Passports, Tickets, Money, Marriage license…
Holiday Day 20 (March 21^st)

I’m still titling these posts ‘holiday’, but it turned into more of an adventure. When I left you yesterday, we had just taken off from Heathrow, and here we are, still flying, only now, we’re flying over Split, in Croatia where we went on our honeymoon a couple of years ago. You might notice that the clock on my phone (this is a screenshot) was two hours out. It had kept up with the time zone changes through Canada, but somewhere on the way back, started to do odd things. We weren’t flying over Croatia ten minutes after take-off; more like a couple of hours. Anyway, we were on our way to our next pitstop on the long journey home.

Landing in Athens at some time in the early morning, and having collected our bags, we found our taxi driver and greeted him in the standard way, by touching elbows and tapping our shoes together, a tradition started back in the early days of the Masons, I believe. I told you about Welcome Pickups and the easy way they do things, but I might not have mentioned that they also supply their guests with maps of the city, talks about what to see (if you ask for them) and bottles of water. In this case, we were also supplied with a facemask and told we were required to wear it. This was the first time we’d had to adhere to a guideline rather than be politely asked to consider the option in that British way we’d seen on TV back in Heathrow. Apart from steaming up my glasses, it wasn’t an issue at all, but it did add to the unsettling dystopian feeling of it all.

Delivered safely to the hotel not far from the seafront in Piraeus, we checked in and crammed into the lift. It was one of those where, if you have more than two people in it, you’d better be married or be very liberal in your views, and clunked and clanked up to the second floor and our room.

There’s not a lot to tell you about most of this day, except things were still changing rapidly. Unable to sleep as it was, by now, breakfast time, we went downstairs for something to eat and discovered that although we had no choice but to be intimate in the lift, there was no chance of dining together.

Our job for the day was to change boat tickets, and I set about the Blue Star website looking up the nearest boking office that was open and the sailing times, only to discover that the law had changed overnight. In order to return home, we needed to prove that we were tax resident on Symi. This measure was put in place pretty quickly and was designed to prevent people from the mainland fleeing to holiday homes on the islands and potentially spreading the virus. It was Saturday morning, we wanted to change the tickets asap, and of course, we weren’t travelling with our tax folders and paperwork. So… A quick think while standing on the balcony watching some kind of weird delivery to and from a bank across the road, and we contacted Jenine.

Being one of those semi-organised people, I knew exactly where our tax papers were, as in: which room, desk drawer, folder and under what other piles of other documents and Jenine volunteered to head down to our house, find them and send photos. Meanwhile, I also emailed our accountant, assuming I’d not hear anything because it was Saturday, but all the same, explained our predicament. Stelios replied almost immediately with a helpfully vague ‘Ok’, and with nothing else to do but our best, we set off to the port and the ticket office. At this point, you could still go outside without SMS permission, but there was queuing at supermarkets, everything else was shut, apart from the peripteron, and most people were masked. I say ‘most’, we saw about ten, whereas usually in Piraeus, you can hardly move no matter what time of day.

A decent walk later, we found the Blue Star offices open and empty apart from two ladies behind the counter wearing masks, so we put ours on, and stood behind the tape that distanced us from the counter, where there was already a Perspex shield in place. (Very organised.) I know it sounds odd, but when we set off for this trip, I thought to bring documents with me that proved I lived in Greece. I was thinking of Brexshit at the time, not a pandemic. We both had our residency permits of course, and my Greek driving license and Neil had his Irish passport, and in the end, we didn’t need any of them to get into the country. But, what I also had just in case, was a copy of our civil partnership registration document from Symi Town Hall. We didn’t have our tax papers by then, but after an explanation to the lady behind the counter, I handed over the certificate to which she said, ‘Congratulations! But on Symi?’ as if we’d pulled off some impossible feat. Her colleague was equally as charming and enthusiastic about our marital status, and our tickets were changed. We would, however, still need our tax papers to actually step foot on the boat which was leaving the next day at 3pm.

Back to the hotel.

Where we spent a very quiet afternoon in our room, reading, popping out once for a sandwich and some cream for Neil’s hands which, thanks to his allergies and various different hand-sans, were now blotched and itching. As were his legs and arms. The sedate raid on the bank opposite went on well into the afternoon and gave us something to watch while not reading, and later, we had dinner at the hotel – the only table – and noticed a new sign by the compact lift.

We were leaving the next day, 22^nd, so that wasn’t a problem for us, but it was sad. One of the very helpful and cheery young staff behind the counter had only just started working here, and her ambition was to work in hospitality. Hopefully, she, and the others, will be able to resume their dream soon. (I just looked on Booking.com, and the hotel appears to be open again, which is good news. It’s the Savoy Hotel on Iroon Polytechniou Avenue, if you are interested.)

Finally, later that evening, we got to bed and slept for the first time in I can’t remember how long, and by that time, both Jenine and Stelios had come up trumps with emailed tax documents, so we were all set for the journey home.

I know that wasn’t an exciting post, but I didn’t want to leave the story hanging. Tomorrow, I’ll round things off by talking about the boat journey. I’ll finish today by saying that at some point over this weekend, while still on the move, we learnt that a national lockdown was due to start at 06.00 on Monday morning, one hour after our ferry was due to arrive at Symi.

To be continued… (And, thankfully, concluded.)

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Reshuffle
Holiday Day 19 (March 20^th) A Friday reshuffle

I woke up around six the next day (I had a lie-in) knowing that we had a long day and a long night ahead what with overnighting in Athens airport to look forward to. What I didn’t know then was that we weren’t going to end up doing that at all, and wouldn’t get to sleep until the following night, about 40 hours later.

Hanging around

There was no rush for anything that morning, so we let the bears sleep in, took showers, and from the bedroom window, watched planes taking off. I think we saw one in the space of an hour; a bit on the slow side for one of the world’s busiest airports. There was a strange sense of ‘nothing happening’ across the distance between us and the terminal and runway, made even more creepy by the grey morning mist.

Downstairs, the bar/dining/reception area of the hotel was equally as calm and quiet, with a few people up and about, talking in respectfully hushed whispers as if we were in church. Maybe it was because it was still early. The wide-screen TVs were on, and the volume turned to an audible but low level, the flight announcement board showed more cancelled flights, and the staff went about their business calmly and with smiles. Remember, we were not yet at the mask-wearing stage, that precaution was only rumoured.

Yesterday (March 19th), the UK government “no longer deems COVID-19 to be a high consequence infectious disease.” Also yesterday, Northern Island reported its first death, the MoD formed a special force to support public services and civilian authorities, the Bank of England cut interest rates in an emergency measure and the government released £1.6b for local authorities, and £1.3b for the NHS so that 15,000 patients could be released from hospital. Prior to this, various countries had put border restrictions in place, cinemas had been closing, the BBC rescheduled programmes, there had been 104 deaths in the UK, the pound had dropped to its lowest level since 1985, theatres had closed, and the government had advised people not to travel if they could help it, work from home if they could, and, if you wouldn’t mind awfully, try not to mix with anyone there’s a good chap, and anyone over 70 should consider this advice “particularly important.” Remember, they were also telling everyone this wasn’t ‘a high consequence infectious disease.’ So, you can see why there was no great sense of urgency at our hotel, more a sense of ‘how inconvenient.’

Compare that to Greece:

February 27th. All carnival events in the country were cancelled
March 10th. The government suspended the operation of educational institutions of all levels.
March 13th. All cafes, bars, museums, shopping centres, sports facilities and restaurants in the country were closed.
March 16th. All retail shops were closed, and all services in all areas of religious worship of any religion or dogma were suspended.

End of. Get over it.

While here at Heathrow, we had breakfast, read our books, stood outside to get fresh air, and spent most of the day in our room. We washed our hands and sanitised them at every opportunity, and waited for the evening when we were to taxi over to the airport to wait for our midnight flight to Athens.

And then…

We were sitting in the reception area, well away from everyone else as most people were distancing, when I had a text message from Aegean to let me know our onward flight to Rhodes had been cancelled. That was it. ‘Your flight to Rhodes is cancelled, please check with your travel agent…’ Etc. As I was our travel agent, I checked with myself and thought, ‘What are we going to do about this?’ It was about three in the afternoon by then, and I took the executive decision to go to the airport now and see what was what.

So, we packed (checking wardrobes for left items), settled up, called a cab and scuttled over to the airport dreaming up all kinds of worst-case scenarios and thinking how interesting it would be to walk from the UK to Greece and experience the life of the refugee.

It turned out to be a timely move on our part, as we found the Aegean desk half an hour before it closed, confirmed our flight was cancelled, though the midnight one was still running (phew!) – though would probably be the last for several days. ‘Could we change our onward flight?’ was the first thought because often the very early morning shuttle from Athens to Rhodes is taken off and passengers moved to the one a couple of hours later, so that really wasn’t anything new. Answer: no, the next available flight from Athens to Rhodes that wasn’t full was a week on Monday, so that was no good.
‘Right!’ he says, adopting a Basil Fawlty voice as he strides across the concourse to find a place to sit and think. ‘Let’s start again.’

We still had Blue Star tickets for the following Tuesday, 24^th, part of our original plan. It shouldn’t be too hard to bring them forward and change them to the Sunday 22^nd sailing, as long as we could get to the office in Piraeus, assuming it was open as most other outlets in the city had closed a few days before. A fair amount of photo tapping occurred (not that FBI kind of phone tapping), and we cancelled the Plaza Hotel room booking for the following night and the Dodecanese tickets for the Sunday. There was no point trying to follow that route. The final leg of the journey had to start from Athens, and flying on from there was out of the question. I didn’t expect any refunds for those bookings which had been made the day before and now cancelled with short notice, but within a few minutes, the Plaza had refunded me the pre-paid room, and a little later, Dodecanese Seaways did the same. A ray of sunshine in a rather turbulent sunset, you might say.

All that left us with a 3.00 a.m. arrival in Athens and a potential three days there to wait for the ferry. So, back on the phone, more tapping and searching, and I came up with a hotel in Piraeus that was not only still open (many had voluntarily closed already), but one which also offered meals. That was handy, remember, because restaurants and cafes etc. had already been ordered to shut, unlike the British ones where we were able to have dinner in departures.

A hotel booked, we still had the journey to Piraeus, so I got back on the Welcome Pickups website (highly recommended) and booked a car to meet us at the airport. I’ve mentioned this company before, and since first using them a couple of years ago, now always use them when I arrive in Athens. You swap your details, phone number and even photo with a stranger as if you’re on some dating site, and they send you a picture of your driver and his/her phone number in return. You also pay in advance, so you not only are you not going to be ripped off, you also know who is meeting you and don’t get in the wrong cab.

That sorted, there was nothing to do but ‘relax’ until called to board which was due to happen at 23.20.

Closing down behind

As I said, we had plenty of time to hang around a quiet departures and find somewhere that was open so we could have supper and chill with a glass of wine while we waited. Most of the shops were closed, and I wasn’t sure if that was because of an edict or if they were always closed at that time of night, but we didn’t need to buy anything, so that wasn’t a problem. A pre-flight drink or three was more important and that all went smoothly, though not cheaply, until 23.00. Then, returning from a walk around, we decided on one last glass of wine at the gate, as it was right next to the shops and bars (handy).

We headed back to the last place we’d been only to be turned away as the shutters were pulled down. The government had, within the last hour or so, ordered that all bars and so forth across the country had to close at eleven. And they did. They couldn’t have made it 11.15, could they? Ah well… We found a sushi place that was somehow still able to stay open and even more miraculously had cans of G&T in its fridge, so going against the grain, we had one of those each while waiting to board.

Sorry if this reads like a list of obstacles and details but that was how that day and evening was, but finally, at 23.30 we boarded our plane, and at roughly one minute past midnight, it took off. Good old Aegean Airlines, I say. We didn’t have any accidental priority boarding on this flight, but we did have those seats near the escape hatch with extra legroom. The nearest seats in front of us were a good four feet away and the guys there were wearing masks.
The only notable thing about the flight was that we had to fill in forms before we landed. These asked what’s now become common, your name, address, phone number etc., but also your onward journey details, hotel, when you will reach home and so on. This was before the phone app that’s now in place and the other forms now in use, and there was also talk of random testing.
Maybe because we arrived at 3.00 in the morning, there were no testing stations, but the flights before us had all been tested, or the passengers had, at least, and we were only slightly disappointed we didn’t get a turn. (As it turned out, we were fine and still are, in case you were worried.)

Just to recap. So far on this trip, since joining the train in Toronto: The Canadian stopped running after we left it. The CN Tower closed to visitors after we dined there. Vancouver shut as we were leaving. The bars in Heathrow shut as we left. The shows we’d seen in London two weeks earlier were now dark, the tourist attractions shut, and we’d closed most of London too, it felt like. It didn’t bode well for the next two days, and we weren’t going to be happy and secure until we were on that ferry and it had pulled out of Piraeus. More about that to come as the race to reach home continues tomorrow.

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A Day with Leonardo but not Tutankhamun
Holiday Day 18 (March 19^th) Heathrow

The distance so far

We are on the last leg of this trip now, but not entirely on our last legs, despite travelling over 12,000 miles so far. I was interested to know the distances of the stages of the journey, so turned to Google Map Developers to find some answers. These distances are as the crow flies, assuming the crow flies in a straight line, so are not 100% exact, and I have rounded them up. Still, this might be of interest to travel nerds like me.
So far, in miles, we’d travelled:

Symi to Athens, Boat, 245
Athens to London, Plane, 1,486
London to Toronto, Plane, 3,550
Toronto to Vancouver, Train, 2,087
Vancouver to London, Plane, 4,710
Total so far, 12,078

That is further than the distance between London and Auckland, NZ, according to Google Maps. With two stages left to go, we had only another 1,737 miles to look forward to. London to Athens by plane, 1,486 miles and Athens to Symi by boat, 245 miles.
There was plenty of waiting around time in between as we are now on Thursday afternoon and we weren’t to reach home until Monday morning.

Heathrow

That’s for later in the week. Right now, we’re stretching our legs after a ten-hour flight from Vancouver to London which, now I think back on it, seemed to pass very quickly. I’m sure there were films, sleeping and food involved, and we arrived back at Heathrow around midday to a cold and drizzly afternoon. People had onward journeys, trains to catch, cars to collect, and we said goodbyes at baggage reclaim rather briefly, as I recall. By then, I was keen to get to our hotel, book in, and check our plans for the rest of the journey because I was aware the situation out there in the real world was changing rapidly. In fact, the world had changed considerably since we were last in London, and travelling through it required a different approach.

After some to-and-fro at the taxi rank (where the driver tried to barter us off to another cabbie because we were only making a short trip and I guess he wanted a longer one for income’s sake), we set off across the airport complex towards the Heathrow Leonardo hotel. Looking back, the airport was unusually quiet, and there was no queue for the taxies – a sign of things to come.

Remember that last time we were in London we’d been to see shows, walked around the West End, battled through the traditional Saturday night fights and frolics in Leicester Square, and negotiated our way through a full Travelodge. Now, looking at the television reports and hearing news from taxi drivers and others, it seemed London was in a post-apocalyptic state of desertion. You almost expected to see zombies staggering through the empty streets. A triffid, at least. It was as if everything here had closed behind us when we left, as Vancouver had closed with our departure. We had just disembarked from one of the last scheduled flights from Canada to London.

But the hotel was open and running as normally as it could be. They preferred cards to cash and offered hand-san on counters and bars, but otherwise, the advice was still to be cautious, sing Happy Birthday and keep a stiff upper lip, but that’s London for you. We checked in, recovered, found the scheduled itinerary and set up central control in the lounge/bar area. The original plan had been to stay at the hotel that night, pop into town the next day for the Tutankhamun exhibition and lunch with friends, stay at the hotel for the Friday night and fly to Athens for two days/three nights on Saturday lunchtime. That, clearly, had to change.

Tutankhamun

While I am dealing with changing a flight from Saturday to Sunday and booking a night at the Plaza in Rhodes, let’s go back in time to 1972. I am nine and standing in line with my parents and brothers outside the British Museum, waiting to see the Treasure of Tutankhamen exhibition. I remember a long, slow-moving line of people, the black iron railings beside me on the street, a vast courtyard with the line heading towards the entrance, and excitement mounting with each climb of the steps.
After that, I have a collage of images of massive, echoing halls, lots of people, and later, dark rooms with beautiful treasures. One room was in complete darkness, it seemed, apart from the golden death mask of a boy who died about 3,300 years ago. Everything else was gold and turquoise, jewelled and dazzling, so much so, I don’t remember the rest of that day or the trip home.

The visit sparked an interest in Ancient Egypt which then led to a fascination with Universal horror films, Boris Karloff and the rest, and I am still interested in both subjects today. In fact, I still have a book of the Tut treasures which may have been bought at that time as it’s always been in my memory. I notice it was published in the year of my birth, so there’s obviously some spooky tie-in there.

I’ve seen the treasures again since then. This was in 1987, when I went to Egypt on a tour, a day of which was spent in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo. As you might imagine, it was hot and busy, somewhat chaotic, and this time, we were herded through rooms and had all of five seconds to admire each piece, but it was all there. The following year, I went back to Luxor on my own for two weeks, and one day, took a boat and taxi to the Valley of the Kings after the tourists had gone and while the hawkers and hecklers were dozing in the shade. (It was about 45 degrees or something daft.) The lack of others made it possible for me to stand in King Tut’s tomb on my own, just me, and him in his sarcophagus (because he hadn’t been removed by then), and just ‘be’ for a while. Fabulous, but I digress.

The treasures, or some of them, were due to be at the Saatchi Gallery until May of this year and we had tickets. By then, however, the event was cancelled and our money refunded.

Meanwhile

So, we had an afternoon and evening to hang around the hotel, but it wasn’t without things to do. I’d managed to change our flight and bring it forward by a day, so we were now due to fly to Athens the following night, wait overnight at the airport (only four hours) and fly on to Rhodes for one more night before taking the Spanos boat to Symi, arriving on Sunday morning. That meant cancelling one night with Leonardo, three nights accommodation in Athens, booking an extra hotel and boat tickets. Luckily, as it turned out, I didn’t cancel the Blue Star tickets from the original plan, because I thought, I can do that when we get back, as with this new itinerary, we’d get home a day before the boat we were going to take left Piraeus.
I do hope you’re keeping up.

There was nothing else to be done but wait for the (new) evening flight due to depart the next day, so we sat, read, ate and had a bottle of wine of £15.00, the cheapest way to buy wine at this particular hotel, apparently. We also chatted to a young guy who was with an under-18 football team who had been hoping to fly out to Romania or somewhere exotic for a youth tournament, but because it was cancelled, now had a squad of disappointed but understanding teens to deal with, and he wasn’t much older than them. We also met a chap who was hoping to get back to Vancouver, but wasn’t sure he could – we said, of course, he could, we’d just left it, so there was plenty of space, but flights were being cancelled left right and centre.

That’s actually the board for tomorrow, but it was the same story. As I mentioned, I was already putting my mind to what if? And we came up with all kinds of ideas for how to reach home if all else failed. I was imagining a kind of Whacky Races dash across Europe and wondering if I could still remember how to drive after 17 years of not doing so and told myself, of course, I could. Not that I wanted to… Or maybe I did. We were in contact with friends in Brighton who offered us their spare room and money should we need it while we holed up there for however many days or weeks a sudden quarantine might last, but we were, at that point, all planned-out and had everything ready to go the next day. At least the bars were still open. For now.

More tomorrow, and by ‘more’, I mean more changes to the route, more things closing down behind us, and a growing sense that we were being chased by events caused by the virus.

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Holiday Day 17 (March 18^th) In the air, on the ground, in the air again
And starting to change plans

Today, officially our last day in Canada, was mainly about flying. We were due to meet everyone at the hotel in the early afternoon to board the coach to the airport for the homeward flight. That left us with a morning to wander what were by now deserted streets, look at closed offices, shops, cafés and tourist attractions, and fill in a few hours of, again, brilliant sunshine. While we were in Vancouver, we had hoped to take a trip to Grouse Mountain to do this…

What to do?

The mountain’s attractions, however, were closed. We’d also hoped to visit people we’d met on Symi, including Yiannis and Megan who we had first met when Yiannis was teaching here on Symi several years ago, but they live on Vancouver Island and were working, and what with ferries and work, the timings didn’t fit, and we weren’t able to do that either. So, this, our last morning, was spent walking down to the waterfront again to pass the time and take photos of interesting sights such as this:

You know, one of the things I wish Google had was a function whereby you could upload a photo and ask, where’s this? I can’t remember exactly where or what this building is, except it’s number 355 Something Street and wasn’t far from our hotel. Perhaps someone will enlighten me. It’s a fantastic entrance to an office block though.

Meanwhile, some of our party had been speaking about the seaplane excursion they’d taken the day before or were intending to take that morning. As we walked, we discussed the idea, and by the time we reached where the seaplanes operate from, we’d made up our minds to do it. It was cheaper than what we’d put aside to fling ourselves off a snowy mountain in a canvas bag dangling from a piece of wire, so, why not?
Neither of us is scared of flying, we’ve flown from Athens to Rhodes in a plane with real propellers which I loved, and been stuck in a jumbo for 24 hours. I’d survived an Air Sinai wind-up contraption from Aswan to Abu Simbel in the past, and once taken a scenic Cessna flight over Land’s End, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat and wondering what would happen if the captain suddenly jumped out, passed out, or died. (I watch too many disaster films.) But, neither of us had been in a seaplane.

Seaplane sightseeing

‘So, why not? Come on then, we’re not going to get the chance again. Are you sure? It’s only a plane’ kind of conversation happened for all of two minutes, and we headed to the Vancouver Harbour Seaplane Flight Centre, which we’d walked past yesterday. This must have been the only sightseeing event happening in the city by then, and surprisingly (or maybe not) it wasn’t busy. We booked onto a flight in an hour’s time, and as the tickets came with free coffee, hung out in the terminal’s very comfortable lounge watching planes take off from the water. The service isn’t just for tourists as seaplanes, also called floatplanes, ferry people and post to the islands, so there was plenty of to watch until our turn came.

Oh, we found this unfortunately apt thing on the way to the dock…

There were five of us and a pilot on our 20-minute flight, and, of course, we followed instructions to the letter. All bags in the boot, which must have a better name than that, everyone strap in and try not to cough on each other – no chance of social distancing there, but then, it still wasn’t a requirement, just a serving suggestion. With everyone strapped in, the pilot poked his head through the door and asked, ‘Your first time on a seaplane?’ to which everyone replied, ‘Yes,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, me too.’

Well, it broke the ice.
The trip gave us plenty of opportunity for photos. There are far too many to post here, but rather than me trying to describe what we saw, I’ll show you a few and let you imagine the hum of the engine, the tilt of the plane, what it’s like looking down directly over the top of a city, and what it’s like to know that there’s only half an inch of steel between you and several hundred feet of nothing.

Take off was noisy, the landing was smooth, and the time in between magical, and we survived.

To the airport

Afterwards, we took a slow walk back to the hotel, checked the packing, vacated our rooms, and reported to the right place at the right time.
Cut to the airport.

You might know, or you might remember me mentioning a couple of weeks ago, that Athens airport has its own museum. It shows you what was excavated before they could build the airport, and it helps pass the time when you’re waiting for your flight. At Vancouver airport, we found all manner of distractions, including a late lunch, a display of Steampunk style objects including a camera, and some haute couture.

I thought Elaine C might like to see these ‘Brown Paper Couture’ dresses from the Givenchy 2011 spring collection because we came across them in her homeland, and hope others enjoy them too.

We didn’t have too long to wait in the quiet airport. The boards were showing a multitude of cancelled flights, and we learnt that this was to be one of the last flights from Vancouver to London until… Well, until everyone saw how it went and decided what was to be done, took advice and so on. All we knew and needed to know was that Keith was on top of things, our check-in was seen to, and we were again accidentally flying premium economy. No complaints there.

Stepping outside for some fresh air and to watch the somewhat limited world go by, I was impressed by the openness of the place, by which I mean even their smoking areas don’t discriminate…

We also gave the bears some air before they climbed back into our hand luggage ready for the nine-hour-twenty-minute flight. This was due to set off at 6 pm and arrive the next day at 11.20, and I’ve never been good at getting my head around all that shift in time zone stuff. When a nine-hour flight seems to take 17, I simply don’t worry about it. There were plenty of films still to watch on my personal screen, and although it was a night fight, there were dinner and breakfast to look forward to, and the linen tablecloths.

Racing Against Time

From now on, until we get home in a few days and this long, winding blog comes to an end, you will be pleased to know that the entries will (might) become shorter. That’s mainly because I took fewer photos during the return trip, and saw fewer places of interest. I’ll try and make it entertaining, however, because what started out as a simple homeward bound journey, soon became something of a race against time.

One thing we had picked up on while waiting for our flight was that all tourist attractions in London were now closed. Our original plan was to spend two nights at a hotel in Heathrow, the first to recover from the flight, the second to be there for our onward flight to Athens on the Saturday. The day in between was to be spent visiting the Tutankhamun exhibition in town and then having lunch with dear friends Kinny & Nick who had offered to take us to Joe Allen in Covent Garden for a late lunch and long overdue catchup. Well, both were closed, so there was no point going into town, and not much point staying in Heathrow, but we had flights booked that would give us two days in Athens to chill before catching the ferry home.

We decided, as we were waiting for the flight, that there was no point sticking to that schedule. London was closed, Athens was closed, and Vancouver was closing down behind us. So, sitting in departures, I started rearranging things, and falling into travel agent mode, cancelled our Air B&B apartment in Monistiraki. (We got an 80% refund, which I wasn’t expecting as it was such short notice.) I also started rebooking flights from London to Athens. This was via Aegean, and you can pay with PayPal, except I couldn’t, because I had no money in it, and, for some reason, wasn’t able to upload any from my bank. I had to contact Jenine for a temporary PayPal loan, and with about ten minutes before boarding, switched flights, the idea now being to fly to Athens on Saturday and head straight to Symi rather than wait around in Athens for the Tuesday booking on the Blue Star out of Piraeus. We’d worry about refunds later.
More about that as we go on, for now, I’ll just say it all got very complicated, and we’d have been stuck without a smartphone and Jenine.
And so, off to departures.

Again, we had that unnecessary priority boarding, and although we weren’t in the front seats with space enough to tap dance, we had plenty of room and were made very comfortable for our second flight of the day.
Watched films, ate, slept a bit, woke up, watched half a film, slept some more (I’m getting better at this sleeping when moving thing), and finished off the other half of a film, were served by attendants in masks, washed our hands regularly, were given free hand-san, dozed off…

On Monday’s blog, we land in London and check into our fifth hotel of the trip (sixth if you include the train), and begin a strategic game of reaching home before we’re locked down in London. We weren’t tense, in fact, I love this kind of challenge and part of me was already plotting how we might journey across Europe by land because so many flights were being cancelled and airports were closing down. Of course, soon, entire countries and their borders would be closed, but we didn’t know that at the time and anyway, that’s a story for Monday.
As you can see, at this point, we were still smiling.

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Holiday Day 16 (March 17^th) A second, and rather gay day in Vancouver

Our second full day in Vancouver dawned sunny and chilly, much like the day before. Unlike the day before, however, there was a change to the breakfast arrangements. Today, we were welcome to take breakfast in the dining area next to reception, but there had to be an empty table between diners, the first demonstration of social distancing. Later, we were told we couldn’t gather as a group in reception either and had to sit apart, although you could sit in your couples.

Breakfast done, we had a full day ahead ‘at leisure’ as the brochures call it. Now, leisure, to me, is either writing at my desk or putting my feet up in front of a good film, as I am not the most active of people. Our leisure this day was to be a ten-mile walk around part of Vancouver before meeting our group for our final evening together, and there were rumours of a group gathering of some sort – which we will get to later. Remember, we’d already had our last night dinner together on the penultimate night, but after the ‘up the tower’ dress rehearsal of yesterday, this was to be our definite last night, for sure, ever. Honest.

Going Gay on the Streets

Not far from where we were staying in the West End was (and still is) ‘Davie Village.’ This isn’t, as you might think, a small mining town in Wales, it’s a street, Davie Street, that is home to what Wiki calls ‘the city’s gay subculture.’ I would call it a gaybourhood, as I don’t like the syllable ‘sub.’ Why should it not be a domculture? Or simply, culture? You know, a lot of gay people have shaped world culture.

Years ago, when I was working with lyricist and singer, Keith Bursnall, we wrote a cabaret song titled ‘Naming Names.’ We used it as an end of set number, and it was basically a list of famous gay people, some of whom came as surprises to many in our audiences. I’ll treat you to a couple of random lines written in Keith’s classic Cole Porter-ish style:

There’s Oscar Wilde and young James Dean, Nazimova overdone on the silver screen… And let’s not forget Colette, the thespian lesbian…
Kenneth Anger loved the men he’d fetter. David Hockney liked his men much wetter…
Ludwig the Second, Richard the Second, Edward the Second, James the First – it’s been reckoned…

I could go on, but we haven’t even left the hotel yet.

When we did, we followed a map towards Davie Village along wide, quiet roads wondering if Vancouver was always so peaceful and fume-free, but suspecting the thing had much to do with it, and on the way, we passed this rather welcoming church.

Not long after, we came to Davie Street and its parade of shops, cafés and diverse take-outs that included a sushi bar or three, KFC, Thai, and one called The Basic which may have just offered the plate with nothing on it. I don’t know because it was still early, and many places were still closed. There are other entertainments on the street, including the naughty-sounding Pump Jack pub, and the alluring Shoppers’ Drug market, and what was really good to see was the abundance of rainbow flags.

Not only were the flags hanging from buildings and in windows, but even the pedestrian crossings were in rainbow colours.

And the bicycle stands were in the shape of hearts.

Not only do you feel that you are celebrating diversity by merely walking along this street, but you also learn something as you go. There is a memorial to one side, and if you click the photo, you should be able to read what it says.

The street also offered a few laughs, and this unfortunate arrangement of vet’s surgery and take-out made me snigger (and decide to eat somewhere else).

And then it was back to education…

Followed by being returned to earth with a thump as we noticed more sights that would, in days to come, become a standard feature outside cafes and bars, shops and other places.

And so, having ‘done’ Davie Street, we wandered on, through narrower streets and into wider ones, down towards the water, Burrad Street and the bridge. Down there, there’s a beach called Sunset Beach which is, according to the map, a dog beach with a dog park. I assume it’s pay and display, I’m not sure. There’s the Aquatic Centre, a park, plenty of sushi bars and views of the river. They take urban planning very seriously in Canada, or at least in Vancouver where they like to do things with class (and glass), and we were lucky enough to see the annual flyover chandelier dusting ceremony.

Of course, I made that up, but not the photo. I think it’s rather grand to have a chandelier beneath an over-pass. More cites should do it.

Towards the Harbour

And onwards we walked, following the river, or inlet, or harbour, bay, body of water, beneath Granville Bridge opposite the market we’d been to the day before, and through another park or two where we stopped to admire views and rest our feet.

Further along the bank towards Marine Plaza and The Plaza of Nations, places offering boat tours though with not many takers, and then we cut inland across Downtown to emerge some time later at Vancouver harbour. Ambling along this waterfront took us past Digital Orca, a sculpture of a pixelated killer whale (I mean, why not?), and the seaplane flight centre.

There will be more about seaplanes tomorrow, for now, we were hungry and walked another mile back to Davie Street for lunch on a more direct route. In my case lunch was a bowl of homemade soup and what I think was a ham and cheese sandwich.

We encountered a few other points of interest during this day of aimless, though enjoyable nomadicy, a word I think I just made up. (Well, if Shakespeare (gay) and Marlowe (gay) can do it, I don’t see why I can’t.) Among these notable sights, I include a steam locomotive inside a building. We took a couple of shots of it because I was doing that ooh-and-wow thing, not quite as enthusiastically as Harvey and the Detainers would have done, but it was an impressive thing to see as window dressing. Neil’s shot captures the reflection of the modern street against the locomotive as if the engine is steaming into the future. I rather like that.

Mine, less so.

Then there was this…

And I have absolutely no idea where that was or why I took a photo of it.
Oh, yes, I do, it just came back to me. That was lunch. Not the rubber duck, which was plastic, but the place we had lunch in. You were given one of these when you’d placed your order, and it had a number underneath. When your order was called, you returned the duck and won a sandwich.

A Quick Sideshow

It reminded me of a fairground sideshow of my youth where I paid sixpence to hook a duck from a revolving channel of water and was guaranteed a prize every time. That was a bit like the elephant in a tall glass cabinet. I can’t remember the name of that one, but for another sixpence, I watched this decorated elephant trundle off into a cave, the rocks above dripping with plastic jewels and the occasional knocked-off wristwatch, and, Lo! A moment later, it reappeared with a box on it back. The thing stopped just above a hole in the ground, and with a kind of ‘Pah, you’re welcome to this, it’s crap,’ the elephant tossed the box into the pit and the ‘prize’ popped out. Hey, I used to love wasting my parents’ sixpences on tacky plastic keyrings given for ‘free’ by disinterested elephants and plastic ducks, mainly because I hated losing, and they guaranteed me a win every time.

Where did that come from? Clearly from before 1971 (or 1980, as that’s when the sixpence was finally taken out of circulation. 1980? Really? Apparently so). The elephant and hook-a-duck thing are memories from growing up in the 60s and 70s in the rural surroundings of Romney Marsh. The elephant was one of the attractions at ‘the arcade’, a throwback to, or leftover from, the 50s and before when Littlestone was a seaside resort complete with a grand Edwardian hotel, and probably people. The arcade and that part of Kent seafront features in my comedy novel, ‘Remotely‘ should you wish to buy a copy and boost my godsons’ chances of getting Christmas presents. That plug is the reason I’ve rerouted from Vancouver to Romney March, so lets’ get back on track.

Back at the Hotel

Our day of walking eventually brought us back to the hotel for a rest. I just looked at my step counter and we did ten miles that day, something of an achievement for me, but not as many miles as we did that day in London. That seems so long ago now, not just because I am writing this in November, but from the point of view of that day on holiday. We’d been on the go for only sixteen days, but it felt like months, pleasurably so, I should add, and we were 6,200 miles from home.

On the way back to the hotel, we called in for a drink at a nearby pub run by an Irishman. It was St Patrick’s Day the following day, and the bar was festooned with all things green and leprechaun. The owner was down in the mouth, to say the least, as everything had to be cancelled, and he was to shut the pub later that afternoon, not knowing when he might reopen.

That afternoon, we rested up in the room for an hour before our ‘honestly it is the last night’ gathering, so I’ll just pause here while you wait for me to get back and finish this story after some random shots from the day that don’t quite fit anywhere else.

Keep going…

Our last night in Vancouver

Hello again. There had been talk of a get together during the day when we distantly met others in reception, and it transpired that Keith had been at work behind the scenes. As I mentioned, people weren’t supposed to be meeting in groups, and many, if not all of the restaurants had closed. Canada’s schools had already closed, although a full lockdown wasn’t yet in place (I don’t think) but on this day, as we prepare for our last evening, apart from Americans and a few exceptions, Canada announced it was closing its borders to non-Canadians. This, naturally, had Keith on his phone, and we received regular reports from him about our flight the next day and how it was still on track. Canada was happy to get rid of us, it seemed, and we would be fine, but there were restrictions in London and most places around the world. It had kind of happened behind our backs until then, and yet, there it was under our noses because there was nowhere to go out to eat. (We’d been lucky to sit down to lunch.)

The hotel kindly and quietly said that if we happened to find ourselves on the very top floor in the accidentally unlocked conference room that evening, no-one would really notice, and as they hadn’t told us, they had plausible deniability. Thus, a few of us scuttled across the street and around the corner to buy in supplies. We queued outside an off-license because they were allowed to stay open, and bought a couple of bottles of wine and some snacks to share, and later, some of the group gathered like naughty school children on the top floor of the hotel.

We couldn’t have asked for better company or a better view. We raised a glass as you can see. That’s Maxine on the left in the brown. I think whoever took the photo must have shouted several times that a photo was being taken, and Judy translated for her.

‘A what, dear?’
‘Photo!’
‘That was Dorothy’s little dog, wasn’t it?’

Beside Judy, going around the table, we find Jude, Keith, Neil, me, Sarah, David and then Jeremy. I meant to say hello to Sarah and David earlier in this story, but now they’ve made an appearance I can finally do it. Small world, they say. Well, when we started chatting days ago, it transpired that Sarah and David had not only been to Symi but were planning to come back to Rhodes/Symi later in the year and were going to come and visit us. Well, we all know how holiday plans turned out this year, so we’ll see you next year, I hope.

And as for our view. I’d say it was better than the one the previous night from just over 500 feet, what with the sun going down over Vancouver Island and the North Pacific beyond.

And that seems an appropriate place to leave the story today – celebrating the end of the trip with some wonderful people, and wondering what the journey home was going to entail.
I’ll give you some clues ahead of telling you all about it over the next few days. Planes, changes and a race to the finish line worthy of ‘The Amazing Race Canada’ lie in store.

See you tomorrow.

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