Symi to Athens
To begin the week, I thought I’d start you off on our recent journey to Split, in Croatia. Our trip started with four days in Rhodes. Why? Well, the weather has a lot to do with it. We were flying on the Tuesday morning and had our annual health checks arranged for Monday. These are done through a private insurance scheme, but previously we arranged them ourselves and, as you may know, seeing specialists in Greece doesn’t have to be expensive. (Roughly, €50.00 for a consultation and you can arrange to go at your convenience and not wait for months, if going privately.) The thing was, the weather was forecast to be rough on the Sunday when we intended to travel.
This meant, to be safe we should go earlier, just in case the Dodecanese was cancelled. The latest boat we could take was on Friday, and so we went over on the Blue Star. We stayed at the hotel Angela this time, and it cost us €98.00 for four nights. It’s a decent enough hotel, helpful staff, not much on the walls but everything was clean, and it all worked. There is no breakfast, but there are free coffee and cakes in the morning for guests. It’s also right opposite one of the airport bus stops and so very handy. As it turned out, the weather was bad on the Sunday, and the boat didn’t go so, had we not gone over early, we would have missed our appointments, and probably worried that there might not be a boat on the Monday and so missed our flights.
Our four days of wandering Rhodes wondering what to do were worth it. We ate at Mythos Symi, Stavros’ new place (with the previous owners of Indigo) not far from the Plaza. We had a drink at Koukos, a lunch at the Lebanese restaurant, a drink at the Plaza, toured the old town (again), saw our jeweler about engravings on our wedding rings, but his workshop was still closed so he will do them for free next time we are there, and went for a drink at the Symi café in the old fish market. That’s not every day, you understand, but over the four days.
On the Tuesday, we took the bus from Rhodes to the airport (€2.40, I think it was, and took 35 minutes), checked in, sat in the sun for a while and then flew up to Athens. It’s one of those journeys where you take off, grab a sandwich and a cup of coffee (included, as this was with Aegean Airlines) and the next thing you know, you’re landing. We stayed the night at the Sofitel at a gulping €170.00 for the night but well worth it. Not only is it really handy for a 7.00 a.m. flight, which we had on Wednesday, but it’s rather posh. You have three showers in your bathroom, and a bath, gowns and slippers and lots of interesting things in bottles that Neil daren’t use because of his allergies, coffee and a TV and soundproofing. It’s a bit costly for us to eat there, so we made the mistake of eating at the airport over the road. A bit of cold pizza, a dodgy pasta something and two glasses of wine between us and that’ll be €40.00 thank you very much.
So, from Symi to Athens involves: One boat, possibly up to four nights in a hotel, one bus, one flight and another hotel. Later in this story, which will run for a few days, I will tell you about the boat back from Athens. Overnight on the Blue Star with a la carte dining, Paddington and a dead goat bagpipe from Kalymnos. But for tomorrow, we should be in Athens with some info about the Parthenon Museum and airport to city centre travel.
