley to arrive. Her flight was scheduled to get in at 2:00pm, so I really was only supposed to have a few hours.

However, that would be too easy, of course. Her flight ended up being an hour late and it caused her to miss her connecting flight in Rome, so she had to wait another nine hours for her next flight to Athens. At the same time, I was concerned because I was just hearing about a potential (and likely) transit strike in Greece, which means buses, metro, trains, and ferries would be stopped. Ashley and I had already booked all our tickets and hotels for our two-island trip, so I wasn't sure what to do. At the time, I didn't know Ashley was having her flight difficulties, so I was considering switching the first ferry trip from the following day to making it the current day instead. But once I learned she would have to arrive the day of the strike, that was no longer a question. She ended up getting in at 3:00am. So we got to sleep in until 8:30 (instead of waking earlier for the original 7:30am ferry) and try to figure out what to do.

The original itinerary was one night on Mykonos and three nights on Santorini. We were unsure as to whether we could make Mykonos at all, and were then concerned with cancellations and refund policies. I'd spent a lot of time talking to the manager of our hotel, who was very helpful and had suggestions as to alternative plans. On the 27th, I talked to him again and explained that my friend had arrived much later than planned. He told me of a woman who came in and said that when she called her hotel on Mykonos to cancel it, that hotel told her the Rafina boats were still running. Rafina is one of the other ports in Greece, and it meant a glimmer of hope for us. Ashley and I went to the ferry offices to inquire as to our options between a few of the boat companies. We booked a ticket for later that evening in Rafina. On the one hand, it was great because we didn't have to miss out on Mykonos or cancel our reservations, but it did mean a lot less time there than was planned.

We left our large suitcases at the Piraeus hotel, so all we'd need to carry was a regular bag for the islands. It was an hour's taxi ride to Rafina (remember, neither the bus nor metro is running) and we had a little time to kill before the boat came. It happened to be a rather nice little place, with a cafe right by the port. We sat there, talked a while and played card games. Upon boarding the boat, we immediately made for the couch seats, so we would have room to stretch out and nap a little if we wanted to do so.

We got to Mykonos at about 10:30 and were picked up by the employees at Villa Vasilis. They were very nice people and let us know how to get around the town. Because of the strike, a lot of the people staying there had elected to extend their stay, so we couldn't get a normal two-bed room like we'd reserved, but we got a house instead! It was great, there were couches, a balcony, a little kitchen, five beds and a full bathroom. We decided it'd be great to just stay there for a month, but alas, we only had a night. Ashley had brought a small bottle of Italian wine that she'd picked up during her stopover in Rome, so we had that, and then went to bed.

Early the next morning, we woke and repacked our bags. It was decided that we would just check out right away so we wouldn't need to return to the room again, and would instead just gather them from reception storage before we needed to get to our 2:55pm boat ride. Maria, who works there and had picked us up the night before, said she would bring our bags to the port so we wouldn't waste time riding back for the bags.

Since we only had a few hours, we made it to the main attractions in the city centre, which were the windmills, Little Venice, and the various churches in that area. By pure chance, we found the archaeological museum; it was quite small, having only three rooms of artifacts, but still a nice little visit. There were lots of cafes, restaurants and shops there too, so we mostly meandered around and looked at the stuff for sale. What items we wanted to buy happened to be far too expensive. In fact, there was one necklace that I'd been looking at for a long time and I saw several of that kind here, but the cheapest (and nicest, in my opinion) was 300 euros, and that was the discount price! I was super sad to have to pass that up. The salesman said, "What, you don't have a credit card?" I replied, "I do, I just wouldn't be able to pay it off." Sad, but true. There was a large, golden variation of that necklace at other shops, but their discount price was something like 7000 euros. We wondered who really could afford shopping on Mykonos.

At 2:15 we went to the Old Port and waited for Maria to come with our things. When the time came and went, we started to get a little concerned. Ashley called Maria and asked what was happening, and Maria apparently was rather flustered and wondered why we weren't at the new port, where she'd sent her father with our things. Now we got really concerned, and asked whether we needed to make a quick walk to the new port to meet with her father. But Maria said she'd tell him to go to the Old Port. There were some communication issues but finally, about 2:45 her father showed up with our bags and we could then get in line for the boat. Maria later showed up and apologized for the confusion, stating that all the strikes and reservations were getting her a bit frazzled. We said it was understandable and parted ways there.

It was a three-hour ride to Santorini, and we also had a ride from our hostel manager there. We would be staying at Villa Dimitris in Perissa for three nights; it's a really pretty spot, and it's right near the black sand beach. We're certainly looking forward to trying out the beach. All we had time for this night though, was dinner and a couple of drinks. For once, it was wonderful to not have to worry about rushing someplace else the next day. On Santorini, we can take a little more time for travelling around.

And that's where we are right now. I'm about to go to sleep and I will hopefully update again soon.