Friday, August 5, 2011

Back to the Big Smoke and on to Greece

















It was back to London for the next job. We were there until the end of June, 3 weeks in the same place! Even better because Orlaith lives in London, so I finally got to see her again. I also took the time the first weekend to go home, it had been 6 weeks so I changed out some of my clothes and things.

It was really a fair amount of just working and hanging out in the free time. It was good to see Orlaith for so long and even got to see a few of my old friends from GT. But after three weeks, it was time for... a vacation. The schedule got shuffled around so all of a sudden I had a free week. June ended with work in London and July got under way with a week holiday in Greece!

So we went to Rhodes. I booked an all inclusive trip to a big resort on the southend of the island. We got out to Rhodes and got the shuttle down to Kiotari, the village were our resort was. It was more or less the last stop so it took AGES to get to but we got to drive by all the Mrytle Beach / Spring Break places. So it was good to know it wouldn't be like that.

Our resort was huge and seemed to have a large muber of Italian/Russian/Eastern European families and people there. The resort was beach front, had 4 restaurants and 4 other bars. They also had a entertianment team that was always organizing games and stuff as well as doing a show most nights. They had to do something, its not like the village had anything to really offer. The food was great, it was all inclusive and all you can eat... always a danger! But the room they gve us was a bit small... it was designed as a single room and they had crammed another bed in there to use two singles to make a bigger bed... leaving no room AT ALL around the sides... apparently they were booked out for the whole time and we changed to a better room the next day, so no more time in the smurf suite.

We had a great time and spent a lot of days just relaxing and doing nothing. We did spend one day and go up to a nearby village called Lindos. Its supposed to be one fo the most photographed places. Its a beautiful white village with an old acropolis on the hill. You can take a Linods taxi up to the top, which is just an old donkey ride. We got there early and went up to the top and looked around. It good we did, because by the time we came down, the line to get in was all the way around the hill and back done to the village.











On the last day we went for a tour of Rhodos old town. We got on the shuttle bus and picked up people from all the other resorts. The group wandered around town for a few hours, looking at the old fort, buildings and learning a bit about the history of the town. We had free time and looked around. There were tonns of fur shops (seemed odd...) and everything else under the sun for sale. It is a great old city, and similar to Cartagena, is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. After a short cruise out in the harbors to see the city from the water, we heade back to our resort. We had a crazy early flight back to London.


















That wasn't helped by the assinine Greek airport system. They had 3 lines open for our flight. After hours it took to check in, you had to get in a different line to check you rbag, then a third line to pass through security!! It also didn't help that their computer system couldn't handle last names with more than 10 characters... I know - I got lucky - only nine. But several people had to wait untilt he very end since the system couldn't identify them... No wonder Greek airports are where most suspected smuggling, illegals and other things come into Europe... Anyway, back to Switzerland for a week.

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