Slideshow of our Europe Trip

It's back to reality now and memories of our 3 week holiday to Europe are already fading a little. We took tons of photos and have selected 500 that remind us of what we got up to and some of the many highlights.

If you're feeling strong here's the slideshow (517 images)...

Favourite Pics from our Europe Trip

These are my favourite images from our Europe trip in terms of my passion for photography.

Slideshow of 105 of my favourite images...

Last day's holiday - Athens

[Written a week after we got home]

We disembarked from the cruise ship at about 7.30am while the queues built for the next cruise which departed at 11am. They don't waste any time!

We had a frustrating hour long wait for our transport to our hotel to find the other family they were transporting. The dude didn't read the details on his instructions and had to go to the other terminal to find them all waiting. If I hadn't vented my frustration we might still be there waiting for the family that would never appear.

We unloaded into our hotel room and went on another exploratory walking tour - 1st on the list was climbing up to the Acropolis. It was very hot but once we got to the top there was a breeze and the view of the Acropolis and the surrounding city was spectacular.

We loved exploring it and photographing the things that facinated us.

After this we walked down to the town and browsed before finding a place to eat for lunch. There we met an Aussie couple and they wanted to go to the food markets. We joined forces and navigated our way. This was great as we got to see "real Athens" life in the city.

The market was mostly meat with a fish section. It was now 2pm I guess and the whiff from the fish area was enough to make me sick. I enjoyed the meat section and took a few photos there. Jan said it was enough to put her right off meat! From there we explored some street markets and felt like we'd found more of the real Athens.

We had dinner in a more expensive outside restaurant that we'd seen on our night here before the cruise. It was well worth it and a worthy last night celebration of our holiday.

Next day we had time to explore the new [2 year old] museum dedicated to the Acropolis. It was stunning, architecturally and of course the contents.

At lunch time we taxied to the airport, flew 4 hours to Dubai where our ticket included overnight accommodation. A huge room in a hotel by the airport which seemed to be dedicated to Emirates flight overnighters. It was 40 degrees outside, like walking into a sauna. Fortunately everywhere we went, which was just the hotel, transport and the airport were well air conditioned and quite cool actually.

Bye Europe, hello New Zealand! We were really looking forward to seeing the boys. Jeremy had arrived back from 2 weeks in Argentina the day after we left so we hadn't been with him for 5 weeks. He picked us up from the airport and we caught up with Mark and Pat when they go home from school and uni.

Photos from Athens...

Santorini - more of this island paradise

[Now that we've had more time we've written more about our short time on Santorini Island]

This is an amazing place - somewhere everyone should have on their "Bucket List".

After a few hours cruise from this morning's visit to Crete, we arrived. To land required small ferrys, of which a multitude were waiting offshore for us. I guess each one would carry 100 people.

We landed on shore at Santorini but the enxt challenge is to get up to the town at the top. The edge of the island is made up of massive shear cliffs hundreds of metres high. The options to get up are by cable car, which carries 40 people per trip 4 euros, donkey 5 euros, or walk up the donkey track - free. Jan had already stated that she wasn't going up on a donkey and didn't like the idea of the gondala. She doesn't enjoy heights. So, we and about 20 others took to the donkey track. It was scarey for Jan and others to star with as we had to pick our way through all the donkeys that were waiting victims but once we cleared them we worked hard at the climb. There are 533 steps, each one about 2 metres from the next. All concreted. It was really hot with the sun reflecting off the white concrete and being out of the breeze. At times the donkeys were close on our tracks so this kept us going quite quickly. We stopped a few times, panting and sweating to drink more water. We'd bought 2 x 500ml bottles of cold water at the bottom of the track thank goodness. We were some of the first from our boat to arrive at the top. Many waited in long queues for the gondola or donkeys as several cruise ships had arrived at once.

We got to the top and tried to find shade and air conditioned shops to cool off. Naturally, due to the energy exerted we continued to sweat profusely and were really wet. We found a local trader who made his own Gelato and bought one each - they were great as we slowly cooled down.

We only had a couple of hours to explore the island so walked around the tiny streets taking a few photos. Eventually we settled into a cliff top restaurant with a beer and a wine to absorb the amazing views. It was spectacular as you can see from the photos. We'd have happily sacrificed going to Crete to spend all day here but it wasn't to be.

After a fairly quick drink we had to head back, going back down the donkey track. Down was easy. As we redied to go down we could see huge queues forming for the gondola and thought fools, walk down. Later we learned that some people queued for 2 hours for the gondola. The walk down took 20 minutes max and wasn't unpleasant apart from getting past the donkeys congregated at the top.

We'd love to come back here and/or Mykonos one day - next time, flying in and spending a few days here. I can't imagine a more beautiful place exists in the world.

Jan's photos (new)...

Doug's photos (as per previous post)...

Santorini - If there is paradise, it is here!

We've just returned to Athens after our cruise and the short 3 hour stop off at Santorini has to be the highlight of our trip. It is amazing and we were cross that it was so short. We would have happily sacrificed this morning's visit to Crete - a major dissapointment for us, for more time on Santorini. Will write about it soon, meantime here are the pictures.

Santorini pictures...

Rhodes Island

The ship cruised overnight and delivered it's 1,000+ passengers to Rhodes Island today. This is the 4th largest island and includes an old walled city area with the rest of the city spreading out from this area.

We didn't sleep well again, mainly due to a couple of American ladies in the room next door who had obviously been on the turps and were still talking and laughing loudly at 4.30am. When they turned on the TV for extra entertainment I'd had enough and knocked a few times on the wall and they turned it off and quietened down. We slept only to be woken at about 5.30am when the deck crew lay out the deck chairs. They must chuck them down on the deck because the clanging reverberates right through the steel ship.Idiots.

We had breakfast and were on the island by 9am checking out the old section. Most of the shops were shut so we went into the castle which had been largely rebuilt for Mussolini who only stayed there a few times. It was interesting, built from local sandstone - like the rest of the old city - which weathers quite a lot over time. Inside there was a museum area where most of the artifacts were dated between 100 and 1300 BC! We understand that this is one of the oldest archeological areas in the world, with the whole of Lindos (nearby town) designated an archeological area.

By 11am the old city had come to life with tourists from 4 cruise ships wandering the streets and all of the shops open and trying to do as much business as they could. We have found the Greek shop owners much more respectful, friendly and let us browse without undue pressure to buy - a welcome relief after the Turkish experience still lingering in our minds from a couple of days ago.

We find a large family owned art shop with some of the nicest art pieces that we have seen, all individually made by known artists from around Greece. We ear mark this to return to later.

We browsed and Jan bought a sun dress that she liked before we returned to a cool outdoor restaurant that we'd spied earlier. They were quite entreprenurial, handing out a map of the old town area which marked where their restaurant was. We had a light lunch of hors d'oeuves, greek salad and pita bread. It was ok but not up to the exceptional standard experienced in Athens.

We returned to the art store having decided that we "deserved" to buy a nice piece to remember this trip by. A good thing is that we had a little trouble deciding which piece we liked best (within our budget) and eventually selected a piece after lots of thinking about how we'd handle getting it back to NZ on the plane. The piece is a modern ceramic female head and torso that I reckon weighs about 10kg. It looks amazing, having being fired 3 times to seal the various glazes and 22kgold in separate firings. I'm only sorry we didn't photograph it before it was well wrapped for it's journey home. The shop keeper and his wife were a little sad to see it go as it was one of their better pieces from this particular artist. We agree.

Not wanting to lug it around the town, we headed back to the boat a couple of hours prior to it's sailing at 5.30pm. I'm writing this while Jan sunbathes.

Today has been hot but on the boat and at sea there is quite a strong breeze which keeps us cool and comfortable. The town seemed to be fairly sheltered and so was really hot in the early afternoon by comparison.

We will have to dine on board tonight since we will be at sea at dinner time. Rather a stuffy, formal affair where you get seated at large tables at one of two "sittings" in the restaurant and have to dress up for the ocassion - in other words, not really us either! The food on board hasn't been that great so we have been dining in local spots on shore which is generally a better choice and it feels more like we're experiencing their culture and cuisine.

When we got back on board there was a bill on Doug's bed which included "gratuity" of 64 Euros being 8 Euros per day per head for cabin and restaurant staff. Of course my reaction was not good because we feel their service has been dismissive and uncaring, in other words "shite". The accompanying letter of explanation invited us to visit reception prior to tonight to make any changes to the gratuity as it would be billed to our credit card tonight (bear in mind we're still a day and a half away from finishing the cruise). So, after some huffing and puffing by Doug we talked it over. We'd only dined once in their restaurant and were "escorted" abrubtly to our table - one that suited them, not us, and they served us luke warm coffee and cold toast - horrible - both remaining untouched at the end of our meal. Our beds weren't made properly and yesterday when I enquired of the bar staff what kinds of beer they had was told "tap beer from Germany" yet I've seen a number of others drinking different brands of bottled beer. Their tap beer was pretty ordinary - I've had better tap beer in most small restaurants on the islands so the cruise ship should be able to do better. Also they serve it in plastic cups - yuk. Enough complaining - suffice to say, we've loved the on-shore experiences and the cruise has been a method to get around, and a place to [try to] sleep at night. I don't think cruising on a ship and being over-organised by others is really us and a few others we've spoken to feel similarly.

Photos...

Turkey - Kusidasi then on to the Greek Island of Patmos

While we slept lightly on our first night on board, the ship cruised through the night to dock at Kusidasi on the coast of Turkey in the early hours. It was noisy from early in the morning with loud clanging of something as the ship docked and then the intercom system burst into life at about 6am reminding all passengers booked on the tours to be down below ready to disembark at 6.45am. Thankfully we were not on a tour so I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. We rose at about 7.30 and had a pretty crappy breakfast at 8.00am - our first breakfast on board.

We were prepared for a hot morning in the port town and had to be back on board by 11.30am so it was a short stop.

As we disembarked we were hounded by 3 wheel bicycle taxi drivers wanting to toake us to the shops in the city for 5 euro. We politely declined but later found that we were hounded by the Turks trying to flog us everything from phone cards, taxi rides, boat excursions, carpets, t shirts, food, coffee, breakfast - the list goes on.

We were actually short of money and found a money machine that was out of order. Another but wouldn't take our travelex visa card. Another worked but declined to give us our requested money. We later figured we'd been a bit dumb as our travelex card is pre-loaded with euros and while the Turks would take our Euros, their local currency was the Turkish [Lira?]. Thanskfully we didn't end up with a whole lot of their Lira!

We walked along the bay and visited an ancient 13the century byzantine (small castle) nestled on a point at the end of the bay. After that we walked into the town and went into a market area. Every store we passed we we "greeted" with "Hello, please come and see my , they are very good, very good price". It was every 20 seconds and we decided after 100 metres of it we just had to get away so be bolted. Had they left us alone we may have bought something.

We found a cafe and had two coffees each (they were really good and cheap too) before doing some more wandering and photography before returning to the ship.

Kusidasi photos...

We cruised for a few hours. Jan sunbathed again, this time with plenty of sun screen on and doug sat in the shade mostly. I went below for an hour and went through the last few days photos and wrote up what we'd been up to. Later Jan came down and corrected all my spelling mistakes as we berthed at Patmos Island. It is famous for the monestry on top of a high hill where St John wrote the Book of Revelations.


As usual, we went walking around the port village. While not as pretty as Mykonos, it was far smaller, quieter and less "touristy" which suited us just fine. We spotted a money machine and got ourselves another tranch of Euros whcih made us feel more comfortable as were were down to about 25 Euros cash left.

The port area had lots of cute little fishing boats and, while browsing the few shops we noticed how no one hounded us and how polite these Greeks were after our bombardment by the Turks this morning.

We bought a muslin top for Jan and replaced my ancient board shorts with new locally produced ones - both for no more than 20 Euros each.

We had a drink on the beach under these cool thatch like umbrellas (see photos) then worked hard to find a non-tourist, authentic restaurant. We found one, noticing that a few of the ships crew were eathing there so figured it must be good. It was. Jan had lots of lightly fried shrimp while Doug had 4 kinds of small fried whole fish. It was tasty while messy eating and by the end of it were full to the gunnels.

We're back on board, cruising to the next destination, and the sun has now gone down. The sunsets here are nice, but because here are no clouds - like not a single one all day - they aren't as spectacular as we can get down under.

It was hot today - 27-33 degrees and felt like it too.

Hopefully we get a better nights sleep tonight - it has been a long day.

Pictures from Patmos...