Following up on my family travel series, I thought I'd share our recent experiences while on the road in Europe. Three weeks ago, we began our latest adventure. We started our trip in Greece, continued through Italy and now 3 weeks later, I am posting this blog from Saltzburg Austria.
It took 24 hours of flight time from Honolulu to Los Angeles, LAX to JFK, then JFK to ATH. Since my husband is a travel industry employee, we took advantage of our pass flying privileges, and successfully made it all the way to Athens without getting bumped off any flights. I was hesitant to book any of our hotels on the exact day our flight was supposed to arrive, so gave a date of arrival to book the hotels 2 days after we actually arrived, just to play it safe if we did end up getting bumped. We reserved a car at the Athens airport for the actual date of our arrival, and had about 3 maybe places we wanted to see upon the earlier arrival. A friend was kind in sharing his GPS with us to take on our trip, which had the map programs for Europe. I think we would not have found our way out of the airport if we didn't have this. We opted to drive to Delphi which was only 2 1/2 hours drive from Athens. We made this decision because we knew we were already going to be 2 days in Athens from our booked reservations we made with a travel agency (Fantasy Travel- found them on the internet and they were good). Delphi also had ruins and ancient history behind it, which interested us, and it was closer then the other places we looked at, so after a 24 hr flight we needed something close! We loved Delphi. I don't know how the other months are, but May was ideal- perfect climate for walking around, uncrowded, and easy to find a hotel without making prior arrangements. We drove through and saw a man, Dimitri, sitting outside a hotel, who invited us in to look at his rooms. It was clean, cosy, and inexpensive! In fact the least expensive we found this entire trip! Well Dimitri and his mom were so hospitable and so nice, he asked us to put in a good word about his hotel, so I will. It is Hotel Orfeas Delfi telephone (2265)082077. Delphi was quaint. I walked into the local church- St. Nicholas and met an elderly woman who spoke no English, but desperately tried to communicate her enthusiasm about that church. From what I understood from her, the icons were over 300 years old and some were given by her grandparents who came to Delphi from the next town after a great earthquake. She also shared the wonderful Pasca (Easter) festivities that take place at the church- free food, dancing. She was very pleased to tell her story and did a great job considering the language barrier. In general, everyone was pretty friendly, laid back and willing to as we say in Hawaii, "talk story".
When we went to Athens my daughters experienced temporary culture shock. Athens is a huge city with a metropolitan population of about 4 million people. It seems like everyone smokes there, and with all the cars you'll probably want to get some fresh air on the islands after 2 days. With that said, my children still appreciated Athens, the delicious food, and glorious history. Takis from Fantasy Travel met us at the airport after we dropped off our rental car, and gave us all of our travel vouchers for the rest of our stay in Greece. It was very easy going through them, because for the rest of our trip we didn't have to think about the hotels, or ferries, yet we had all the flexibility of doing whatever we wanted when we arrived. A half day tour was included in our stay in Athens and it was nice to have a guide, who made every place we went more interesting- especially the acropolis museum. The rest of the time in Athens was spent walking around, shopping for souvenirs, taking pictures, and eating, eating and eating!
We spent the rest of our visit to Greece on 2 islands, Mykonos and Santorini, and even if they are probably the most tourist centered places in Greece, they are beautiful, fun, and because they cater to tourists they have all the comforts a world traveller would look for- good food, shopping, beaches, modern facilities, and internet! Greece has a good ferry system to get around the islands, but sometimes the sea does not cooperate. Everything went fine to Mykonos, but from Mykonos to Santorini the coast guard closed the ports and we ended up staying overnight in Ios. Unfortunately here the communication was not so good, and we were hearing different messages from the people on the ferry to those working on the ferry to the coast guards themselves on our expected departure times, so it was hard to know what exactly was going on. When on the islands we rented cars. Again this gave us flexibility to come and go as we pleased and explore different parts of the islands, and even though the islands are not very big, that GPS was a necessity.
All in all our family loved Greece so much, it would be a place we would choose to return to. People are friendly and helpful, it's a beautiful place where each place you go to offers something unique and interesting, and in spite of it being a country with some harsh terrain and intense politics, it's civilized, and culturally spectacular!
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