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A Greek holiday update

I’m writing this while my wife and I are sitting on a train traveling out into the countryside of Greece, on our way to a place called Kalabaka. It’s a sunny day, with pretty scenery and fascinating mountain ranges. But there’s no wifi on the train, or USB ports to charge devices. I know, I know… first world problems. And we’ve found that Greece certainly isn’t part of the first world…

Their economy has been terrible over the past few years, and their infrastructure has suffered for it. It’s a shame, because I can see that Athens used to be so beautiful, but now it’s run down and covered in graffiti, and many of its taxi drivers are greedy scumbags just out to unethically rip people off without actually taking them to the right destinations…. I understand it’s because they’re forced to by the circumstances they’re in, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Maybe one day in the future Athens will restore itself again. I hope so. It deserves to be wonderful again.

Anyway, I thought I’d take the time to do a blog post to update the holiday so far. There’s only so much reading one can do on a 5 hour train ride before you want to do something else….

Our holiday started with a couple days in Abu Dhabi, capital city of the United Arab Emirates. That was fun, and we wouldn’t mind going back for a few more days sometime. We really enjoyed the hotel we stayed in, the amazing architecture and history of the city and the country, the food, the boat ride around the island, and the desert that we went out into in a 4WD tour. That was a lot of fun, with some very skilled desert drivers.

Abu Dhabi Desert Tour
Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi

(Ok, the above was written yesterday, now I’ll continue…)

Then we flew out to spend 4 nights in Athens. We saw the Acropolis and original Olympic Stadium, and the Olympion Temple to Zeus.

The Acropolis, Athens, Greece

Yesterday we went out to Kalabaka, where we had an incredible time on a tour to see a number of old monasteries built on top of rock columns in a unique series of mountain rocks called Meteora. It was amazing.

Meteora, Kalabaka, Greece
Meteora, Kalabaka, Greece

You can view a lot more photos of the holiday here:

* Facebook (LOTS of photos!): www.facebook.com/alanhphotos
* Instagram (just a few photos): www.instagram.com/alanhphotos

Or you can also click on Photos above (https://www.alansjourney.com/photos) to see an imported feed from Instagram if you simply don’t want to use any of the social media tools.

Our hotel has been ok, but not as good as the hotel’s photos on booking.com suggested it would be. I think that might be because we got the cheapest room or something, but when we come back to it for ‘round 2’ of Athens after spending some time in Santorini, I’ve booked us into a more expensive room with a view of the Acropolis. Maybe that’ll be a completely different experience.

Tomorrow morning we’re flying to Santorini for 4 nights… I’ll do another update later. I hope you enjoy following the photos! 🙂


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