En Vacances!

The Athenians seem to like a queue. At least, that was the impression they gave me at the airport on my way home from ‘me hols’ last week. First queue, of course, was to check my bag in. What a muddle. Priority line, or non-priority line? There was no difference. The customer service guy simply split the very large queue down the middle, whereupon I found myself in the queue into which every disabled passenger forged through to the head of it as they arrived.

One and a half hours later, I was finally through – Graham and Gail were shocked. They’d whizzed through their bag check-in, no problem. Ha! Ha! They were boarding their plane!

I wasn’t. There were no queues at the security desk or the passport desk but, guess what? There was definitely a queue at the gate, which turned out to be a twenty-five minute walk away from passport control. A really lovely lounge area with lots of seats, but nah!! They didn’t want to let the passengers in. Queue, queue, queue to even get into the lounge area, with boarding passes and passports to be checked again here.

I took the easy option and sat in the general lounge area to eat my sandwich until almost everyone was through – a good thirty-five minutes later. Not sure why we were herded in like sardines – because the plane was delayed, of course.

Apparently, Graham and Gail’s plane was delayed too, despite them being on it, which meant that they missed their connecting flight to Sri Lanka. Next flight? 2.20 a.m. Eeeeesh.

Before I noticed the inclination for the Athenians to insist on a queue however, Graham, Gail and I had had a thoroughly enjoyable time in Greece. Plenty to see and enjoy, despite one or two hiccups at The Moxy Hotel, like the thumpy-thump ‘musak’; no daylight in the rooms and no view; and disappointingly, no pool or sauna. Graham nicknamed the hotel: ‘The Poxy Hotel’………. I mean, the view from our rooms was a wall. Pretty enough, but not exactly what we’d been hoping hoping for – hehe.

We had arrived at our final tourist destination of Athens via Croatia, Montenegro, Albania and North Macedonia. We had a minibus, with seven fellow travellers, which suited me far better than the bun-fight I thought we might have had on a 50-seater bus. It has to be said though, that in every beauty spot we stopped at, so did a leviathan cruise boat-load of other 50-seater coaches – and our elbows got sharper by the day.

But honestly, these were all very minor inconveniences during the time we had together. We got on well, enjoying each others’ company, we saw lots of interesting historical buildings, learned about the evolution of every country we visited and ate some fabulous food.

And the highlights of the holiday? Main one was meeting up with Graham and Gail, of course! It was wonderful to be in their company and they were as kind as kind, and as witty as witty, could be.

Our first day visiting Dubrovnik is worth a mention. We had taken a tour of the walled city and planned to take the cable car to the top of the hill afterwards, but gosh! The coachloads from the cruise ships were also waiting, so we abandoned the idea temporarily and took a boat to Lokrum Island in the bay. This is a nature reserve which was so tranquil that it blew our socks off. There were gardens, a monastery, caves, beaches (we had a paddle) and a fabulous inland dead sea lake – as well as the Game of Thrones throne…….lovely. I did sit in it to sample it and here’s the photo to prove it!

On our return to Dubrovnik we thought we’d check out the cable car again – and wow! No queues now, so we clambered in and went up to the Panorama Restaurant for the views, cocktails, a bite to eat and the sunset. Absolutely stunning. We loved it and felt like a million dollars.

We could see the walled town of Dubrovnik and Lokrum Island as we hit the heights; behind us there were mountains inland that framed the bay; and then, of course, there was the sunset. It was super.

The next day we set off for Kotor — another walled town, this time in Montenegro. It was incredibly crowded, but very interesting, and I lit a candle for John in the Church of Santa Clara. The exterior of this church was incredibly plain but the interior was another ‘wow’ moment. Such intricate carving of the marble.

Not my photo, I’m afraid – this one is from Trip Advisor – but you can see the phenomenal carving of the curtain draped either side of the altar. It really looked like material, but was marble.

While we waited for Graham in the main square of Kotor, Gail obligingly posed for a photo in front of the Pillar of Shame. She’s a good sport! Apparently, if you had done wrong, you stood there and told everyone about it all day long. Gail had nothing to say! Hehe.

We now know, in modern parlance, that ‘being pilloried’ comes from this practice. See? I told you it was all interesting!

On to Albania next, where I found our stay mixed. The recent history of the country and the capital, Tirana, in particular, was distressing. We heard about the vicious communist rule, from post-war until 1992. It was fascinating to learn about it but I didn’t have the stomach for it, I’m afraid, and opted out of the bunker tour shortly after it had started. Too much blood and gore and injustice to think about all in one go. Shocking stuff.

Another highlight for me though, was the city of Ohrid, situated beside the lake of the same name in North Macedonia. The city, which houses one of only two copies of the Gutenberg press in the world, has an amazing history of different cultures – Illyrian, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Slavic, Norman, Byzantine….. and, of course, the Ottomans and Christians – not to mention the equally amazing statistic of this small city once having had 365 churches – one for every day of the week!

We ate well here, overlooking the lake, and enjoyed the warm breeze from the glorious lake, bounded by mountains, as we walked along the shore.

For all of us though, I think, the most momentous sight of this Ancient Cities and Empires Tour were the rocks at Meteora, which emerged from the ground at an unexpected and massive height, and atop which monasteries and nunneries had been built. How they got the building materials, food and all other supplies up there blew our minds, and the whole site absolutely took our breath away.

I may not have had the best view from my room in Athens, but boy, I had the most fantastic view from my room in the Grand Meteora Hotel! Just look at that!

Naturally, the pièce de résistance of the tour was expected to be the Acropolis in Athens but, although it was fascinating and enjoyable to see, it didn’t have the same ‘wow’ factor as those Meteora rocks. Part of the polish was taken off the Acropolis because there seemed to be millions of tourists there – and I felt apologetic that I, too, was a tourist. More elbow sharpening was required…… but we did find a nice spot in front of the Parthenon for a minute or two.

I was thrilled, however, when the tour guide paused halfway up the steps to the top. She showed us the Areopagus, also known as Mars Hill, which is a rocky outcrop next to the Acropolis, on which Apostle Paul preached to a Roman crowd in 52 AD. More fascinating stuff. I love history.

On our last evening, we also enjoyed a rooftop view of the Acropolis. Once more, we succumbed to cocktails and a bite to eat, and generally indulged all our senses.

And then there was the sunset over Athens……

and the Acropolis by night…….. smashing.

A lovely holiday, thank you very much.