Sasha had already been to Greece as part of her Summer of Fun before we were together, but had loved it - and wanted to go back, but wanted to try and do some Islands for her next trip. This suited me, as I was forever seeing pictures of one place on a Greek Island with white buildings, some blue domes and which just looked amazing - which I discovered was Santorini. But in order to do Islands we needed time - this could not be some 3-day weekend type of trip. Hence why Greece formed a key part of our End Of travel plan.
Greece was a bit messy to organise - we had an idea of where we wanted to go, but it did not lend itself to a logical order. Athens, a must because its Athens; I wanted to see Olympia where the Olympic Games had been held, a place Sasha had been to already but was keen to go back to; we had to visit Meteora, which I had first found out about from Jeremy and Rachel and its been on the list ever since; and of course some Greek Islands. The Albania problem (discussed in the last blog post) meant we couldn't actually work on the logistics of Greece until we knew where we were coming from and where we were going to - but in the research of options we'd discovered some other places in Greece we'd like to visit. Long story short (ha! is that even possible with me?) we couldn't fit all of what we wanted to do in the time available. So some things went by the wayside - no visit to Delphi (Sasha had already been, I wasn't so fussed on it); no visit to Zakynthos, an Island below Corfu and an hours travel away from Olympos that had caught our eye; and in the time we had allocated for Greek Islands, rather than try and shoehorn in a bunch of them we decided to really pare down the numbers and just do 2 and spend more time on them. But which two? Santorini had to be one, and then we settled on Paros as the other. An order of events arrived - doing Athens and Olympia, then to the Islands of Santorini and Paros; then back to Athens to venture on to Meteora and Thessaloniki before heading to Macedonia.
So because this trip was split into 3 stages, I will be doing the blogging for Greece in 3 parts - and also because I feel like it it makes sense for Greece, I will be returning to the old format of Day by Day rather than the new format used so far (disappointing? or did you not like the new format?). The time in Greece is just short of 2 weeks, so I will be doing the usual Day numbering format for consistency but in brackets I will also put the day number of the elapsed trip as a whole since we left Germany.
Righto, lets begin, shall we?
Day 0 (Day 16)
Day 1 (Day 17)
Sasha and I have a document we call "The Bible" both on our phones and in printed form which lets us keep track of various detals about our different accommodation, whether its a shared bathroom, double or twin or bunk beds, kitchen facilities, breakfast included, paid or not etc. Neither of us had thought to check what to expect - and we had gone for the cheapest accommodation we could find in virtually all places. I wasn't sure that we had booked a futon in the lobby outside an elevator but it was possible. Sasha then said "Ok - and the bathroom?" "Downstairs - where you used in morning". "And the shower?" "Also downstairs". "Ok" was Sasha's reply, at which point Jenny cracked up laughing, went to nearby door and opened it - "That not your room! this your room!" she said, still laughing and quite enjoying the fact that Sasha had been taken in by her little ruse. For the record I had too, but hadn't expressed anything to suggest as much to our host and so Sasha was the one copping the attention! This new room was rather eccentrically decorated, but had a double bed and a single, basic kitchen facilities, a balcony and bathroon, and in size was far larger than our apartment in Berlin had been! Certainly far better than the futon outside the lift!