From Smiley Fritz to Santiago...: The Big Fat Greek Birthday!

After a quick stop in at the allotment to check on the progress of the veggies, Eliza and I were on our way to Manchester for one last night of miserable weather and cold, before escaping early the next morning to the heat and sunshine of Greece!

Checking into our hostel in Athens, we were soon to discover we were in for a real treat – my budget-conscious booking had landed us in quite the ‘interesting’ neighbourhood! With streets littered with rubbish and buildings covered in graffiti, broken footpaths, prostitutes on every corner, and a steady flow of ‘unusual’ people, there was certainly a lot to look at!

We spent our first couple of days in Athens exploring the local area, catching up on some much-needed SongPop, and enjoying our balcony view of the street (and the insalubrious business dealings going on) below. With memories of the UK’s weather still fresh in our mind, neither of us seemed to find it too much of a struggle to do very little, and much of our time was spent sitting around in various cafés, restaurants, gelatarias and at the beach, watching the world pass us by, and soaking up the beautiful Mediterranean sun.

However, all good things must come to an end, and after six weeks of unsupervised, reckless, irresponsible and downright silly antics through Denmark, Iceland, the UK and now Greece, Eliza and I were about to be travel-crashed… by parents! GASP!

Flying in from Australia early the next day, Eliza’s parents Ros and Paul, and friends Liz and David arrived in Athens bearing gifts of a new MacBook, Haigh’s Chocolates, Ann’s Famous Melting Moments… and Iced Coffee!!! Maybe this whole ‘parental supervision’ thing wasn’t going to be so bad after all!

Now under constant parental supervision, the pressure was on for Eliza and I to be on our very best behaviour, and heading out with our jet-lagged companions, we set about exploring downtown Athens… after a meal, coffee and gelati of course!

Athens, which has been continuously inhabited for the past 7000 years, is one of the oldest cities in the world, is recognised as the birthplace of democracy, and is the modern-day capital of Greece. With a metropolitan population of over four million, Athens is the fourth largest city in Europe, and with its position on the Mediterranean Sea, it’s also the southern-most European mainland capital.

After a leisurely lunch, a stroll through a market district, and of course a gelati to help wash it all down, we got our ‘typical tourist’ on, with a good fun double-decker bus through the city, learning about the modern history of the city, as well as the surprisingly still visible Roman and Byzantine history the city has to offer. While the fleeting glimpses of the 1896 Olympic Stadium, the National Gardens, The Arch of Hadrian, and The Temple of Zeus left us wanting more – the bus was great fun, and the city surprisingly appealing.

Kindly permitting ‘the oldies’ an early night to try and align their body clocks with their surroundings, Eliza and I headed back to our own accommodation with great intentions to hit the town hard, and party well into the morning. Of course, these intentions didn’t take into account the sheer volume of olives, fetta and vinegar my body had consumed since our arrival, or the physical exertion involved in lifting a gelati-cone to the mouth, and we were both soon fast asleep – and I thought the oldies were bad!

Up late the next morning, it was time to delve deeper into the history of Athens, as we met up with our blind-date (aka somewhat-questionable-website tour-guide) for the day, Walter. Having booked ‘Walter’ a few days earlier, and not sure what kind of mess I may have managed to get the six of us into, I was greatly relieved when ‘Walter’ turned out to be a real human being, who arrived on time, and could even speak English as promised! Hooray! Taking us on a journey through the history of Athens as a city, Greece as a country, and of myself as a prospective Olympic athlete, we spent the next four hours walking the beautiful city streets, exploring ruins, markets, gardens and buildings, before making our way up to explore the spectacular Acropolis, and undoubtedly Athens’ most recognisable structure, the Parthenon.

Built from 447 BC, the Parthenon is a temple dedicated to the Greek Goddess Athena, located on a limestone outcrop in the centre of modern-day Athens. Still some-what standing today, the structure served as the Treasury of the Athenian Empire, before being converted into a Christian church, an Ottoman mosque, and finally an ammunition storage facility. It turns out the building wasn’t so well suited to the storage of ammunition, and an explosion inside the Parthenon in 1687 led to its current condition. While the building was partly destroyed by this explosion, it remains an incredibly impressive structure!

Leaving the hustle and bustle of Athens behind, and determined to sample a wide selection of Greek food and drink, Eliza and I (still under parental supervision of Ros and Paul) were yet again on a plane, for the half-hour journey to Santorini, in the Greek Islands.

Having dreamt of visiting Santorini since well before I was even a twinkle in my parent’s eyes, Ros recently decided to mark a certain special birthday (it wasn’t her 40^th, or 60^th… but somewhere in between) with a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the stunning caldera island. Arriving just after sunset (and the four of us plus luggage all squashing into a Peugeot 108, with Pete our driver), it was hard to completely appreciate our new surroundings, however it was clear that whatever the sunlight was going to present to us the next morning, it was certain to be impressive!

With 13 Aussies flying in for the celebration (of course Aaron and Dillon needed to reappear in this story somewhere!), we had all booked accommodation together in Oia, a town on the southern end of the island. Often referred to the ‘most beautiful sunset in the world’, the Oia sunset is a major tourist attraction, drawing crowds night after night, and enthusiastically celebrated with a round of applause as the last rays of sun drop below the horizon. While accommodation in Oia doesn’t come cheap, it does come with a number of unexpected challenges, which after 8 months traveling around the world, caught me quite unprepared.

While I will admit it was a struggle for us all, we had to somehow come to terms with waking up everyday to breathtaking views across the ocean, spend our days by the pool watching cruise liners come in and out of the sheltered caldera, and somehow spend our evenings on our private balconies, watching the ‘common people’ return to their sub-standard accommodation further back from the cliff face. Not only was it the lifestyle we had to somehow come to accept, we were also forced into big decisions; should I order the fresh lobster, or the oysters? Will I have the white wine or the cider while I watch the sunset from the deck chair on my private balcony? Is a second dessert really necessary after the two mains I already had? Oh, life was certainly tough for a few days!

Of course, while I made every attempt to avoid all strenuous activity, there was an entire island to explore, and the next couple of days were spent wandering Oia’s small streets, shops and alleyways, catching a bus into Fira (the island’s main town), and walking the 200 or so steps down to the beautiful sea port of Ammoudi, which stretches along the bottom of the cliffs below the town of Oia. Understandably, I broke these physically challenging activities up with regular stops at coffee shops, gelaterias, and restaurants – and made sure I kept my Omega-3 levels up with generous servings of fresh crab, lobster, mussels, fish, prawns and octopus. Obviously my health was paramount in my every decision!

Now completely relaxed, beginning to show signs of a decent tan, and accustomed to the aforementioned challenges of staying in a cliff-top hotel, it was time to get down to the real business of the week in Santorini – Ros’ birthday!

With very little information provided to us throughout the week, and no clues as to the plans for the ‘Celebration Day’, we all met after breakfast around the pool, eager to have some light shed on what this mystery celebration might entail, and how we would all be involved. However, much to my disappointment, while I left with a new customized hat, some TimTam’s, a boomerang and a map of the island, even after the ‘briefing’, I had very little idea of what adventures lay ahead!

Instructed to meet again after lunch, we were herded into waiting mini-buses (I chose the one with the darkest tinting… it seemed more exciting!), which took us without explanation on a drive around the island. While our driver seemed to have great English skills when it came to talking about tourism on the island, his family, and his business, his language skills seemed to let him down quite severely when asked about our destination for the journey, and where he was taking us. It was still a complete mystery!

While I was beginning to think perhaps this was all a set up, and I was about to become the next star of the upcoming horror flick ‘Stolen in Santorini’, my fears were soon allayed when we pulled up to a small marina, to be greeted by the waiting Captain George, and our yacht for the remained of the day, Eleftheria.

With three crew onboard, a seemingly endless supply of food and drink, and the pristine blue waters of the Greek Islands lapping at the sides of the boat, we set sail in search of adventure! While many of her fellow yachts in the Greek Islands may be new, sparkling, luxury floating mansions, Eleftheria is the ‘real deal’, and we had an unforgettable afternoon sailing around the island, checking out the impressive ‘red sand beach’, swimming off the wooden boat, and going to the slightly unappealing thermal springs on a small island nearby.

With energy supplies severely depleted from the swimming, and no doubt with my health in mind, Captain George and crew cooked an amazing dinner onboard – which was devoured with great enthusiasm and Greek gusto! With appetites now appeased, the famous sunset providing a captivating show behind us, and every one of us no doubt pinching ourselves, we slowly made our way back around the caldera to the marina, and to our waiting transport back to the hotel.

The following morning it was time to say goodbye to a number of friends, and with one last day in Santorini, I decided it would be irresponsible to push myself too hard. Breakfast on the balcony overlooking the caldera, lunch by the pool, and one final dinner with the remaining party-goers in Oia was the perfect end to a perfect week, and the end to almost two months traveling with Eliza!