A week to go …

Well we leave in about a week and yesterday I woke up to a message from the Ferry boat operator informing us that they had cancelled our ferry from Santorini to Paros!! Hopefully this isn’t a harbinger of things to come!

I was able to get a refund and rebook on another ferry but at this time of year the ferry schedules are very light or non-existent.

Anyway, perhaps I should tell you about our trips plans! ….

After contemplating for over a year about where we would go traveling next, Covid put a huge twist in our plans. We had originally been hoping to spend

several months in Malaysia but they wont allow us to enter… then we started looking at going to Phuket, since they had this concept called “The Sandbox” where they allowed fully vaccinated people to come in without needing to quarantine. Well, that fell through as the complications and risks started to weigh in. So we settled on Europe. We had a few iterations of where to go at first: Italy, Portugal, France, Greece; but after studying the rules and situations in those countries we settled on Greece!

So in arranging flights to Greece I found that the best flights flew through Copenhagen. And the return flight had a 16 hour layover in Copenhagen. Well, of course that sounded awful, so I decided lets spend a few days in Copenhagen first, then on the way back we can enjoy a quick layover and already know where we want to go for drinks and food etc.

So, now the itinerary is coming together. I booked a multi-city plan from SFO – Copenhagen – Athens – Copenhagen – SFO. We will spend 3 nights in Copenhagen, then fly to Athens, and then … do what? Well in October, the Greek Islands will be warmer so I looked at the various Islands and options to get there etc and settled on Mykonos, Santorini and Crete. But after some struggles with ferries and getting to where we wanted to be in Crete it seemed that would not work, so we decided to go to Paros. That’s Paros with an “O”.

So after Copenhagen, we fly to Athens and then immediately, actually after a four hour layover, catch a flight to Mykonos. According to various sources, Mykonos is the party Island, Santorini is for couples, and Paros is traditional Greece with few tourists. So our first stop in the Greek Islands is Mykonos (pronounced meek-o-nis) where we will spend five nights in a boutique hotel about 10 minutes from the main town.

From there, we take a ferry to Santorini where we found, what we hope to be, an awesome spot overlooking all the white buildings and the famous blue domed churches. We will be in Santorini for five nights and then take a ferry (the one that was cancelled) to Paros.

We will spend four nights in Paros at a nice Airbnb/hotel right next to the beach. After Paros, we fly back to Athens, where we spend five nights in a hotel overlooking the Acropolis. That should be nice! Then finally we take a flight back to Copenhagen. Oh, I forgot to mention, a few days before the Ferry was cancelled, they also cancelled our flight from Copenhagen back to SFO! They rebooked us on a flight the following day. So now, instead of a 16 hour layover, we actually have two nights in Copenhagen. It will be much colder by that time but we will have a good understanding of the city and where to go so I am sure it will be fun!

Can’t wait for October 17th to arrive! Talk to you soon!