Thursday 3 August 2006

Adventures in Hellas

JK: A career training offer for Mel beginning the day after Jason and Carolyne's wedding meant we had to quickly revise our original plan to stay in Greece for a holiday after my brother's wedding.

Left with what was essentially a day to decide on a plan, we thought up the most obvious agenda for a holiday: fly a cheap charter flight to Lesbos, spend a long weekend there, take a 12 hour overnight ferry to the northern port of Kavala, from there take three buses to my mother's town of Alexandroupolis, after three days fly down to Athens on the weekend of Jason and Carolyne's wedding only to take a flight directly from the wedding back to Lesbos to catch the return charter home. Sound easy? Believe it or not all the pieces fell into place and we pulled it off -- even if the frenetic pace resulted in me actually falling asleep at the office on my first day back at work. Oh well, it is "summertime" in Europe and no one is at work anyway.

Highlights of the trip included our visit to the lesbian mecca of "Eressos" in Lesbos. In case you're wondering, it was more of a comfortable shoe and close-crop hairdo convention than anything else. ;)

In my mother's homeland of Thrace, Melanie was introduced to the wilder side of the family. However, most of this wildness in middle age entails carrying out Herculean feats of food consumption. We -- and our respective bellies -- were taken very, very, good care of in northern Greece.

In Athens, Melanie achieved here life-long goal: to see Shakira in concert. Yes, we took the trek, along with about 25,000 disciples, to the Olympic stadium to watch the talented little lass in action. We also spent a bit (not enough) of time with our cousins in Athens' up-and-coming neighbourhood of Gazi, a former gas works and warehouse area.

So despite its relative brevity (10 days by European standards is paltry for one's summer holidays; then again, 10 days by North American standards is a massive holiday that one should be honoured to have) our trip was a success!

5 comments:

  1. What an epic trip for both of you. It is great to see both you diplomats thinking on your feet and changing your traveling plans. Melanie, I was thinking I could get you on skpe and you could give a little presentation on the EU/UN to my classes (just a thought). Hope you both are well, keep up the good work and hope to see you in Africa soon.

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  2. I finally just read a bit about the two of you...WOW! What an incredible life you lead, and what extraordinary things the two of you do! You are an insipration and I will be checking in a lot more!

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  3. M says: Thanks "anonymous". What a nice thing to say. Now, who would say such a wonderful thing?

    And yes, I too hope to be in Africa soon....

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  4. Hi eurotrash and welcome! Thanks so much for your comments. J&MK

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