Rosemary's Travels 2016: Greece

By Rosemary O'Donoghue

When you read about Rosemary's travels, you'll feel like you're there: finding your way around, seeing the sights, making new friends , eating the local food, feeling the history of ancient Greece and the romance of the Greek islands.

When Rosemary visited Greece, Italy, Malta and China in 2016, as she went, she sent detailed emails to friends about her travels. In this first book of the series, she details her journeys in Greece, visiting Athens, ancient sites, Meteora, and the Greek islands, Mykonos and Santorini.

If you would like to visit Greece but can't right now, or you have plans to go and would like a preview, or you simply enjoy reading about travel from the comfort of your armchair, this book will take you there and entertain you along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rosemary O'Donoghue
• Release date: Jul 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370575213

Rosemary O'Donoghue

Rosemary O'Donoghue writes for work and for fun. A Technical Writer with a science background, she has published travel books and a business book, Clarity out of Complexity: Writing Effective Workplace Procedures, to share some of the wisdom she has learned from many years of writing for a wide range of industries. She gets excited about how good procedures (as opposed to longwinded, boring, repetitive procedures) can dramatically lift the performance of a business.In between (and often during) jobs, Rosemary enjoys travelling and writes daily to capture her experiences and entertain friends, family and random people she meets. In recent years she has discovered a passion for sailing and spends months at a times on a boat coastal cruising along the NSW and Queensland coast of Australia. She has written about her experiences along the way in her book North on Rocinante and will soon publish Second Season, also about her sailing experiences. She has published travel stories about Italy, Greece, Malta, Hong Kong & China.Rosemary is currently combining her technical writing and training expertise and her passion for sailing creating a self-discovery learning guide about coastal cruising.When she's not on the water, Rosemary lives with her partner, her cat and her pet python in Sydney, Australia.

Book preview

Introduction

On Tuesday August 23, I left Australia for a holiday in Europe, returning via Hong Kong and China around 5 weeks later. I met a friend, Stavros, in Athens, and travelled with him through parts of Greece, Italy and Malta, before heading towards home and meeting my son, Noah, in Hong Kong.

I wrote about my travels as I went; to send via email to friends and family back home; but also to capture and relish my adventures so that I could enjoy them all the more and relive them once I returned to daily life. I wrote about the places we visited, the people we met, the food we ate and anything else that made an impression on me.

Now I’ve put my stories together with the photos that I took along the way, to share with anyone else who may like to travel vicariously, or who is planning a trip and wants some ideas, or wants to know what to expect.

This book covers travel in Greece, the sequel covers travel in Italy, the third, Malta, and the fourth, Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China. Read one, or read the lot – it’s up to you, but I hope it feels like you were there. Enjoy your travels!

1

Sydney to Athens

Tuesday August 23 2016

Don’t you just love the sensory overload of travel? Right from the beginning: planning a trip, where to go, what to see, how long to go for, who to go with? So many options, such a big, interesting world. But finances are limited and there are responsibilities: a house to pay for, a neurotic cat to look after, keeping together a grown-up family, work responsibilities. Sort out the jumble, make it happen. Sometimes wonder if I really want to. But, yes! I do! Live life, make an effort, fill it to the brim, or sit back with the comfortable usual and let the years slip by.

Lists, lists and more lists. Slowly cross them off, let some of them go. Still struggling on the day I leave to sort out the phone. My anxious cat sits on a list, wanting to snuggle. When I pull out the paper from under him he swipes at me. I yell at him to go away and he stands up to me, ready for a fight. I open the office door and order him out, my wrist dripping with blood. Poor Willie, I’m guilt-ridden for leaving him. But I’ve made sure he’ll be well taken care of while I’m away.

Stressing too about how to get to the airport. Still haven’t arranged anything by about lunchtime. I’d been planning to book a shuttle but left it too late. Ask Jassie to take me but she has a function on that evening. Consider Uber but not sure how to book it ahead. Ask Aaron but he’s working tonight and doesn’t think he’ll make it back home in time for work. Instead he suggests I catch a train and offers to take me to the station. Good idea. No need to battle the traffic or pay exorbitant taxi fares.

International travel is getting easier. My flight is going via Melbourne then Abu Dhabi and I’m able to book my bags through from Sydney and am given boarding passes for all 3 flights.

In Melbourne I board a packed A380. Unfortunately I have a window seat – I prefer aisle seats for long flights. An Arabian teenager (though maybe he’s a young man) is sitting next to me, his mother on the other side of him. He has earrings, a pierced eyebrow, a fledgling beard and jiggles his leg constantly until he falls asleep. They ignore me, speaking to each other in a language I assume is Arabic, until I make a point of making eye contact. Do you speak English? I ask him. Just a little, he says. We still keep to ourselves for most of the flight. I doze on and off, leaning back as much as I’m able, legs stretched out in front. The young man, legs well spread, encroaches on the space I’m not using but is careful to keep out of my way. When a meal comes and he’s fast asleep, his mother shakes him gently and we smile at each other. I bet he’s the typically annoying teenager that a mother can’t help but love – at least while he’s asleep.

The sun is just rising as we fly in to Abu Dhabi. Peering out the window I try to make out the lay of the land. I can see ordered squares of orange lights marking roadways, but nothing much in between. I realize they are on islands, which is why they don’t all join up. As we fly further inland and the sun rises higher, I see that the roads are strips of tar running across sand. Everywhere is flat, everywhere is sandy, the roads laid on top of sand, looking like printed circuit boards. In the distance are high-rise buildings, not clustered like our CBDs, more spread out. The control tower at the airport is a curious wave-shaped building. I wonder what it’s like inside.

The heat in the air hits as soon as I come off the plane. I queue up at the first set of toilets. There are only 2 cubicles and a long queue so I have to patiently await my turn. Continuing along the corridors towards the immigration area, in the first open area there’s a small enclosed smoking hut. Several people hurry into it and light up. I come to a big huddle and some confusion where people queue to go through immigration and others group around a set of stairs leading to boarding gates. No one is moving. I check again with a young man in uniform. Yes, it is the way to boarding gate 43. Eventually the huddle begins to move forward. Then it stops. We wait a while before it moves again. When I finally make it to the moving mass, we clump down the stairs and go through security. Nothing needs to come out of the bags – just toss each bag into a bucket and let it go through. A conveyor system feeds the empty trays back around to the beginning.

When it’s my turn to go through the metal detector, of course it detects my metal hips and beeps. I’m sent to a small curtain-enclosed booth where a woman directs me inside, closes the curtain and pats me down. Not the usual scan with a hand-held device, just a pat-down. The woman is very serious, doesn’t talk or smile or make eye contact.

There are crowds of people at the gates, and not enough seats. People of all varieties and backgrounds: women in full black niqab, some with very young eyes peeping out, others obviously much older, limping along. Men in full-length white robes, and westerners in shorts and T-shirts. It’s noisy and crowded, people around me talking in a cacophony of languages. The plane is delayed, apparently because they’re trying to cool the cabin temperature before we board. Even after we leave the terminal and board buses to take us to the plane, there are more delays and discussions back and forth between airline staff and the bus drivers.

The plane to Athens is an A340 and the flight is sparsely filled. I’m down the back, next to a window again, but this time have no one beside me. I’m starving by then and looking forward to a meal. But there are no announcements about a food service, the entertainment system doesn’t seem to boot up and the seatbelt sign remains on for a long time after take-off. The poor old fellow in the seat behind me keeps getting up to go to the toilet but is repeatedly told to sit down again. I’m starting to think maybe it’s a flight without