MORE GREECE

So after Kusadasi we went to Patmos, we were only there for the afternoon and it was the smallest island we visited. We hiked up to St John's grotto which was very good for us seeing as we'd been stuffing our faces on buffets of ship food for 2 days already and done no exercise except spending cash.

Behind me is the whole island basically, I'm at the monastery on the very top of Patmos with a view of the island and beyond.

After Patmos we sailed through the night to arrive very early in the morning at Rhodes. First stop was the internet cafe but it took longer than the 30 minutes it was supposed to as Rhodes had a power failure for 2 hours so we had to hang around the area where the internet cafe was, not the most fun place, until the power came back. After that Sarah and I hot-footed it back to the old town. Rhodes has a new town and an old town, the new town is obviously the modern part of Rhodes, the old town is still fortified, has cobbled streets and ruins and is far more beautiful than the new town. We shopped for presents for the rest of the morning, and we met more Greek islanders who had family in various parts of South Africa which is always fun. For lunch we went back to the ship, dumped all the purchases, met up with some other contikiers and ate. The weather was beautiful and it would've been a disgrace to miss the sea so we spent the afternoon on the beach. Usually I'm a ninny when it comes to the sea, waves frighten me but in the Med there are no waves, you can walk out for miles and look down at your feet as you go as the water is so clear so I was fine, Durban girl or not waves are scary.

This is a photo of The Old Town. The arched entrance shows the ancient walls of the city.

Here is the photo of the theatre. Drew and Mike, two of the Contiki boys, are in the photo as well but they're not nearly as important as the theatre, it's cool hey? Sting had just had a concert there 2 weeks before our trip so it's still used today which is saying something for the sturdiness of the structure don't you think?

So this is what the room looked like after the rolling out of the carpet display, there are at least 5 layers of carpet and the salesmen just kept rolling.

It's me, surprisingly close up and drinking apple tea which looking at the photo now you actually can't even see. You can see the little bowl it came in but my ginormous hand is covering the whole glass, oh well, look at my arm then.

Oh and about the radio station, you have to select a station, obviously, so the right one to pick will be the Orange Umbrella, enjoy listening. I'll write more later, I have to have some breakfast before I do the nest bit, I think pancakes sound good.

HOW COOL AM I

Okay so thanks to Brother dearest I can now be even cooler. I have a radio station on my blog! Ha, cool hey. You will probably have to press play to start it and it will slow other things you may be doing on your computer down but now you can read my stories and listen to some tunes at the same time, fantastic! The photos weren't uploading but I'm working on it and I will get the photos of the carpet showroom and the theatre asap as well as tell you about Patmos and the rest of the Greek trip! It's all a bit disjointed but it keeps you on your toes!

KUSADASI (TURKEY)

Hello, so it's been a while but I thought I'd quickly tell you about our quick stop in Turkey. We arrived in Kusadasi (say it like this "kushaadisi") on the second day. At 8am we were at the ancient site of Ephesus one of the best preserved archeological sites. This excursion was my favourite, you could imagine people actually living and working there. The sites where shops used to be can still be seen clearly and the mosaic floor are still basically perfect. We had a very well informed Turkish guide, Errol, who being so full of beans so early in the morning got us all paying attention.

Here Errol is with a broken piece of a pediment of a building depicting the Goddess Nike, the winged one...now do Nike takkies makes sense to some of you?

After booking the excursion I was very excited because I found out that the ancient theatre is so well preserved you can actually still stand on the "stage" and speak and those in the back seats will hear you, I've wanted to do that since I did Classical Civilisations at varsity so as nerdy as it sounds I was very excited. But before we got to the theatre we wondered down the road with the shop spaces on either side of us and came to the library. What was so entertaining about the library was (remember that men were the learned ones) underneath the library there was a secret passage that tunneled under the library, under the road and ended in the basement of a brothel. Apparently men would tell their wives they were off to be scholarly for the morning and would head off to the library to come back with a greater understanding of the female anatomy.

So the library is behind us and the brothel would've been in front of us and to the left, long tunnel hey.

So after the library we headed to the theatre. We went inside and I whispered to other Contiki people from the stage and they could hear me all the way at the back. I took photos from inside but the best view is as you are leaving the entire sit. I've been trying to upload the photo of the theatre for the whole day so now I've over it and I'll upload it another day.

After we left Ephesus we arrived in the town of Kusadasi where our guide took us on an extra special excursion to visit a friend of his, a carpet merchant. The shop was spectacular, every inch of wall was covered in carpets on display, we had a demonstration on how these carpets are made and then were given tiny glasses of warm apple tea to sample. I don't do hot drinks but this was quite yummy, Hayles you'll appreciate that, fruit tea isn't too bad. After the info session about 15 men appeared from the sidelines and began unrolling carpets in all colours, shapes, sizes and worth on the floor at our feet, it was a magnificent thing to see. Caught up in the softness and colours we were suitably blinkered to what they were setting up, one hard sale on a grand scale! Seeing as the tiniest tray sized carpet cost about 200 euros I wasn't about to buy one much to the disappointment of the salesman who had attached himself to my hip but hey I did need to survive another 5 days around the islands and definitely didn't have that much cash to spend on a carpet too small for an adult to sit on.

After managing to politely leave the show room I headed to the Bazaar and was completely disappointed, shopping prospects were not good and not wanting to ruin the Turkish experience I headed back to the boat just in time for all aboard as we headed for Patmos.

SANIBONANI

Honey, I'm home!!!!

I have caught up on my sleep I think though today my bed is looking very inviting, stupid me packed ALL my winter clothes in a box which is currently making it's way to me very slowly on the high seas so I'm cold. Just to let anyone who is still reading know that all my photos are presently on my laptop which isn't connected to an internet connection in SA so I have to do the great photo transfer before I can do more blogging and that doesn't really grab me right now as a fun thing to do. So this is a very boring post but I really just felt like blogging...I'll get interesting again soon, promise.

I been there, done that and I ain't looking back

It's been a long long road

Feels like I never left,

that's how the story goes

It doesn't matter where you are,

it doesn't matter where you go

If it's a million miles aways or just a mile up the road

Take it in, take it with you when you go,

who says you can't go home

(Bon Jovi)

So I know I haven't finished writing about Greece and I know that I have 2 weeks in London still to write about so I have plently still to do, and you lot have plenty still to read. The "critical" risk level in London means that there is absolute chaos at Heathrow and cancelled planes and lots and lots of delays so the thought of flying out tomorrow is SLIGHTLY nervewracking. Oh and the no hand luggage thing is also getting to me... what the hell do you do on a 11 hour flight without a book to read or an ipod to listen to, there are only so many movies you can watch in a night when the screen is a ruler length away from your face and the fat man next to you is squidging into your seat... the joys of long haul flights! So ANYWAY I'm coming home but don't despair as I've said seeing as I'm so far behind with my blogging, faithful readers, the fun and photos will continue when I'm back in SA and who knows if you're good maybe you'll appear on here one day too... wouldn't that just make your day? Lots of love!

Another aeroplane

Another sunny place

I’m lucky I know

But I wanna go home

Mmmm, I’ve got to go home

(Michael Buble)

ATHENS-MYKONOS

We boarded the Sea Diamond, our vessel for the trip, early on Monday morning and headed to Mykonos. As we were sailing during the day (unusual because mostly during the day we were visiting an island and then sailing at night) we had plenty of time to get aquainted with the ship and all it had to offer(Sarah and I were on deck 2, which meant we had a window in our room as opposed to a mirror, a good thing? Maybe for most of the time except when the seas were very rough because then we were basically underwater, yikes). I have never been on a cruise before and I don't think I'm about to run at the chance to go on another one, don't get me wrong it wasn't a terrible experience it was just a bit confined. Anyway we spent the day by the pool drinking fruit cocktails made especially for Sarah and me by some waiter she found who was from Mauritiaus but used to work in Durban. We also had an emergency drill, we had to out on our life jackets and move to our desiganted spot on the 8th deck of the ship where, if anything were to have happened, we would jump into our designated life boat, in our designated life jackets and be saved!!!! It was very amusing to see everyone fumbling around in the most awkward life jackets ever, just look at me:

We reached the port of Mykonos at about 15:00 and were on the island until 21:30 when it was "all on board" and if we weren't there we would've waved goodbye to the ship and lived on mykonos for a while...hmmm maybe not a bad idea, Mykonos is beautiful. We spent our time on Mykonos wondering the tiny cobbled streets and we had a meet and greet with some resident pelicans (people got up close and personal with the birds... it seems that if people don't come from Africa and they see a "wild" thing most of them want to touch it, why? I will never understand but they did, they stroked wild pellys as the pellys had their afternoon nap).

We sat drinking cocktails by the sea and found some delicious crepes to eat for dinner. I enjoyed Mykonos, apart from Rhodes I think it was my favourite stop.

There are cats all over Greece, in Mykonos we found kittens playing, they were so sweet.

DON'T MISS IT

The first installment of Greece is below the blurb about my London holiday, Blogger has been having some problems so sorry it's in this random place. Read it though, I'll do another one soon with photos!

And of course I sampled the ship's Strawberry Daiquiri's!

Okay so just so everyone knows, I have written blogs about Greece but blogger won't upload photos so I haven't uploaded the blurb yet. Since I've been back from Greece I've been to Shere (a small village in the south west of England) and seen the church where the Wedding Date with Debra Messing was filmed. I've also been shopping and Sarah and I went to watch PATRICK SWAYZE in a musical called Guys and Dolls it was so cool but all I really wanted was for Jennifer Grey to come out from the wings and for "I've had the time of my life" start playing...aaah. It was lots of fun though. I've been to a piano recital with the Woods and then out for dinner and then yesterday I went with Lloyd (some of you know Lloyd from WBHS?) to the summer opening of Buckingham Palace. We saw 19 state rooms and 80 of the queens most spectacular evening gowns to mark her 80th birthday and then we got to wonder around the grounds it was quite fun and I was prancing up the red-carpeted grand staircase as if I was some royal guest... only thing missing was some real royal or other, where was Harry? Today Sarah and I met Leigh at Oxford Circus and then we went to HAMLEYS the world's greatest toy store. They hadn't been there before and the last time I went I was 10 so it was such fun to go again. I also did something that I've wanted to do since I first heard that it was possible and it is quite a bizarre thing for me to do because I'm not a big teddy bear person but hey... I made my own bear at the teddy bear factory, funny hey? You choose it's heart and you get to help stuff it and if you feel like forking out loads of pounds you can choose clothes for it too but I didn't go that far. Tomorrow I'm going to Brighton to go to the pebble beach and eat fish and chips. One week left in London and I've got lots more to do.

LONDON-ATHENS

so I've decided to do this blog in installments, those of you who check regularly should (if I manage to blog daily, hmmm) have something to read for a little while each day. Sarah and I were picked up by our taxi early on Sunday morning last week. We arrived at Heathrow to mass exodus of pommies. I have never ever seen anything like it, there were queues of people snaking around each other throughout the whole check in area the place was bursting with eager summer holidayers...those over eager ones were easily spotted they got up tight if you didn't move as soon as the person in front of you in the line moved and so rammed their luggage trolleys persistently into your heels, really friendly bunch.

We had a 4 hour flight to Athens and the only thing mildly entertaining on the plane was the flip down tv screens that map the planes journey inch by inch, okay let's be specific it's entertaining when the screens flip down and it's interesting to see where you are flying over BUT it is one of those things like watching a clock...you don't feel like you're making any progress.

In Athens everyone speaks English and Greek, it took me about 10 minutes to say "it's all greek to me" which I thought was hilarious until I heard 2 other randoms saying the exact same thing and then falling about laughing at themselves while the people they were with rolled their eyes, so it was old by the time I'd finished laughing.

We hailed another taxi (oh note the number of different modes of transport I patronised this holiday, so far, for those a little slow, it's a plane and taxis).

We arrived starving at Hotel Hermes after a nice chat with the taxi driver about his family who live in Pretoria, as we found out not an uncommon thing amongst Greeks fron Greece, though most of them haven't been to SA. Dropping our bags in our very boring, plain room we headed out to find food. What we found was the Plaka. Roads filled with shoppers and shop owners leaving you alone as you walk past their shop but don't be fooled, if you walk into one there's no easy way out. Prime Example: Sarah was admiring a white linen shirt, asked me if I liked it and I said yes. Next thing I know Sarah is on the other side of the shop and I am being bombarded by the tiniest little silver-haired greek granny, who is measuring me for the perfect blouse and ordering her daughter around the shop with the mission to find me exaclt what I want (remember I wasn't looking at the shirts). Then Granny stretches up to my face, grabs both my cheeks with her hands and pinching them she shakes my head down to her level and says, 'ah I like the woman, I am a mother I am meant to like the woman, I don't like the man but I am a woman', (then pointing at my apparent womanly shape) she says again, 'Ah, I like dis woman'. Okay so I know that Heathrow injection got me a bit and I have more curves than when I arrived but really I wasn't the only woman in the shop! But boy Granny took a liking to me and my womanly shape. Oh and no I didn't buy the top, Sarah liked it remember.

After a crepe (to maintain my womanly figure of course) and some more window shopping we headed back to Hotel Hermes to get ready for the evening. It was a contiki tour, something I was VERY unsure about, and we had to meet the rest of our group and then were off to dinner in the Plaka. The group consisited of mostly Americans and Canadians, there were 6 Aussies and 1 Kiwi and then the 2 South Africans. Most of the group spent the entire trip boozed and didn't see many of the sites and sometimes didn't even see the Islands but that wasn't everyone so it was okay.

We went to dinner on the first night at a restaurant in the plaka. As we walked there the shops were still open, the people were so cheerful and friendly, there were grape vines hanging like a canopy across parts of the streets and it was just a lovely atmosphere. We had a 3 course meal and drank greek wine while we were entertained by greek pop music (interesting) and then traditional greek dancing, wopa! After eating, drinking and being merry with the greeks we headed to bed, we had a 6:00 wake up call in the morning and it was past midnight, and I didn't fancy getting onto a boat feeling crappy.

I'll write installment 2 asap.

The Greek dancers were lovely to watch and the all the diners were laughing and singing and drinking their wine very happily.

We came across this car on our way home from dinner, pretty hey.