What can one say about a cruise through the Greek Isles? If one seeks a holiday where one is waited on hand and foot, is served so much food that one cannot eat it and also has a twenty Euro a day unlimited drinks card, this is the holiday for you.
The week commenced where only moments after arriving at our hotel in Athenia, a knock on the door was the announcement of the arrival of Leigh and Michelle, who promptly invited us to their room for nibbles and drinks, which of course, we rather reluctantly accepted. After drinks and nibbles we decided that we probably should eat, so we staggered purposefully strode towards a very cheap restaurant that Leigh and Michelle had earlier located not too far from the hotel. After a hearty meal and quite a few drinks, which actually cost less than 12 Euros a head, we retired to the hotel for a well earned sleep. It is fair to say that this was the pattern of our existence for the next few days.
The next day we took a guided tour around the historical monuments in Athens. The Greek history appears to be as interesting as that of the Romans.
The next morning saw us boarding the ship and heading for Mikonos. Unfortunately this was disappointing, as Mikonos is nothing more than a town of white washed buildings that have been converted to shops to cater for the tourist trade predominantly from cruise ships such as ours.
The next day was spent at Rhodes and this is a fascinating town. It is a city in some senses like Rome where there is an old city encircled by a defensive wall and surrounded by a newer, much younger city. It certainly seemed to be the most popular island we visited and the beach was something to behold.
There was no sand, only small rocks and pebbles on the beach. There were several thousand people and about half that number of beach umbrellas. In fact, other than the people who were swimming in the sea, all you could see was umbrellas.
As my family is aware, I don’t normally go swimming. However, on this occasion I made an exception for two primary reasons. The first was that it was quite warm and my opportunities to swim in Mediterranean waters are rather limited. The second was that I was able to observe the people on the beach as I bobbed about in the water.
It is fair to say that there were all shapes and sizes and ages on the beach. The number of grossly overweight and over 50 women in bikinis had to be seen to be believed – and they just didn’t care how they looked. They also outnumbered the young and beautiful by a ratio of 20 to 1 or better.
There was also a man of around 80 on the beach. He was as white as the driven snow and was wearing a black g-string as a pair of bathers. Gloria and Michelle couldn’t believe it and neither could a group of German speaking tourists who had wandered down to the waters edge for a dip. If any of my children see me acting like this at that age, they have my permission to put me away for a long time…..
We also visited the Turkish port of Kusadasi, where we visited the local market. I have decided that I like the Turks – they tried very hard to persuade you to visit their shop, but once they understood that you were not interested, they actually struck up conversations about where you were from, what you were doing and where you were going and so on and made you feel very comfortable.
Interspersed with playing the tourist was some substantial time on the ship that was spent eating, drinking and sleeping and not necessarily in that order. The ships crew were just terrific and really did look after us. We both thought that we had lost weight with the substantial walking we done over the previous weeks, but we think we put it all back on during our time on the ship. We had no problem getting full value from our drink cards and I doubt if they considered that Australians would be on their ship, because our drinks averaged around 1 Euro each, which is substantially less than what we would pay anywhere in Australia, including take home drinks.
However, I did discover some interesting facts. The Greek people are generally rude and very pushy people, although I suspect that this may be out of necessity. Everywhere we went we had to contend with pushing and shoving and poor behaviour. At one shop, Michelle found a dress which she held up to show Gloria – it was snatched from her hand by another Greek woman who hurriedly took it to the fitting room and emerged a few moments later and promptly purchased it. Unfortunately there wasn’t another similar dress in the shop, so Michelle missed out. This is quite the reverse of the people I know of Greek origin in Australia who I think are quite good people.
Whilst we were on Rhodes, we had the opportunity to visit an archaeological museum which just blew us away. I won’t bore you with all the details, but some of the exhibits were claimed to 3,000 years old and I quite believe it as Rhodes has a history dating back well before the time of Christ.
It was fair to say that this was the week we have enjoyed the most and like most enjoyable experiences, it seemed over before it had begun. It is going to be tough to be back in Australia next week and back at work.
