Goodbye to London for Now

And so now I am getting ready to leave London for a few months as tomorrow I will take the train to York. After flying in from Greece I went directly to Royal Leamington Spa to spend the weekend with the Crawleys which was lots of fun and even though it rained the first day, it didn't matter as we just rearranged our plans. It is a beautiful town and it was also fun to visit Stratford (birthplace of Shakespeare!). I have included some photos and hopefully they convey the laughter and fun of a weekend with good friends.

  

On the Monday I came back to London, well actually a little bit out of London in Staines. Staines is on the river and a really beautiful town which was nice to explore and enjoy a pace that is a bit more relaxed. In London, Belle and I visited the British Museum, for the museum AND high tea, and explored London a bit more. One of the fun things about travel is the people you get to see overseas and it was ace to catch up with one of my 2019 students for coffee and then two hours later dash across London for a final goodbye to London cocktail. It was more a goodbye for Belle as she was returning home which marks the start of my more 'solo style' travelling for the next five months. I spent this first day at the V&A museum but as it has a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects (fun fact!), I didn't see everything. This was partly to preserve my sanity and partly because I had to check in to my hotel before meeting friends for dinner and going to see The Crucible. I have read the play but never seen it performed and it was so thought-provoking. We all enjoyed it and I even got into a discussion about it with the stranger next to me who has seen it performed a few times and thought this was one of the best performances he had seen. It was a really strong cast and a good way to end my 'summer in London' part of the trip.

  

   

   

Staines:

By myself in London...

The Fourth and Final Post of the Island Adventures...Samos

I was going to include some notes about Samos in the last post but with all the photos it got a bit long and besides I think Samos deserves its own post. Samos is beautiful. It is so different to the other islands that we have visited in that it is verdant and green. I was struck by how barren the other islands were and so to arrive and see all the green in Samos was surprising. I really liked the island from the minute we arrived. Unfortunately we only have two nights here (I am posting this while on Samos!) but looking at it positively I will say that I definitely want to return to see more. We are staying at a hotel that was recommended to us and I think that it is a bit more remote than I would have liked so next time I will choose a place that is closer to the airport because there were some really pretty towns that were also closer to more of the sights. That being said, it was still really nice to relax at our hotel and the taxi ride (we missed the last bus) gave us an opportunity to see more of the island. Early in the morning we got to see the sunrise from our balcony (see below!) and we were able to walk to and explore the nearby town of Kokkari early in the morning before it got hot. Samos is a few degrees hotter than the other places so we did take things a little slower. One thing that surprised me was that Turkey is only one hour from Samos?! I knew they were close but we could clearly see Kusadasi on our way around the island.

And of course, unable to resist a fun fact, famous people from Samos include: Pythagoras, Epicurus, Aesop, Aristarchus and Herodotus. I am DEFINITELY coming back here to spend more time exploring but for now we say goodbye to Greece and hello (again) to England.

The Third Post of the Island Adventures...Santorini

The third and final island on the tour (but not for Belle and me) was Santorini. Santorini was probably the island I had heard the most about and it was interesting to visit. Because of the heat, most of our exploring is best done later in the evening or earlier in the morning so our first visit to the centre of Fira and it was crowded but it was stunning to look over the town and the cliffs as the sun slowly set and cast a magical rosy glow over the white buildings. While we were staying in Fira, we didn't confine ourselves to this village but the next morning visited Oia. Some of the group (including me) made the 12 km trek by foot and it was absolutely worth it. We set off before 6 am to have less time of our walk in the hot sun and so we were able to enjoy the sunrise and see some amazing views on the way. There were so many wild herbs along the walk such as oregano, lemon thyme and capers. Apparently caper leaves are great in a salad (fun fact!) and so if I remember, I might do this when I return to Melbourne. We were also able to fit in a really fun boat trip later in the day where we got to enjoy another sunset but this time from the water looking across to the island. This is where our tour ended. It was a wonderful group of people from all stages in life and I enjoyed getting to know them but we had to say goodbye and set off to Samos. Here are some photos from Santorini including one from a local 24 hour bakery that sold the best baklava I have ever had (more about Samos below!).

The boat trip:

The baklava:

The Second Post of the Island Adventures...Mykonos and Delos

 Post 2: The islands continue to Mykonos and Delos

And now we move to the more familiar of the Greek islands. Mykonos was first and it was full of the expected and unexpected juxtaposed in what overall was a beautiful island. Firstly, the expected, the whitewashed buildings and the crowds and the heat were all that I expected. In saying this however, I don’t want to suggest that being expected dulled the beauty of it. The small streets meant that every corner revealed a beautiful walkway, shop or scene of some description. As you might or might not know, all the houses are white and the restrictions mean that all doors and windows can only be painted blue, green or red. Fun fact - this is from the tradition where sailors painted their doors blue, farmers painted their doors green and everyone else painted their doors red.

Our hotel was a 10 minute walk from the ‘old’ part of town and the hotel had stunning views over the sea and sitting on the balcony in the early morning or the evening was very special. I should comment on the food because every meal has been delicious and on our first day we had souvlaki which I wanted to do and it was worth it. I also had lemon coke. I liked it but don’t take that as a recommendation because I can imagine that others wouldn’t like it. The unexpected? The wind! It was so windy. Another unexpected delight was the delicious Mythos beer which apparently doesn’t taste as good outside of Greece so this will just have to be something I enjoy here. 

We did a day trip to Delos. This is an archeological site which was the supposed birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. Our guide was really informative and it was such a treat to learn about ancient Greek history. Some of it was familiar from uni days and it was a reminder of how much I enjoyed studying it. I have included some photos of Delos:

One of the particular things I like about visiting a place is meeting people from the area and talking to them about their perspective. It has been interesting talking to our tour guide about his perspective of Greece and the EU. It is a very different perspective than what we have in the Australian media and has made me much more sympathetic to the plight of their people. The Greek people have been under some type of occupation for many years and now they are at the mercy of the EU. It is sad to see a culture with such a rich heritage suffering so much. I also didn’t appreciate how bitter the conflict has been between Greece and Turkey for so many years. Even the name ‘Greece’ is a name that was imposed on them during the Ottoman occupation and they prefer to be called Hellas. It is these conversations that are a highlight of my travel and the day after I began rereading Homer’s Odyssey.

Mykonos photos:

The First Post of the Island Adventures...Syros

​​So this is where we joined a tour and began a trip to the Greek islands. I should probably say in the Elliniká islands as this is what it is in Greek and I will talk more about the importance of this later. We had dinner with most of the tour group (12 of us) in Athens before heading off early the next day for the island of Syros. We stayed in Ermoupolis which is the main town on the island and due to Venetian influence is different in architecture to the other islands that we would later visit. Fun fact is that it was actually built by the Venetians in the 13th Century when Greece was under Roman influence. Yes, the weather was still hot but we were able to explore and we visited a fourth generation family owned loukoumi shop. Loukoumi is the Greek version of turkish delight but I think they would prefer me to say that turkish delight is the Turkish version of loukoumi. It was interesting to see how they made it using the original methods and also to what extent it is an art form that must adapt to changes in weather, humidity and sugar variations. They also made a type of nougat that I preferred and I am hoping my purchase survives in my case until I return to London to share it with friends I will be staying with. The time in Syros was spent exploring, going to a remote beach that can only be accessed by boat and having dinners with amazing views. There are two big hills in Syros and one has a Catholic church at the top in a medieval town called Ano Syros. We had dinner in this town and it overlooked a Greek Orthodox church. In this post I have included photos of Syros and Ano Syros and you will see that Ano Syros has more of the whitewashed architecture that you might be familiar with. 

Syros:

Ano Syros: