Doug

 Sunday 29 Sept.

A few years ago I managed to track down my best friend from the early 60's. We used to work together and became best buddies for a number of years. It took nearly 10 years of searching to find him again, as the last time we saw him was in 1975 when Chris & I and Chris' Mum & Dad visited the UK.

So after a gap of 38 years I finally got to meet up with my best friend Doug Lockwood.

Doug met me at the station and we spent the next 7 hours or so non stop talking about the old days. We visited some of our old haunts, went to his house and even managed to get to a sea side resort where we used to go for holidays.

Here's some pics of the day we tripped down memory lane.

Me & Doug's awesome dog Leicester

Thanks for a great day Doug. Let's not leave it another 38 years!

Last Day In Athens

Saturday was our last day in Athens so after a long lay in we still had a few hours to kill before the taxi was due to take us to the airport. We decided to visit the National Archaeological Museum and had a quick look around at some of the amazing exhibits. Don't ask me what they were because there were so many and all from different periods in time.

Back In Athens

We arrived back in Athens this morning (Friday) and got to the hotel about 9am. Check in wasn't until 2pm so we had a lot of time to kill. (remember we were up at 5.15am). decided to try to find the market area and did a bit of shopping. (Note the earings Chris is wearing in the picture below).

We were back at the same hotel where we started the trip from and were not really looking forward to it because it was pretty dowdy. However, I asked the female clerk (who remembered me) if we could get a refurbished room and once again we got a free upgrade and are very happy with our new room!

Back to London tomorrow.

Cruise Round Up

Friday. We arrived back in Athens shattered from the cruise. Most of the excursions we took required us to be up at ungodly hours. Even disembarkation needed a 5.15am wake up call!

We didn't (and couldn't) participate in the night life on board because of the early starts. However we both really enjoyed ourselves.

There was a small casino but opening times were odd so only managed to contribute about 30 Euros!

I took out an unlimited drinks package, which meant I had to drink a lot to get my moneys worth! Chris had a non alcoholic package but we managed to switch drinks several times.

The only downside really was the food. Just about every meal we had was COLD (even though it was supposed to be hot) but for the price we paid we ain't complaining.

The cabin was small but serviceable and had everything we needed. Cabin staff and tour director and drink waiters were superb, although some of the food waiters needed a good kick up the bum sometimes.

We never swam or sun baked, using any spare time we had to catch up on badly needed sleep!

A nice touch was a couple of times each day our cabin was cleaned and the staff made our towels into animal shapes, such as swans, dogs, rabbits a bull, love hearts etc. A picture is included below.

I enjoyed this part of our holiday with Santorini being the stand out for beauty and Ephesus (Turkey) for it's history.

Here's a couple of pics taken on the ship.

Woof woof

Santorini

Thursday Afternoon. This was the one we had really been looking forward to and it turned out to be breathtaking. I will let the pictures (and I have lots of them) do the talking.

Flour honey, walnuts & Greek yogurt

Crete

Thursday. In the morning we arrived at Crete but decided to stay on board the ship as we knew Santorini was coming up in the afternoon and wanted to save our energy. Just a few snaps of the dock area follow. We were glad we didn't do the Crete tour as those that did it were a little disappointed.

Rhodes & Lindos

Wednesday - After sailing all night we arrived early at Rhodes. Took a tour around the old city which was interesting but not really spectacular. We also got to Lindos (a village on the island). This involved a lot of climbing and I gave up almost at the top but Chris made it all the way. On the way down we got to the dock area and I managed to trip over a step and went sprawling. My glasses flew off, as did my watch. I received a nasty cut on my knee and scraped my shin. All healing now but it gave me a fright and the thing that hurt most was my dignity!

The following pics are from Lindos, Rhodes follows.

Ancient carving of a ship

 

 

Rhodes