First, apologies to those of you I have been unable to reply to personally. Time has been short, plus I switched into holiday mode and it became difficult to find the motivation to sit down at the computer in the midst of a Greek Island wind-down.Athens…
….was SO hot. It got up to 38 degrees one day.
We visited more amazing archeological sites….the Acropolis, the Parthenon, the old Roman ruins…. trekking around the city in the scorching heat either on foot, public transport, or a tourist bus. I bought a parasol, they were quite the thing around Athens, with lots of street vendors (more about them later) selling them.
I have to say that despite all the fantastic history and sights....we are so lucky in NZ - now I really know it!!!! There are just too many people in Europe. Greece has not been too bad overall, but in Athens there's still about 4.7 million and another 3 million in the ‘burbs. I went to the post office one day and you have to get a number from a machine and then wait for your number to come up at one of the counters. My number was 294 and they were up to 271….had to wait about 20 mins just to buy a couple of stamps!!!
There are lots of people living in parks, street prostitutes, people snorting drugs, beggars in wheel chairs and/or with missing limbs……
We saw several street protests going on…busloads of cops in full riot gear. We asked them what was going on and they said…’It’s nothing, nothing’. Then one of them said…’just some trouble with fascists’. We finally got the story from the paper - Students protesting at the Govt wanting to privatise the public (free!!) university system.
At the same time that was going on, African migrant workers, who get a red ticket which allows them to be in the country and work, were staging a demo about the fact that they can be taken into Police custody, held for 12 hours and have their ticket taken off them for no apparent reason…they then can’t work and have to resort to illegal ways of making a living – the best of which seems to be selling goods (such as Prada knockoff handbags, sunglasses etc) on the streets – but they have to constantly dodge Police. So, you’ll be sitting having a coffee and suddenly a stream of about 20 tall beautiful black men with bulging white sheets over their shoulders will go jogging by. Five or ten mins later, two or three Police will follow.
Sooo….lots of political unrest. It was great to escape to the islands and just have a holiday!!
I’m not going to write too much about that bit, except to say it was fantastic and involved sight seeing, beaches, and even a wee bit of adventure tourism when we hired an ATV to get around the spectacular volcanic island of Santorini where we finished our holiday after attending Alex and Lisa’s lovely wedding. We have heaps of photos of the wedding and will email these to the Ruth family shortly. Tried to post one here but it keeps turning itself around! On that note, no photos of Stephen on this blog sorry, as photos on my camera not yet downloaded onto computer.
Before Santorini we spent three days each on Syros and Naxos…both lovely places with a slower pace. My favourite was Syros.
We are back in Athens tonight before flying out tomorrow for Singapore – home on Friday. See you all soon.
