GREECE!

We just got back from the most amazing vacation where Ella, Mal and I spent 2 weeks in Greece with our good friends John, Barb and William! I have to tell you that I have been procrastinating in doing this Blog entry as I was unsure how to deal with all of the pictures we took!

Anyhow in discussing this with a few friends it was recommended that I just attach my Ofoto Album to the entry ... lets hope it works as its a much better idea. If you cannot click on the following link please copy and paster it into your address line of your Internet browser.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=xwswi0k.5yp0ygl8&Uy=-kjvojb&Ux=0

A little summary of our 2 weeks!

On Sept 21 my Mom took us to the airport and we flew to London over night; after a 4 hour layover in Gatwick we flew to Athens ...Ella was great on both flights...the Hfx - Lon she slept most of the way and then on the Athens flight we had 3 seats so she had her own :-) John and Barb kindly met us at the Athens airport and helped us out with the car rental. From there we followed them to John's families home town Sparta. By the time we arrived here we realized that it had been exactly 24hrs since we left out house! Somehow ...must have been the excitement ....we all managed just fine. John's parents have a lovely flat in the midst of Sparta; I have never felt so comfortable so quickly in arriving to another country! Thank you!!!!

While in Sparta we took in the lovely city, enjoyed the authenticity of the food and the culture and took 2 day trips; one to Monemvasia on Malcolm's birthday and another to Olympia. I would love to get into details but I will save this for conversation as we saw so much this entry would go on forever!

After 4 days in Sparta we all drove to Athens, returned our rental cars and took a 35 minute flight to the island of Crete. WOW Crete was beautiful; it was hot and sunny everyday and the hotel that Barbara found for us was right one the beach! I had no idea we were staying in such a beach resort area! We had side by side units (after a little arguing) and kitchenettes so we spent a few evenings out on our patios chatting as the kids went to bed :-) In the 5 days we toured a lot of the island ... actually we started to wonder if in fact the Greek KM was the same as the rest of the world as everywhere we tried to go took us twice as long as anticipated. The terrain was very mountainous ...beautiful but a little sickening at times in the Jumpy ( our right family caravan)!

We visited the Ancient ruins of Knosses, hiked part of the SanMaria Gorge and went to a few different beaches. Ella LOVED the beach ...the waves would be crashing right into her and she was just laughing ...it was really a lot of fun ...however the days of laying and relaxing were fast over as she is quick! We also did a little snorkeling ...the blue/green water was so warm and you didn't have to go far to see fish anywhere!

After flying back to Athens ...we sadly said goodbye to John, Barb and Will...they traveled North to Volos to visit Barb's family and Mal, Ella and I stayed in Athens for 2 days. After checking a few of our million bags at the airport we took off into the city, found a place to stay and went for a walk. Athens was beautiful, I had pictured it a little differently... it was much cleaner than I thought it would be and the people were very kind ... believe it or not but I don't think anyone tried to rip us off!

We spent our last day at the Acropolis ... BREATHTAKING is all I have to say... to have these Ancient ruins in the middle of the city was unbelievable.

We left EARLY the next morning and arrived early in London ...we had a layover until the next afternoon so we stayed at Malcolm's Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Len's for the evening...sadly they were out of town but Mal's cousin Clare came and met us and his cousins Marc, Emma, Zack and Taigen took very good care of us for the evening. We had a GREAT sleep and flew home the next day.

It was an amazing holiday .... great first overseas adventure for Ella and fabulous time with our good friends John, Barb and Will...we look forward to future family holidays together! We cannot thank you enough for inviting us!!