It was time that we went overseas as a family.
Overseas travel is a fantastic and valuable education - especially for kids.
Everyone needs to see and experience how other cultures live and the best way to do that is to visit them for a first-hand experience.
We chose 4 destinations, Santorini, Athens, London and some of rural England. We were kind of following our roots with Greece and England.
This is 2002, digital cameras are gaining popularity, but they are not quite there yet. However, we took some photos with the digital camera as well as on film as we weren't sure to trust our memories to a digital camera!
We flew from Sydney to Athens and then caught a connecting flight to Santorini. We cabbed it to our hotel the Volcano View Villas which was right on the edge of the cliff with a view of the caldera (see above). The Agean Sea was its typical blue colour and looked awesome!
We started exploring Santorini. It is a popular island and gaining popularity very quickly. We hired a car to get around. Andrew has no problem driving on the opposite side of the road and traffic doesn't seem to phase him much. We visited Black Sand beach - notice the church set into the middle of the hill in the middle top photo below. Greeks build churches in the strangest places! Red Sand Beach, Oia for viewing the sunset, though it lookd awesome from anywhere overlooking the caldera. What we did notice while driving is that there are no footpaths and peoples front doors open up directly onto the road!
Santorini is the remains of a massive ancient volcano eruption and is what remains of the eastern rim of the volcano. The islands opposite still have thermal activity on them.
The view is spectacular and the town of Thira sitting atop the edge of the caldera is an amazing sight to see. The top row of the photos above show the jig jag steps to get from the town to the port below. However, nowadays, if the steps are too much, there is a cable car that runs up next to the steps on the left side.
We took a ride down to the bottom via the steps on the back of mules. It was a scary experience as they seemed to stumble down the steps at times and our legs would get caught between the mule's body and the step walls. However, we got down to the bottom and had lunch there before catching the cable car back to the top.
The following day, we went for another mule ride up to a monastery at the highest point of the island. The view was excellent but we could not get access to the monestary as it was closed.
We explored the streets and laneways of Thira an Oia, drove around the island and then, after 4 nights, we headed to Athens for a few days there.
Upon arrival at Athens Airport, we were picked up by George the Taxi Driver who took us for a driving tour of some of the local sights including the Acropolis, Syntygma Square, Cape Sounion, we had lunch at a taverna in Sounion before heading back to our hotel in Athens.
No matter where you go around Greece, you will find ruins that are thousands of years old.
We walked everywhere in Athens, through Monastiraki, Plaka, up to Syntigma Square, and also visited the Acropolis to view the Acropolis. Mount Lycabettus is the highest point in Athens, so we decided to go up for the view. we had the most expensive coffee in our lives up there - A$10 per cup!
While constructing the new underground railway and stations, more ruins were found along with skeletal remains from before Christ. The engineers have incorporated these ancient relics into the construction as encased museum pieces as shown in the picture below where the skeletal remains are encased in glass at an underground railway station in Athens.
After several days in Athens, we flew across to London where we were to spend the next 3 days exploring the city.
Using the Hop on Hop off busses, we toured around the sights of London visiting Westminster Abbey, Tower Bridge, Madame Tussauds, Big Ben, The London Eye, Harrods, Hyde Park, Notting Hill, Buckingham Palace and, because Anthony loves the game of Monopoly, we visited every street/station that appears on the original Monopoly Board! In fact, when it could not find the last 5-6 streets, we jumped into a London cab and the driver took us to the remainder of the places as well as other sights he said we should see as well. The driver was excellent and he looked after us very well - in fact, he had such a great time with us and the kids that he didn't want to charge us for the hour in the cab! We insisted however, and we ended up splitting the bill.
We also took the boys to an interactive science musem, shopping at Harrods, had fish and chips at a pub (surprising how expensive this was) and visited a McDonalds where we spent A$60+ for four meals! London is an expensive place to eat for some inexplicable reason.
After taking in the sights and sounds of London, we hired a car and headed to the countryside. We decided to head west to Stonehenge, followed by the Cotswalds and on to Bath on the coast.
On the way, we saw the hill carving of the Cerne Giant (the legend is an interesting one) and had lunch in Corfe after visiting the ruins of Corfe Castle. Bath itself is a fascinating city located on the coast with lots of canals and waterways. Bath is known for it's Roman Baths which were built after the Romans invaded and conquered England around 50 AD. Bath still has a lot of ancient Roman architecture and was worth the visit.
On the way back to London, we spent a night in Lower Slaughter which is located in the Cotswalds. Country cottages with thatched roofs on lanes with dry stone walls - a beautiful part of the English countryside.
After leaving the Cotswalds, we headed back to Heathrow for our flights back to Sydney.
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