Friday, February 20
Hi, just a reminder that we are not receiving text messages while on our trip. The following will work: email, Facebook messenger, and WhatsApp.
Tonight we flew out of Toronto at 6 pm, another red-eye flight. We are trying KLM because they gave us FREE seat choice.
It was a 7 hour flight. We landed in Amsterdam at 7 am (1 am our time). We had a 5 hour layover here which is quite long, but we were not brave enough to leave the airport to see anything. Besides, we've been to Amsterdam twice before. We walked around for a bit (the Amsterdam airport is HUGE!), then we found some cushioned seats and crashed.
We had to go through passport control for our next flight. When the worker saw that we were Canadian, he was super friendly and chatty with us. Welcome to Amsterdam! We noticed he didn't say a thing to the Americans.
In the waiting area, we sat next to a couple who are from Ottawa and are taking the exact cruise and pre-tour that we are taking.
The flight from Amsterdam to Athens, Greece, was 4 hours long. This is the first flight ever that we slept THROUGH THE TAKEOFF! We don't remember much of that flight at all. Finally the flight landed in Athens, Greece, at 4:30 pm local time.
We are doing a 10 night Greek Islands cruise with Viking. More about that later. But the cruise does not start until the 25th. We decided to take the Viking pre-cruise so we could see some of the interior of Greece. That meant that we got picked up at the airport and transferred to our hotel, yay! It was only a 25 minute drive to the NJV Athens Plaza. Too bad there was an American in our shuttle bus who made a comment to us about Canada being the 51st state. We quickly shut him down as did an American lady in the shuttle.
The hotel is super nice. We ventured out and found a place to eat.
We had no idea what we paid for. The 3rd item turns out to be bread and olives.
We also discovered that this is NOT olive oil for the bread..... The waiter finally told us that it is hand sanitizer. Oops!
The streets are paved with marble slabs and stones. Slippery when wet!
Before we get our energy back and start our group tour tomorrow, here are a few interesting facts about Greece:
- Greece was the birthplace of democracy.
-Western philosophy began here with Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates.
-Greece has over 6000 islands. Only 227 are inhabited. We will be visiting 6 of them.
-The Olympics began here in 776 BC
-Ancient Greeks invented the yoyo AND cheesecake.
-Population of Greece is 10.5 million people. Compare that to 41 million in Canada.
-It is EXTREMELY rude here to hold up your hand like a stop sign and show people your palm. Don't do it! It goes back to Byzantine times when people taunted criminals by smearing dung in their faces. Ewwww!
-Athens has buildings surviving from 1200 BC.
-Greece has one of the longest coastlines in Europe. Greece is in purple at the bottom. We're not counting Russia.
-Mountains cover 80% of the country.
-Greece is the English name. The natives call their country Hellas, and they are known as Hellenes.
-The word "barbarian" was invented to describe people who do not speak Greek.
-Famous Greek actors include Telly Savalas, John Aniston, and John Stamos.
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