Greek Adventure/Best Laid Plans

Unfortunately when you’re travelling, much as you might carefully plan, there are some things beyond your control. When Marj and I booked this trip last year we chose the tour with the beautiful wooden sailboat as I’d never been on one before. Apparently last week the boat had other plans as it broke down and is in for repairs. The tour company scrambled and managed to find another boat for us but it’s a bit disappointing. 

The boat we booked:

The boat we’re now on. It looks a bit like a run down pirate ship:

I’m sure Plan B will be fine but it’s a bit of a downgrade. 

Our first view of Greece didn’t disappoint - even though this photo was taken through the plane window the water is beautifully blue and clear.

Yesterday we just kind of wandered around Athens getting our bearings. We watched the changing of the guards outside the parliament, at the tomb of the unknown soldier.They do a very strange slow motion kind of movement - lifting their legs high and wearing goofy shoes. To each their own I guess. 

Listened to a few street musicians. This guy was playing with a bow on a multi stringed instrument and he got kind of annoyed at me when I asked him the name of the instrument. So I still don’t know. 

Another guys was playing a hammered dulcimer (Santouri) and was quite skilled.

This morning we’d hired a guide (our taxi driver from yesterday) to do a tour for us. He was supposed to pick us up at 10 but was a no show. On to plan B: we got on the hop on hop off bus then wandered some funky streets full of shops, restaurants and of course gelato. 

This beautiful old Byzantine church is the view from our hotel window. Behind it is the big bell tower with, you guessed it, big (and loud) bells. They rang at precisely 9 pm and 12:54 am. Strange.

They say bad things come in 3s - they might be right. I had this whole blog written then somehow with a wayward keystroke I erased the whole thing. It’s always good to be flexible and adaptable when you’re traveling. But perhaps we can stick with plan A from now on.

Tomorrow we board the boat and since there is no wifi on board I’ll post when I can. 

Note to interested musicians- we passed a music store today and I asked the proprietor about the stringed instrument above.  Apparently it’s a Bulgarian instrument, a type of Lyra and the doubled strings are ‘sympathetic' meaning they vibrate when another one is played. Gadulka