Yia Sas, Ciao, and Au Revoir!

After 4 weeks of travelling both Lindsay and I feel like going home.

We have enjoyed our time away, but there is definitely something nice about sleeping in your own bed, not having to take public transportation, and being around friends and family.  So, with eager anticipation, we were up early, and out the door by 8am, catching metros and trains to Charles de Gaulle Airport, for our 11am flight back to Toronto.

It was all pretty smooth sailing, with a connecting flight in Toronto and Vancouver, as we were on Air Canada for all 3 legs of the flight, and there was only 2 hour waits at both Pearson and Vancouver Airports.   However, when we arrived in PG around 8:30pm we were ready for bed, even though we had been "resting" on the plane.

The only hiccup we faced is that somewhere along the way, during our return flight from Paris, we lost Lindsay's money belt which contained all her cards, minus her passport.  So, now that we're back in town we'll have to take care of that and hope she isn't a victim of identity fraud, but we'll do what we can and pray for the best.

Such a great trip, and until next time, yia sas, ciao, and au revoir.

Day 5...A Longer Day Yet

Our day started with a wake-up alarm at 4am...yes, I said 4am. We had booked ourselves a flight from Athens to Crete for 9:45, and we knew it was going to take about 4-4.5 hours to get to Athens International from Meteora. It was a long drive, and hard to stay awake for, but we made it fine and it one-piece...even though I missed seeing a railroad crossing on the highway and hit it going 80km/h...that was the biggest bounce I have ever had in a car!

The night before, we did our sunset tour of Meteora, and it was nice. The sun was not really cooperating with us, as it had (and is still on Crete) quite hazy. The locals believe it might be the humidity, or some dust storms from Africa, but it doesn't matter to us – it is still hazy at a distance. We did learn some interesting facts about Meteora, in that hermits wanting to be closer to God and starve themselves of worldly pleasures, back in the 10th century, came to the area to make homes in the caves up high in the rocks. They had to learn how to rock climb from the locals, but eventually created these sanctuaries and grouped together with other hermits, leading to the creation of the monasteries.

Once arriving in Crete we hired a taxi and went to our hotel, Kronos Hotel. After quickly settling in we went for lunch, and made our way to the bus station to take a 20 minute bus to one of the local beaches, Arita Sand. We spent most of the day there, until about 7pm, with me listening to Harry Potter on audio book, and Lindsay reading The Undomestic Goddess and then made our way back to the hotel to shower and head out for dinner. It was relaxing time after a long start to the day.