The travel log of Vic and Steve

May the 4th be with you! it's May 4th, also Greek orthodox Easter so lots of things are closed here. We said farewell to Paros today and caught the 11am ferry after packing our bags again. This time we caught a SeaJet fast ferry which only took 45 minutes to get us to Mykonos. Paul and Karen's ferry was meant to arrive from Athens about the same time but it seemed to struggle with the approach into the port so they were about 30 minutes later meeting us for the water taxi from the new modern port over to the old port town where we are staying. Above - Farewell Paros from the Ferry and Hello Mykonos.  After that slightly bumpy 10 minute ride watching cruise ship tenders going in and out as well, we spent a wee while finding our accommodation - which is upstairs, pretty small but perfectly functional for the 5 of us for the next couple of days. Bags dropped we headed out for lunch and an explore.  Photos right. Paul and Karen up top on the water taxi. Old Port in Mykonos town. T...

Paros has 2 main towns, Parikia where we are staying which is the port town and Naoussa which is a gorgeous fishing village and tourist spot. After breakfast of muesli and yoghurt we wandered to the bus terminal and caught a bus to Naoussa. It cost 2 euro ($4) and was comfortable with airconditioning although pretty rundown. We had considered going to AntiParos instead which is a boat ride away but decided as it was still a bit windy and the boats to there are small it probably wasn't the best idea. Mike remembers AntiParos as very cute,  I have all of these lovely places confused in my brain but am sure it was wonderful.  Naoussa is gorgeous, not large, has a real vibe and unlike Parikia empty sites are being developed everywhere. The fishing boats had just come in when we arrived so there was loads of activity going on, the outdoor restaurants were all setting up for lunch as well. We started down by the port and then wandered out to the venetian castle ruin that once protec...

As I mentioned yesterday we really enjoyed Naxos and I finally relaxed throwing the cold (for the most part) and loving our wee apartment, so it was a bit sad to get up in the morning and leave!  This ferry trip is less than an hour so we bought economy class tickets, smaller ferry this time too. Waiting for the very late ferry at the port involved standing in a long tunnel full of people where cigarette smoke blew through with the wind and the voices of loud Americans echo'd in the concrete structure - so another adventure.  Left - Bye bye Naxos, walking to the boat and views from the Ferry terminal / from the Ferry as we left.  Paros is lovely, a smaller island and a slower way of life again. We even found our walking pace slowed down here today.  The ferry loading / unloading process was way more pleasant this time with far less people. Naxos port can only take 1 ferry at a time but Paros 2 so the chaos was post unloading with cars and people everywhere being herd...

Yamas, most important news is my cold has finally broken, I didn't use a whole packet of tissues for the first time today. It was also the first stay where breakfast wasn't included so we ate muesli and yoghurt with juice and some peppermint tea we purchased last night (missing my cups of tea). Then we headed out.  Naxos is a huge island - so I can't for the life of me figure out why two crazy 20 something backpackers decided to walk around it 33/34 years ago! no wonder we ran out of water and had to come back to town.  First stop today was Apollo's gate, the ruins of a seemingly unfinished temple built in 530BC, what's left is the door frame and loads of huge blocks which would have made up the floor and walls.  Mike and I climbed all over this when we were here way back but now it's nicely cordoned off for tourists, well lit and has wonderful paths to follow around for different vistas. The Wellington like wind (see my hair in the top photo) made for quite an ...

Yassas, I started to write this from the Santorini Ferry terminal where, due to checkout time / ferry time misalignment we have 2.5 hours to kill. Right now we are sitting in an expensive cafe enjoying a pizza and local beer / wine. I've also taken this moment to do some work, payroll, write a press release, catchup on emails kind of things.  Our morning was pretty quiet, breakfast arrived a bit later closer to 9am - french toast and scrambled eggs today with creme croissants. Then we had til midday to packup and people watch before Benny - who threw both of our packs on his back this time and raced along ahead of us - took us to our transfer car.  The photographers started before 8am today, we also discovered the "wind dress" version too, where a woman or group of women wear these dresses with huge trains which get thrown up into the air for the photo. Crazy stuff. With two cruise ships in there were many groups of Americans on small group tours stopping at our gate as w...

It really is surreal staying on the rim of a volcano and simply crazy how they have built into the layers of rock down and down, with houses stacked on houses, some accessed directly off paths, others up / down tens of stairs.  Our day started with 8am breakfast delivery, omelette and scrambled eggs, a croissant each (I eat croissants now, sourdough and croissants!) and fruit salad. I had deteriorated somewhat overnight so went back to bed for an hour before we set out into the warm but very very windy day.  Our plan was to walk the windy paths down to Fira (the nearest big town), bus to Oia and walk back the 9km to our village. But a combo of the wind and my cold meant we ended up bussing both ways.  These pics are from our walk to Fira. Top left Steve on a quiet part of the track. Top right and bottom left are both looking back towards our wee house with the blue domed church in front. Bottom right a cruise ship with it's tiny boats ferrying passengers to shore.  F...

To get to our hideaway house our host walked us through windy paths from the road, at one stage we rounded a corner to this view - just wow. But that was in the afternoon, our day started getting up at 6am for our early flight. Pleased we had sussed out Termini the night before it all went quite smoothly getting the train from central Rome out to the Airport. The airport on the other hand was actually organised chaos and unlike in NZ or the UK their scanners can see everything so no taking laptops or liquids out of bags, nor taking shoes off - so it all runs quite smoothly except when you have well trained Americans ahead of you who proactively removed everything and we had to wait for them to repack and put shoes / belts back on.  Our trip to Santorini was with Aegean airlines and we had a 60 minute layover in Athens, luckily after being dropped by bus in the terminal our next gate was right there so we just joined a queue and carried on. My cold hasn't improved so I slept a fair ...