The next day I moved on to a hotel in Fira, the main town on the island.  I have a beautiful little family run hotel with a pool, two blocks from the main square, for 40 euros a night.  This was an amazing find, as you can spend $000s on hotels here, if you want a cave with a caldera view.  There are many shops here, some very high end ones for the cave and cruise ships crowd, but also more mainstream ones.  Two of my new friends from the group and I had dinner at a restaurant on the edge of the caldera to see the sunset again.  Its…

We had to leave our beautiful little town the next day, by ferry then two buses to the major centre of Iraklion or Heraklion (many places have two or three different spellings, and thats just in English).  Just outside is the biggest tourist draw in Crete, the Palace of Knossos.  This is the partially reconstructed ruins of the advanced Minoan civilization, from a few thousand years ago.  The improvements are controversial, since a hundred years ago an Englishman made these additions based more on his imagination than fact.   That night after a three hour meal with raki and two desserts showing up unordered, a few of us ended up…

The next morning we were off by ferry to the tiny tourist town of Loutros. It can be reached only by boat, in a spectacular setting on the side of cliffs leading down to the ocean. There is one commercial street on the oceanside, the iconic white buildings with blue shutters. It exists only for tourists, and shuts down in the winter months when rains and cold weather settle in, but now it is hot in the day and still very warm at night. Tourist season is coming to an end but we have lots of company, including many Europeans who trek here along a mountainous route covering the south…

6 am docking at the town of Hania, where we did a walking tour around the harbour and commercial areas before we could check in to our hotel.  The old town here has ruins left from Venetian and Turkish invaders.  It`s apparently a late night party town also.  While at breakfast, a loud, drunken and very good looking group of locals knocked over their table and left piles of broken glass, then drove off on motorcycles.  And we had previously been told that the Greeks don’t really break plates when they party. We have noticed that a lot of the young men here are really well built.  They don`t have…

The next day we moved on by bus to the former Greek capital of Nafplio,  known as the prettiest town in Greece. Along the way we stopped to see the Corinthian Canal, built in 1870s, with no locks, just all at sea level.  We also stopped at Epidavros where among the ruins is an ancient theatre seating 14,000, with acoustics so excellent that from the top we could hear a coin dropped in the centre, or a member of our group badly doing a Celine Dion imitation. On arrival in Napflio, a few of us climbed legendary 999 steep steps (actually a few less than that) to the fortress above…

The next day we set off by private bus, along winding mountainous roads, for the town of Delphi.  This tiny town is built beside the famous ruins thought to be the navel of the world by the ancient Greeks, and known for the Oracle of Delphi.  The oracle is actually a place, not a person, in the Temple of Apollo, where fault lines in this area of frequent earthquakes released a gas that was inhaled by a woman from the town, who then gave a prophetic answer to a question posed to her.  The gas contains ethylene, which made her very perceptive, which I interpret to mean probably just got…

Moving on from Athens, we travelled six hours by train to Meteora in central Greece.  Its name means in the sky, and is so named because of the 24 monasteries built on top of huge rock formations where they seem to be hanging.  They were built six centuries ago for the monks to escape persecution, and until only a few decades ago all supplies and monks were hauled up with ropes, pulleys and nets.  The ropes were only replaced when they snapped, since this was felt to be the way God intended, so some of the monks may not have made it all the way up.  The scenery is fantastic. …

For the late evening meal that night (no one eats before 8 or 9 pm) we went to the main square, the Plaka, to a rooftop restaurant with views of the nearby lit up Acropolis and of the city.  The restaurants were crowded, the steps lined with customers at tables or sitting on the steps.  Souvlaki and gyros (pita bread stuffed with meat, tomatoes, onions, tzatziki and French fries) are served everywhere, as well as Greek salad of course.  Greek wine is available and is not bad at all, and there is also retsina, white wine made in pine barrels which is cheaper and watery.  Every meal seems to be…

Yesterday I made my way to the Acropolis, the most important ancient architecture in the western world.  Acropolis is really the name of one of eight hills within Athens, and is dominated by the Parthenon, a massive structure made of marble hauled from great distances.  Below it are ruins of a city from 300 years BC (the designation BC has changed recently to not reflect the birth of Christ but Im not sure what the new name is).  The Parthenon in particular is impressive only for its size and placing on high, many of the carvings and statues from it have been placed in the nearby Acropolis Museum.  I also…

Travelling through Toronto and Frankfurt, I arrived in Athens this afternoon.  Rather than brave the legendary taxi drivers from the airport (if you get a nice one he will very likely rip you off) I instead took the Metro train, which takes about the same amount of time and saves about 40 Euro or more than $50.  The hard part was keeping my wits about me to gather my bags and leave at the right exit after an hour on the train, since I couldn’t help but nod off a few times (it’s 9 hours ahead of the time at home). Leaving the metro station whose exit was lined with…