Athens
Chris and I began our trip flying from Sydney to Athens via Abu Dhabi, a trip that took about 20 hours of in-flight
movies and one lucky glimpse at the Great Pyramid of Giza from above. After meeting up with Ellie, a friend of ours
who was joining us on our Contiki, we taxied our way to our hostel in the city, where we had two nights before we
had to move to our tour’s hotel. Although we were all pretty jetlagged we managed to drag ourselves out of bed and
set off exploring Athens, which unsurprisingly we found to be an amazing city; it was fascinating seeing all these
building I had learnt about in high school, from the remains of the Temple of Zeus and Acropolis to the ancient
Olympic Stadium.
Mykonos
Contiki – 13 day Greek Islands tour
The first night of our tour was reasonably quiet, comprising of an introductory speech from our tour managers and a
brief greet and meet with the other 70 odd people doing the tour. From the get go we formed a small group of six of
us: Chris and I, Ellie and her roommate, and two other Aussies who were rooming together that we bumped into in
the lobby of the hotel. The second day of our tour was action packed – we left the hotel at about 5am for the docks
where we caught our first ferry of the trip from Athens to Mykonos, which from memory was about a five hour trip.
The one saving point of the ride was that our allocated seats were done in alphabetical order and by luck Chris
followed me on the list so we managed to spend most of the time watching a movie on his tablet. It’s probably
worth pointing out that leading up to this first ferry we were all a bit excited, most of the group’s experiences with
boats was largely limited to harbour crossings in Sydney and the like, and comparatively this ferry was huge. This
keenness was shortly outlived as we were introduced to “Greek time” – the boat was two hours late, and then once
we finally boarded, we found ourselves in chaos, and half our seats had been taken by old Greek ladies who refused
to move, resulting in half the group being sent to another room entirely.
Despite this our excitement for our first Greek Island remained unhindered, and Mykonos did not disappoint in the
slightest. Our time there was spent largely wandering around the small “city” by day and pretty much drinking by
night. During our few days on the island we had a toga party, in which our whole Contiki went down to our pool bar
in bed sheet togas, went out to a super-club which was supposedly ranked in the top 50 in the world, which naturally
meant 50 euros to get in the door and 12 euros for a beer from then on, needless to say it wasn’t as great as we
were told it would be. That relatively disappointing night was in complete contrast to the following day when we
went down to a day party at a place called Paradise Beach, which proved to be one of the best days of the trip. We
lucked out and the table we sat at and danced on for most of the day was placed right behind a VIP table, which
resulted in an infinite supply of Moet being handed to us, which in turn resulted in a noticeable lack of memory of
the rest of the afternoon and night!
Nightlife aside, the island was absolutely amazing – every building is white with a similar curved design to account
for the ridiculous amount of wind the island gets, creating what I'm sure you all know to be a beautifully scenic
landscape.
1|Page