Tuesday, September 12, 2006

AUGUST 3rd

woke up after bugger all sleep.
ship arrived in Patras at 1pm.
caught a train at 155pm and gradually made our way to Piraeus - the big port for Athens.
stuck with Yvonne and Craig all the way and picked up a couple of chicks from Perth along the way who had about as much of an idea about where they were going as the four of us. safety in numbers!

everything was booked out for going to Santorini that night, so instead of spending a night in Piraeus, we booked an overnight ferry to Crete and an early morning ferry to Santorini.
Piraeus was where we experienced our first of many yiros. and it was bloody marvelous! it may have been due to the fact that it was only 1euro60cents or that we hadn't eaten since breakfast, but it was soooo good!

the ferry was "okay", but definitely nowhere near the standard of the Blue Star ferry from the previous night. this one did have showers though, but they were pretty dodgy looking so we decided against it. it took off at 9pm and we were pretty beat from lack of sleep and all day travel, so after a whiskey for me and a coffee for G, we TRIED to sleep. the seats were about as good as the night before and this time it was cold in the cabin area. couldn't just grab some extra clothes from our bags though cos for this ship (and only this one out of all our trips) the big bags were locked in the hold.

on top of the cold, the light and tv were left on all night. the light is no problem - i always tie my bandana over my eyes to block out the light when travel sleeping. but the bloody tv was a different story. maybe if they had greek programs i would've been ok cos i wouldn't have been able to understand a word. but every single program was in english with greek subtitles! CSI, Law and Order, Walker Texas Ranger, Desperate Housewives, The Shield and one more that i think has slipped my mind.
when i couldn't sleep, i tried watching some of the shows but then i'd get sleepy so i'd try to sleep. but i couldn't sleep cos of the cold and noise.
i couldn't wait till 6am...

AUGUST 4th

got into Crete at 6.
thankfully the sun was up. had to wait till 9 for next ferry to Santorini, so we thought we'd grab some food. could see the Golden Arches up the road, so walked up there. not open. :-(
couldn't even see an opening time written anywhere either.

headed back down to the port where the boat was already sitting and just waited there. had to wait until 30 mins prior to departure before we could board so were starving when we got on! grabbed food at bar at were soon zooming off to Santorini.

got into Santorini and started to look for accommodation. one guy grabbed us and began ranting about his place - Tony's Villa (the Legend). seemed decent enough so we went for it.
place was ok.
Tony kept talking about how he can get us a good deal for this or half price for that. he drove past one place and said that if we mention his name there, we can drink wine for free! turned out later to be a winery that had free tastings!

seeing as we hadn't showered or slept properly in two and a half days, we had a shower and then crashed for 4 hours. we then got up, went and ate a yiros and then went back to sleep again!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to read your posts when there's a month discrepency!! :) It's fun, kinda like a jigsaw puzzle though, but I get to the end of one and find out it was three days before the last one, which is posted after that, but you could only get it all online 6 weeks after the date......!! I'll still be finding messages three weeks after you guys have returned the way this goes