This morning we made our way to Delphi without the group from Eston. We had the a 48 passenger bus for the nine of us and Laertes. Everyone stretched out to enjoy the view.

An incredibly beautiful country side with multiple solar farms and small scale farming operations. Small by Canadian standards anyways.

We drove through the town of Arachova. It is a beautiful mountain side town which the Greeks call the Winter Mykonos. The streets were very narrow and our huge bus squeaked through with about an inch of either side.

We had an incredible tour guide at Delphi. She was a fantastic story teller, the crowds were small and the audio worked! Quite a mystical beautiful experience. She told us of Maxine’s of Delphi which are phrases that many people use in speeches.

On our way back to Athens, it was a pretty quiet ride while all of the kids slept pretty hard. One would think they have had a busy few days.

We had lunch on the mountain and then slowly drove back to Athens for our last dinner with our friends from Eston.

Tomorrow will be a long travel day. Let’s hope the spring blizzard let’s us land! See you at the airport!

Disembarked from ship: pretty uneventful and quite smooth

Greek dance lesson! Wow! There were some fast moving feet by the end of the hour and half of instruction. Some of us may be better dancers than others, but it was fun!

City tour: Heesa was our tour guide.

Acropolis: acro means edge polis means city Surrounded by walls in ancient time. Parthenon. Built for gods. We walked up to the Acropolis which is quite a walk. It was incredibly expansive and awesome to see. The museum was impressive, but by this point most of us are in information overload.

Today our ship is at the port of Cesme (pronounced Chesme ), Turkiye.

The following information is from our guide that we had on the bus all day as we travelled to Ephesus and back to the ship. If you sound out “Do-night-in” that is Turkish for good morning. The currency of Turkey is the Lira but will accept Euro.

Our outline for the day: Ephesus, Turkish delight, and magic carpets.

Guide name: Smiley

Capital: was Istanbul. Now Ankara. Turkey is 95 % in Asia and 5% in Europe In Asia Minor from biblical times

Olive oil. Oldest tree in world. $4000 per bottle. Second largest producer of pistachio. Apricots and figs and pomegranates. Rose oil will fix any pain. Traditionally, Turks were nomads.

Carpet weavers are a dying art.

Turkey has 35% agricultural land. Sweetest tomato in the world. Apricots, peaches, pomegranate. Oh so good.

Turkish leather is the softest. All jackets are reversible.

Once we entered Ephesus:

Barbarian. Someone who doesn’t speak your language. Marble keeps heat the longest of all materials. Fish symbolize Jesus Christ.

We also learned that women who were virgins were untouchable in Ephesus. People couldn’t even touch their arms. If a man checked a virgins tonsils and they were swollen, the girl would be killed. It meant the girl had gone out and was now sick. 🤪

Homes. Only poor people ate in restaurants as they only had one room and no equipment. Wealthy people are at home because of those reasons.

Slippery walkways in Ephesus due to marble.

They collected urine to make material white as the ammonia was used.

Heart shape explanation. Men would take a drug similar to Viagra. It would make one’s heart beat faster which would make one have more children. 🙄 read between the lines.

The trip of crappy headphones. The “whispers” either hang off our ear, don’t work or just fall out. The crowds are so big in some places that we need them though.

Magic carpet demonstration. Will ship to Canada. We had a carpet manufacturing demonstration of beautiful handmade rugs of diverse colors. They fed us lunch of either meat or cheese/mushroom. As we ate, many many men threw many many rugs of various sizes. Interesting demo but strange sales pitch to a student group. I don’t know of many students who would spend hundreds of dollars at the drop of a hat. They also had a jewelley store where some of the kids tried on some beautiful pieces. Layne tried on a $150 chain and said “he felt so pimpin”. He made a lot of people laugh pretty hard.

Arranged marriages are a thing in Turkey. The parents would make the initial contact between the parents. Then the two proses marriage candidate would have a coffee date. If the girl likes the boy, she puts sugar/honey in coffee. If she doesn’t, she puts salt

We stopped at another store where we tried Turkish delight in various flavours, but pomegranate was the most popular one and the one that would be in a Big Turk. Pistachio, lemon, orange, and lime were some other flavours. They also had various oils which were supposed to solve all ailments. St John’s Wort oil is supposed to solve all skin ailment, rose oil and olive oil can be mixed to solve all else 🤪. That’s all according to them. You could also buy tea, saffron, and some pottery there. They really encourage tourists to buy, buy, buy.

We returned to the ship for our last night at sea. We had been told we would have a blue and white night. Nobody else seems to have got that message. 🙄. It didn’t matter. The YG and Eston crew rocked it big time! Made for some great pictures! After supper, we went to the “dance show” in the lounge. Our one friend from Eston went and got a sheet and decided he would have a toga night. It was a hit!! Our boys had their pics taken with the show dancers and then the karaoke started! Our tour director, Laertis, brought the house down! He ended with taking all of our travellers up on stage with him. It was so much fun!!! Pics will posted when we are back on land!

Santorini!!!

Early morning found us taking the tender from our ship to the island of Santorini!

The guide on our bus from the port told us many items:

Blue and White Houses. Blue for the sky and water. White because it gets so hot in summer (42-45 C). On Aegean Sea which is part of the Mediterranean.

Volcano. Active. Animals know when an eruption will occur. In Thailand, elephants go up in the mountain when they know volcano and tsunami will happen, so she keeps an elephant in her house. Joke joke. But donkeys are everywhere. Interesting character of a lady.

Hotels on Santorini. Cheapest $500€ a night. Prices go up to $10000€ a night. She thinks that is nuts but it does show how important tourism is to the island.

Pistachios grow here. Very great quality but small in number

Overhead: Layne wants to bring a lizard and a pigeon home with him, Jacey a dog and Lindsay some donkey beer made only on Santorini.

The scenery at our first stop was the legendary scene that one sees in all the pictures. So beautiful.

Santorini was fabulous! Very beautiful. The kids, Felecia and I took the cable car down the mountain to the tender, while Linds walked down the many many stairs with a couple other women for a little extra exercise. You know because getting thousands a steps a day just isn’t enough ❤️

Greek word for the day Yaya = grandma.

A lovely afternoon was had on the ship while we sailed to Mykonos. The students hung at the pool and soaked up the sun. Tonight we celebrate Easter at midnight on Mykonos so we need to rest up.

Tonight after supper, we went into Mykonos to witness’s the celebrity lifestyle at the beach side town. We were here for the Saturday night/Sunday morning of Easter in the Greek Orthodox Church. At midnight, they had fireworks go off at churches and they shared lighting candles as we have done on Christmas Eve. Very festive and very boisterous! Fun!

Today has been an adventure! We started off the day with a great breakfast at our beautiful hotel in Athens. We spent the morning exploring Athens and it’s neat little side streets around the Acropolis. At noon, we went to the port to board our ship Gemini on Miray cruises. After boarding, we went had homework to do. EF seminar to listen to our “rules” and how we would be doing things. After lunch was had, we were able to enjoy some sunshine around the pool and begin to really learn the surroundings of the ship. We attended our lifesaving seminar of where to find your life jacket, where to meet and where to get on your lifeboat. Necessary procedure but let’s hope we don’t need it! Back to the pool area, where our boys joined in a soccer game with boys from Chicago. All is fun and games for hockey players trying to play soccer until the ball accidentally got booted overboard. Oops. Sorry Chicago boys!

Supper had us enjoying the buffet again and then settling into a little night life. Watching our prairie kids dancing was a highlight. Joe is quite a charmer as he asked some older lady to join him and made her day!

Our YG travellers are thoroughly enjoying our travel buddies from Eston. Our groups have completely meddled and we travel as one group, which I haven’t experienced on an EF trip before. Watching the interaction with the Eston crew, the soccer with the boys from Chicago and the dancing, our travellers could be an EF advertisement. It is awesome to witness!

The parents from Eston are as much fun as their students. Allie helped play a joke on one of the dads today as the dad had come prepared to help his daughters through ANY emergency. Allie was more embarrassed than the dad, but it did cause a lot of laughter.

Tonight we are sailing towards Santorini for an early day tomorrow of exploring!

Today we left the hotel around 7 to get to the airport for our 1030 flight to Athens!

We ended up checking our bags to Athens as the other group was checking their bags. Some bags keep getting more puffed up with cool little souvenirs.

Interesting lunch on our flight. A vegan sandwich made with carrot, celery, corn and rockets with a slight sauce. It was like Joey Tribianni eating beef in his trifle. Corn good. Carrots good. Celery good. Rockets good. Just a little odd having it all together on a sandwich. Then dessert was a little bar made with sesame and sugar. All the writing on the packages was in Greek so we needed to ask for explanations from the stewards.

The afternoon got away from us as our flight was delayed a little and traffic was heavy due to Easter being this weekend in Greece. We had some time in the city center to look around and then went to hotel for supper with a walk on the beach at sunset.

Tomorrow we board the cruise ship. We have been told that cell service will be non-existent so probably won’t be able to update blog until Monday night.

Started morning off with a fresh start! Everyone is looking bright and ready for a day of exploring!!

Breakfast at hotel was buffet with croissants, meat, cheese, cereal and juice.

As we drive along in our bus and I see regular Romans riding the bus, I want to stop and ask them if they even realize how awesome and historical this beautiful city is as there is so much to learn and absorb. I wonder if visitors to Canada feel the same when they are see our beautiful prairie, legislative buildings and pics of Justin. Hahaha. Please pick the one piece of irony out of that.

The Vatican. Wow. We saw many beautiful pieces and learned a lot of history of popes and cardinal and Michaengelo. Some jewellery that can only be purchased at the Vatican was viewed and purchased. The peace cross designed by Pope John Paul was very popular even for non-Catholics. Interesting tidbit from this portion was Joe losing a tooth. Literally fell off out of head with a little pull. That’s a first on tour.

The Colosseum was brilliant with its history and legends. Our guide of Danielle shared her frustration with the changing history of the place. How many times did those gladiators actually fight each year? The Roman Forum was another highlight as it showed the different historical levels. These prairie people had a hard time understanding how you build a city on top of a city. It just isn’t done where we come from.

Dinner (deeener) was on our own as the restaurant cancelled so EF paid us to go on our own. Spaghetti, roast beef, gnocchi and fish was all enjoyed. We then had some free time on our own in Piazza Navona (sp?)

Yesterday we walked around 12000 steps. Today was a bit more steps with over 21000 or about 14km. I think we will be ready for bed tonight as we prep for Pompeii.

I didn’t mention yesterday, but we are staying at hotel called Campus X. It is a dormitory for college but there is one building that they rent rooms out. A very casual place that plays modern pop music at breakfast so it doesn’t have typical Italian vibes. It is clean, spacious and good for our purposes.

All is well and everyone is safe and happy!

Best, worst and weirdest part of our day as answered by all of us:

Best; Roman Forum, Colosseum, strawberries, Vatican, spaghetti, carbonara for lunch

Worst: peeing in the trees, walking up the stairs Wedding Cake Building, no fruit at breakfast, chilly weather in morning, bad coffee at one coffee bar, but we have also had wonderful coffee at other places.

Weirdest: Joe losing a tooth, bathroom door having to be held up for others, Layne feeding a bird and gathering a flock, toilet paper shortage in the country of Italy, seeing David and his junk everywhere.

Landed a couple hours late. Laertis, our tour guide, was waiting for us. We arrived and met up with our group from Eston. This will be a fun week with that crew!

We did a little walking tour to see the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain and we tried to see the Pantheon, but due to Easter, we will try tomorrow. Gelato, slushies, and pasta have been tried already.

Tomorrow will be a full day so we are going to bed early tonight to try to combat the excited weariness. All is good!

Italian words for the day:

Bonjourno good morning

Caio good day.

Bonsairo. Good evening

“Porfourour”Italians pronounce everything