Greece Trip (Part 1)

2 weeks ago, it was busy busy busy... write up that document, finish some reports, troubleshooting, meetings.... bah! can't take it anymore! And so, I went for a holiday in Greece with my family :P Actually it was that my mom's friends wanted to go... so we just kindda follow along.

Day 1 (11th of April 2006)

Flight was at 4.15pm, so that morning, I woke up really early to pack. No alarm clocks, nobody woke me up, I just popped right out of bed. hehe... I wish that happens during working days... instead of the usual tossing and turning for 30 minutes before i drag myself to the bathroom. And so, taxi came at 1pm, we checked in our luggage and had lunch at KLIA McDs with mom's friends.

We took Gulf Air. And had to transit in Bahrain for a night. Well, with budget tours like these, I think they booked cheap flights for us too. I feel a little weird having to take this flight. The people speak in arab. And most of the time, they sounded like praying. We were taken to a hotel called Golden Tulip for the night, opposite Sheraton Hotel. Oh well, its good enough :P

Day 2 (12th of April)

Woke up pretty early in the morning, took our breaky, and the tour guide brought us around for some sight seeing before heading to the airport. We went and snap some shots at a mosque too. Nice....

Then upon arriving at the airport, we found out that the flight would be delayed for 1.5 hours! That really messed up our schedule and some of our activity in Athens had to be postponed to a later freetime. And that also left us to wander around in the airport for 1.5 hours.

Athens (Athina in greek), the capital of Greece, is named after an ancient Greek Goddess. A nice busy town with traffic jam at most of the streets. We arrived during spring season, so the temperature was just lovely. Here, people drive on the opposite side. So, we had to constantly remind outselves to watch out for cars on the left side 1st before crossing. We stayed in a modern, small hotel called Ariston (probably named after Aristotle? *shrug*) Here's the view from our hotel.

That night, we went for a bus ride around Athens to see the beautiful night lights. Too bad the bus didn't stop to let us snap some photos, and our camera isn't really good enough to get a good picture. But yeah, it was simply beeaautiful!

We went for dinner at a Tavern. A happening place with dancing and singing on stage until midnight. They had traditional Greek dance and belly dancing, and at some point of time, they even dragged some of my tour group members to dance on stage! Luckily I wasn't involved :P The food, simply yummy!

And that was the end of day 2. Slumber time till our real adventure.... 4 day Classical tour to many more interesting places.

Day 3 (13th of April)

We had an early start of the day, with barely enough sleep. But well, we always wanna make the most of our time and visit more places right. So I can't really complain. We packed our luggages and left our hotel at 7.30am.

The journey started with the coach driving by the coastal road and we enjoyed many beautiful scenery. The sky so blue, and the water so clear! Lovely Lovely.... We saw some fish farms along the way too.

Our 1st stop - Corinth Canal, a man-made river so deep and large, that even large ships can go through it. Really amazing. Too bad we didn't get to witness any ships going through it. For this, I didn't get any shot of myself with the canal. Why? The cold wind was blowing very strongly and the pathway for photoshots was pretty narrow. And in the end, my mom took a photo of me, without the canal. Great.

After that we stepped into the souvenir shop and saw some cute liquor bottles, Ouzo. This Greek liquor contains 46% alchohol and tastes somewhat similar to medicine. :P Well, not to my liking anyway. But I liked the bottle.

Then we drove on to the Theatre of Epidauros. We visited the Museum 1st. That's where we saw all the ancient statues and craftings.

You realize that all the statues in the photo had neither head nor arms? That's because these body statues were made 1st without representing anyone. Only when they want a statue of a particular person, then they would carve and add in the head and arms. hmm... would be nice to have one of my own... kekkeek

The Theatre of Epidauros. It was built sometime between 4th and 2nd century BC. The seats and steps were mostly broken now. And this theatre overlooks a beautiful scenery.

Next, we headed off to Mycenae and visited the Tomb of Agamemnon and his palace. The entrance to the tomb was pretty cool, which gave a kind of ancient mysterious feel. I was half expecting to see some mummy tombs or some statues. But too bad... on the inside, it was empty.

Agamemnon's palace was pretty much broken down now. Our tour guide explained that it was mainly due to war at those times, and earthquakes.

This picture of my mom and sis was taken at the entrance of Agamemnon's palace. And our tour guide... on the far right. You see the large block of rocks used to build this entrance? It was believed that it was built by giants! That's because the rocks are so huge they couldn't possibly be lifted up by humans! And it was build so many centuries ago, they couldn't possibly have the technology good enough to lift them up! Do you believe it? Real history or is it just a myth? OO... spooky. Anyway this is pretty much what's left of Agamemnon's palace.

We went to a nearby souvenir shop and saw some pretty cool statues. These are duplicates of course. Statue of Venus and Hercules.

Then we headed off to Olympia where we stayed for the night. Our hotel was called New Olympia, but it wasn't new at all. The lifts were the manual type, where we have to open the lift doors outselves. Really old and freaky. Our rooms were so old as well, with no tv, creaky bed, and our bathroom door just doesn't close! Oh man, Thank God we're just staying here for one night.

(To be continued)