Ok, so where I was: Corfu, Greece for most of it, nearly a day in Athens and way, way too much time on planes and in airports - of which I absolutely despise Montreal and Athens in a way that's difficult to describe. Oh, and the BS that American citizens have to go through just to get home. I mean, it's honestly easier to cross a desert on foot than to go through the hassel of being a citizen returning to where you were born (ok, it's not but ... ). Dood, someone just scanned my boarding pass. Like, that guy right there. Ten feet away. You totally saw him scan it! Why do you need to scan it again! Grr ...
Ok, so why I was: Finally got married. Honeymoon (what a stupid, ugly word) trip extravaganza. The gal wanted somewhere far from home and picked this li'l gem of an island (uhh ... sorta) about 20 hours from home (after layovers and cab rides an' stuff). She decided against a big wedding in favor of a trip to remember and I let her decide all of the particulars. She did pretty good.
Ok, so what I was: Relaxed, mostly. The travel was absolute torture. I mean that, too. Just abysmal. Follow along, won't you? Step one, get ride to Cleveland airport - about 45mins. Step two, wait for plane to Montreal - about 2-3hrs. Step three, fly to Montreal - about 1.5hrs. Step four, go through customs, etc and wait for plane to Athens - about 3-4hrs. Step five, fly to Athens - about 9hrs on the way there and 10 back (head/tail winds). Step six, go through customs, etc and wait for tiny, tiny plane to Corfu (more accurately, wait for a bus to take you from the gate to the small plane) - about 2hrs. Step seven, fly to Corfu - about 1hr. Step eight, go through customs (again), pick up bags (again) and catch a cab to Kaminiki - about 1hr. Step nine, you're done. On the way home, add a day layover in Athens and an hour delay in Montreal. Fun, no? No.
Anyhoo, aside from all of that it was quite nice. Lotsa Brits, few Germans and Italians and no Americans (on Corfu anyway). Food was absolutely astoundingly good - and crazy cheap for the quality. The water was fantastically clear - so clear I even decided to buy a snorkel. The people were - outside of the annoying touristy areas - wonderfully friendly, helpful and just pleasant to be around. The Villa was really quite nice, too. Overall a great time.
And aside from all of that, there was some bad. The people in the touristy areas suck. The food is worse and everything else is overpriced. They hound you and chase you and it makes you sick. Corfu Town is for chumps ... and so is Athens. The pictures make you think of ruins in open places when, in fact, they're in the middle of a dirty, nasty looking city. Every single building is tagged multiple times and most have barred windows or gates. And here you can find some of the most amazing treasures of man's heritage ... a few seconds from a hotel and about twenty yards from a congested, honking highway. Meh, at least it made the view from the hotel we thankfully spent less than 24hrs in better than it would have been. And the food there was good if overly priced. Er, the food at Athens Gate - not the cafes. That wasn't very good. Anyhoo, yeah. I don't like Athens and don't regret a bit that I didn't get to spend more time there. Hell, the hotel wouldn't even let us check in until after 2pm. Insane. But whatever, can't let one rotten egg spoil the bushel. Or something.
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So that's that. If ya wanna know anything, ask. If not, what-evs.
Any interesting pictures you took? (Not neccesarily of you; landscape, foods, hotels and stuff is often also interesting to see :P)
... Lotsa Brits, few Germans and Italians and no Americans (on Corfu anyway)...
That is incorrect. You and your newlywed wife were there, thus there was at least two Americans on Corfu at that particular time.
At least you had a good time though (apart from the traveling and the obvious tourist traps).
I'm glad to hear you guys went for the trip instead of some god awful overpriced wedding.
Any annoying fellow airline passenger stories to share?
Did the wedding itself go smoothly?
Any new embarassing stories to share?
Also were they night flights or day flights? Which do you hate more?
Also you should go back to Montreal and see more than just the airport. One of my favorite cities ever.
Also I think I'm going to start a new thread for bad travel experiences, just so we can keep this about your story.
(blame catching up and a monitor that is very near death with no replacement news as of yet)Sounds like you had a mostly good trip. Unfortunately the tourist-hunters always suck. It's their job, or something.
Any interesting pictures you took? (Not neccesarily of you; landscape, foods, hotels and stuff is often also interesting to see :P)
We took a ton of pics. The wife even went so far as to take pics of all of the meals we had. Cool idea, really, when all we really did was waste time at the beach and eat.
To clear that up a smidge, we ate about once a day. One real dinner and maybe a croissant for breakfast and that was it. We didn't make pigs of ourselves but ate like pigs when we did eat. A fine way to spend money, IMO. ;)Unfortunately I have no pics to share right now. We didn't get back 'til like 10:30pm or so and had to shower, put some stuff away, take some stuff out of the safe, get the dog back, I had to check tire pressure and get gas, etc so we had literally no time to get anything done with the pics. When we do, I'll see what I can do about gettin' some up here.
How long did you stay in Corfu? Did you go elsewhere? Any boat ride on the islands? Did you meet any greek god?
Why did Montréal airport suck?
How was banging your wife? Less or more fun then banging your GF?
We were there like 7 or 8 days and had one in Athens. We rented a li'l boat with a 30hp 4 stroke one day and took it up and down the coast for a while. Got some cool pics, saw some dolphins, ran over some idiot's fishing line (who fishes from a friggin' sailboat?) and used up all the gas. Didn't stop anywhere to swin cuz the gal didn't want to risk the boat and didn't wanna go anywhere there were already people. No gods were met though we did spend some time admiring the remains of Mighty Zeus' temple near Hadrian's Arch.
The airport sucked cuz it's just a gigantic mall with a tiny bit of airport attached to it in comparison. Everywhere you go it's shop after shop selling overpriced everything. We had to eat there on the way and it cost us $50 for two cheeseburgers, fries (chips if you prefer) and a couple of sodas. Don't get me wrong, the food wasn't bad - especially considering it was in an airport - but $50 was Insane. For that we could get two beers, a half liter of wine, an appetizer and two entrees at the Taverna we ate at (Spiros Tavern (also Kati Thavres) on Kaminiki - about a two minute walk from the villa). And much better food at that. They also totally neglected to do such small things like announce that our flight was being delayed and that another flight was moved to our gate and would be taking off before ours - further delaying the flight. They would just stand around like idiots and say nothing. The li'l board would say departing at 1755 and there would be no plane sitting there to be unloaded/loaded at 1745 and they didn't think to update status or announce what was going on. When we got to the gate one time, they had different info on the board and we asked if our flight was after the one listed. The answer given by the friggin' lady that friggin' works there? Possibly. Gee, thanks. So yeah, it was a terrible place and we will do our best to never, ever fly out of there again.
As for the last question, it was about the same. Old hat but still a fun hat, ya know?
You said you bought a snorkel. I'm assuming you also used it. What cool critters did you get to play with? Any scary shark encounters?
Yep, I used the hell out of it the last two days there. I saw all sorts of fish but nothing big. I wish I knew what type of fishies I saw, but I couldn't place 'em. Nothing over 24" and maybe 5lb. Mostly fish that were pickin' stuff off of rocks or hidin' in 'em. Did see a couple of predator lookin' things here and there, though. Possibly mackerel but I'm not sure. But there was always a fish somewhere nearby. I mean always. Little, medium or 'big', there was always something to look at. And the water is so, so clear. You can see bottom without trouble over 10' down. A lot of it is rock and there's some seaweed beds, too. Oh, no sharks, though. Not that I'm upset about that.
There was a guy spearfishing there the last evening we spent on the island. We watched him intently but he never came up with anything. Nearest I can figure he was looking for something that was specific but not there. Oh yeah! I also saw a sea urchin. One. And that was something my feet were thankful for. ;)
That is incorrect. You and your newlywed wife were there, thus there was at least two Americans on Corfu at that particular time.
At least you had a good time though (apart from the traveling and the obvious tourist traps).
There were Americans in Athens but not even too many there. Oddly enough, the most annoying people we saw were Germans and Italians. The Brits were wonderful and the few Americans we did run into were ok, too. The Germans were young ladies so that may explain their rudeness. But damn, they just wouldn't shut up and didn't talk below a yell. The one hot blond did decide to sunbathe topless for a bit, though, so I forgave them. ;) The Italians were some guys that sat literally behind us on the beach after being obnoxious in the taverna above us (by a few feet) for quite some time. There's room, we're obviously relaxing (eyes closed) and they choose right behind us to sit and yell to each other. Non stop. But mostly the beach was quiet. Very, very quiet. Aside from a few morons it was all good.
Welcome back ZB!
I'm glad to hear you guys went for the trip instead of some god awful overpriced wedding.
Any annoying fellow airline passenger stories to share?
Did the wedding itself go smoothly?
Any new embarassing stories to share?
Yeah, she made the right call with that. One day that would have cost us at least 5x as much or what we did? Take the trip, people!
Nothing really annoying about the passengers. Had a couple of Americans talking loudly for a while and the obligatory baby but that's it. The baby's family did do something uniquely annoying, though: when it cried they played it music. Loud enough for us all to 'enjoy'. Nice. At least that flight was short.
Wedding went smooth. Had someone that couldn't make it, JoP pronounced gal's last name wrong after writing it down phonetically to make sure she didn't - which was more funny than wrong, ya know - and nothing else.
One embarrasing story: I had forgotten, for reasons uknown, what wine does to me and I had forgotten, for other unknown reasons, that the one pill I was on makes alcohol pack more punch. The house wine at the taverna was quite good - and that's saying something considering I am not a wine person - and they had a red, white and rose. She had the red, I said it was ok and so the next day had some white with whatever it was I ate. She did, too. So we got a liter. And it was good. And I had had two Mythos beers (think tallboy size) before that. So we decided we had better try the rose. And it was also good so a liter later we decided to swing back to the red. And had a liter of that, too. I guess I was inviting some poor Brit couple to drink with us all night (something which they forgave me of) and had some real trouble negotiating the nasty, rocky path back to the villa. Thankfully it wasn't far. There's some pics of me struggling with the walk, too. But yeah, I felt like an ass the next day and the waiter gave me a playful hard time about it. I explained that I had not intended to do that and just wasn't thinking clearly (and the meds make consequences a foreign word) and never did it again. But yeah, totally embarrasing.
Well congrats to you and the misses.
Tourist traps are traps no matter what part of the world your in. It really is a shame that the ruins are being desicrated in this way. Not that I'm really surprised, look at what happened in Egypt a few months ago.
Yeah, it was kinda sad to see the ruins in such a state. And they leave broken pieces on the ground where the elements can ravage them, too. Meh, it was still cool to see 'em but it ain't as picturesque as we're lead to believe, ya know?
Welcome back! What was the best food? I'm so-so on Greek food, since they seem to love onions and I can't stand them, but I still love hearing a good food story.
Also were they night flights or day flights? Which do you hate more?
Also you should go back to Montreal and see more than just the airport. One of my favorite cities ever.
Also I think I'm going to start a new thread for bad travel experiences, just so we can keep this about your story.
My favorite was the gyro, actually. I know it's typical but they make a wonderful one at Spiros Taverna. The lamb Kleftikos was pretty good, too, but I'd have to say my second favorite was the Moussaka. Oh, and their Tzatziki was amazing! We had it every meal. Spread a li'l on bread and save the rest for fries. Man, that was some yummy stuff.
The long flight (Montral/Athens) there was night the first time and day the next. I found them equally awful overall but the night flight is easier to sleep on so that makes it the winner.
If I gotta go through the Montreal airport to see Montreal, I'm out.
Yeah, we'll have to look for workarounds in the future. No big deal overall, though. Oh, the Brits all seemed to delight in telling us it only takes them a three hour flight to get there. Punks.
At any rate, it's just not on the radar currently but it's certainly a possibility. Not soon-soon but soon. We ain't gettin' any younger.
**PIC UPDATE**
There are pics up ... on Facebook. So, sorry no linkies yet as there are pics there that show me/her. She is also placing them on Photobucket and I've asked that she build a new PB thingy in order to place all of the pics that we took that don't have one of us in 'em. As soon as that's up, I'll link to it. As we took over 500 pics, it may be a bit, though. Heh.