Yahoo! Last night James and I returned from Greece and Turkey. James’ brother picked us up at the airport and delivered us to his house for turkey dinner. That was awesome, even though I was ready to fall asleep after the first sip of wine, ok, it was even before the wine. We woke at 5 am, caught the 6 am airport shuttle, got on the 9 am flight to London, then the 3:30 pm flight to Vancouver. And after a full 22 hours we were back in Vancouver.
Quick trip review:
London was amazing and I cannot believe how many things we saw in 3 days, it was an unbelievable time. Then we went off to Greece and took the ferry to Santorini island for some R&R. Again we had fabulous dinners and some Santorini white wine. James and I scootered across the island. Scooter buddies. We went to a red sand beach, a black sand one, and a white sand beach. These are pebbly beaches rather than soft sand.
We practically missed our flight from Athens to Leros. The train was delayed 2x and we got to the airport 15 minutes before the flight. The agent told us we couldn’t get on the flight but we begged. Eventually she let us go with our bag, which we had to drag to the passenger gate and then beg security to push it through the scanner. That was no small feat! In the end we made the plane and I was thrilled it was Greece and not Canada. I doubt we would have had any luck getting on a Canadian flight 15 min. before departure.
In Leros we met up with a bunch of other couples for our sailing trip. Two weeks sailing from Greece to Turkey. It was so incredible. Greek food was fresh and lovely and cheap. The islands were beautiful and then Turkey was even better. The food was better tasting and the landscape was brilliant, lots of red rock and cliffs.
After the sailing trip we had 8 days beating around Turkey. We took minibuses and coaches to Ephesus, where the ruins of an ancient city exist. That was really cool–3,000 year old rocks set in amazing cliff faces. I was wishing I had a geologist friend along to explain the land formations.
We flew to Istanbul for our final 4 days and the night we arrived was the first day of Ramadan. Around the Blue Mosque were all sorts of street vendors and every night there was a market with sausage and corn, kebabs, donars, cotton candy, twirl candy, dates and almonds. I loved it.
I still can’t believe how much we did in 5 weeks, now I feel like I can barely think about going back to work and regular life.