May/June 2007
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May/June 2007 |
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Ready to hit the road again for the first time since returning from Australia, we found another tour offered by Gate1 Travel. The tour visits Mykonos, Santorini and Athens over 10 days. Our plan was to take advantage of the package price with its low airfare, transfers, hotels, etc. and stay on beyond the tour's scheduled return date. Having enjoyed three months in Australia last year, we decided that two months in Greece would be about right. Rick had been to Greece three times before, but Rory had never been, so Rick set out to plan a trip that would include all the "must see sites" and add enough new things that he'd not experienced before. Matt Barrett's Greek Travel website has over 5000 pages of useful information to help anyone plan a trip to Greece. We highly recommend it!! So, instead of coming home with the rest of the group at the end of the tour, we stayed in Greece six more weeks. From Athens we rented a car and spent a week in the Peloponnese and a week in central Greece, returning to Athens via Cape Sounion. We returned the car and began three weeks of island hopping, taking ferries from Athens (Pireaus) to Tinos to Naxos to Paros to Crete and back to Athens for our last week. As we did in Australia last year, we found self-catering apartments. On the Peloponnese we stayed in the small town of Astros using it as a central point for day trips. In central Greece, we found accomodations as we went along, often calling ahead to ensure we always had a place to stay. (Note, we again traveled with an international cell phone, containing a SIM card with a local Greek phone number. We found this very handy enabling us to make advanced reservations, contact the agencies from whom we rented apartments, and any number of other things. We simply get a new SIM card for whatever country we are visiting; no need to purchase a new phone. Check this link to Telestial for more information.) Tinos, Naxos, and Paros are small enough that renting a car for a day was sufficient to tour each one. On Crete, the largest of all the Greek island, we rented a car for the week. We found the ferries to be a great way to get around. We took the high speed versions which get you from island to island in half the time as the regular ones. For the most part they sailed on time. All the ferries are quite comfortable, with large airline-type seats and plenty of leg room. The most "painful" part of the trip was the premium of
the Euro over the US dollar--the opposite of what we experienced in Australia.
(While we were in Greece, the Euro fluctuated between $1.33 and $1.37.) Speaking of money, we have found that
the very best rates for converting dollars to Euros (or any other country's
currency) is via ATM. We use a Fidelity Visa Gold Debit card and have received rates almost right on the official
rate for the given day. The worst rates are for travelers cheques and cash (believe it or not). Purchases by credit
card will almost always incur a service charge not to mention a poor rate. We found dealing in cash with the local
currency is the best use of our money (and, we don't have big credit card bills piling up.)
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Both of us are animal lovers especially dogs and birds (cats, too) and we encountered so many. We saw beautiful pelicans in Mykonos and Tinos; they seem to have been adopted by the shop keepers and restaurant owners. It seems that there is an unusually large number of stray cats and dogs all over Greece. We heard a story that before the 2004 Olympics, the Greek government attempted to round up and put to sleep as many cats and dogs as they could find that didn't have collars. So the people went around and put collars on as many as they could. We're thankful that all of these animals survived to make our trip that much more fun. |
