Planes, Trains and Orthotics: A Middle-Age Woman's Guide to Travel

 I’m sitting on our hotel veranda on the island of Spetses, after just rearranging my luggage for the umpteenth time since tomorrow, we are headed back to the United States.  I’m usually ready to go home after a long vacation, but this time it wouldn’t take much to twist my arm to stay, at least for a little bit longer.  But we are already checked in for our flights, have our boarding passes and tomorrow we will take a quick, early morning ride on a taxi boat and then drive the three hours to Athens Airport.  I have been thinking about the things I will and will not miss once I leave this beautiful country.  Here’s the breakdown: What I will not miss: 1. The constant struggle of being a good steward for our environment and mopping up all the shower water on the bathroom floor.  I know that I have written about this before but I just don’t get it.  Many of the hotels we have stayed in have had notes in the bathroom asking its patrons to be environmental...

 The hotel we were staying at in Aristi was absolutely beautiful with breathtaking vistas everywhere you look.  But even Shangra-La can have its issues.  We were high in the mountains and internet service could best be described as “spotty.”  Plus, yesterday morning, Bob and I had no hot water.  When we met Judy and Mark for breakfast, we all complained about the lack of hot water, while sitting outside overlooking this picture perfect scenery.  As we listened to ourselves complain, we all concurred that none of us could ever have made it as “mountain people.”  Bob said that if the four of us were on the Lewis and Clark expedition, America’s western-most boundary would have ended in Parsippany, New Jersey. Doris explained that our adventures that day would include viewing the Vikos Gorge, the second deepest gorge in the world, with the Grand Canyon as its sole rival and rafting down the Voidomatis River, the cleanest river in Europe. Our first stop was...

 Doris told us that we would have an easy day yesterday, beginning with a morning hike from the top of the mountain hotel we were staying into the beautiful town of Metsovo.  After the hike, she said that we could do a little shopping, have lunch and then proceed to a wood carving class and then onto wine tasting, as this area is known for its wonderful red wines. I’m not quite sure how Doris defines a easy day, but by the time we got to the wine tasting, we could all barely keep our heads off the bar!  The hike down the mountain included breathtaking vistas, beautiful wild flowers and a whole lot of pine cones and tree roots. One or both of those impediments caused Bob to fall and hit his head on a tree limb.  The good news is that he is fine, with a small bump on his head, a splinter and a few scratches.  Even with these minor injuries, the “medical team” went into action.  In our previous trip, I had recommended that everyone should travel with a nurse a...

 Being able to spend time in this beautiful, nearly untouched part of Greece has been wonderful, but this has been quite the vacation for Bob.  Great things have been happening non-stop. First, Doris got him his own map of Greece—and not just any map —it was laminated. She had also circled all the places we would be visiting for him to better understand where we had been and where we were going.  For Bob, it was like Christmas morning.  While it was very generous of Doris,  this is not her first rodeo with us, and I think she may have had some ulterior motives, mainly around reducing his many, many questions to her.  While the map addressed most of Bob’s geography questions, it could not answer those of a non-geographic nature, including the current annual income and life span of the average Greek, which came first, the wars between Sparta and Troy or the Peloponnesian War and where exactly is Troy?  Poor Doris was in the front seat of the van, nearly ...

The city of Thessaloniki is a real treasure.  It has everything any vacationer could want, particularly if you like history and food and clearly, the four of us are very fond of both. Yesterday, we took an all-day walking tour of the city (with a two hour lunch in between) beginning at the top of the town’s hills and working our way finally to the sea. As we listened to the importance of this port city to the Romans, the Ottomans and its role during the Byzantine Empire, we came across a large group of Americans with their own guide, with the guide finishing his talk by saying, “Let us all take a moment to pray.” It really took me for a loop to be standing on a hilltop in a northern Greek city and see and hear 50 people, all Americans, put their heads down and begin to pray.  Our guide, JoAnna, (said with a “y”) told me that this is very common, as there are many tour groups that specialize in visiting locations visited by St. Paul, the Apostle, one of the most important figur...

 I am currently sitting on a hotel veranda in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, which over looks the Aegean Sea.   Needless to say, it’s not too shabby.  But it’s been a day, and it’s only the afternoon. We arrived in Athens yesterday and except for the challenging cab ride to get to our hotel, because of a bike race through center-city, the day was uneventful.  We slept, walked around the city and then ate.  I take pause, because the three letters in the word “ate” don’t seem adequate for the meal we had.  Nor does the nine letter word, “delicious,” but suffice it to say, it was both…and then some.   It had been less than two years since our last visit to this beautiful country but I had forgotten about the real art of Greek cuisine. We ate nothing fancy—grape leaves (the best I ever had), tomato salad with whipped feta, grilled fish and small potatoes on a bed of yogurt, lemon, olive oil and chives. I went to bed thinking that I can’t eat meal...

We had so much fun soaking up the beauty and history of Greece, that after two years, Bob, our friends Mark and Judy and I decided that it was time to soak up some more.  This time however, instead of island-hopping like we did on our last trip, we are headed north via Athens, to see a completely different Greece. We did not come up with this idea on our own—we’re just not that creative. Prior to the end of our last Greek adventure, our wonderful tour guide, Doris, recommended that we someday come back and see a very different, less known and even less traveled part of her beloved country.  While it sounded lovely, we all thought that there is a big world to see and what Greek adventure could ever top our visits to Crete and Santorini?  Well, Doris knows how to be persuasive. What really sealed the deal was that she said that if we came back, she would join us and lead the adventure.  Because other than our mothers, no one IN OUR LIVES has ever taken better care of u...

 I am not a big fan of Florida. Sure, over the years our family has spent plenty of time in Orlando, eating breakfast with Mickey, standing in lines and me experiencing queasiness after nearly every single ride.   (I had yet to discover the merits of Sea Bands)  But my dislike for the state is based on two things: the heat and the politics.  The heat is understandable.  Either you embrace it or look at vacation options in Canada, Scandinavia or in my case, Ireland, where a warm sweater is a must, even in July. But the politics is something else.  After two glasses of Cabernet one evening (I’m clearly a cheap date), I pronounced that I would not enter Florida until the current Governor was gone. The next morning, with the Cabernet out of my system, I hoped that he had left office before my grandchildren were old enough to want to have breakfast with Mickey.   Even with my proclamation, when we heard that my dear great uncle had passed away this week, Bo...