Jess I guess wrote about Capri and a small blurb or Malta. Malta was very cool, and less touristy than a lot of the places we have been. The prices were also much better there... it still stuns me how a beer can fluctuate by 300% in a 5 block radius. Highlights were the fact that we stayed at a cheap hotel that was connected to an expensive hotel, and we got to use the expensive hotels rooftop infiniti pool for 2 days. It was funny because when the guy said they had an outdoor pool at the front desk, and we checked into our crap room, we expected a dirty bathtub on the roof, but man were we ever in for a surprise!! The last day I had no clothes left and we had I had to be shirtless or wear one of jess's shirts when we went out to eat. We took our laundry to a service that charged 10 euros a load, which we figured we had 1 load, maybe 2 if they were trying to screw us, and they made it 3 loads for 30eur! It was the most expensive thing we did all of the time there... Luckily it smelled great.
We stayed in the athens airport at the awesome sofitel there the night after we left malta and before we got to Santorini. We arrived very early in the morning, and bummed around in town with a girl from our flight before taking the bus up to Oia to where we were staying. We had no car and our place was at least a 15 minute walk uphill in blistering heat, but luckily the housekeeper had some english and was at the place with her ATV, so she called her friend after meeting us and we got a free ride. We later rented a Nissan Micra (which I love I want to buy one) and picked up my brother at 6pm! It was great seeing him for the next 7 days, but it should have been 10 (read below)
Shockingly Santorini lived up to the hype I had heard, and was quite reasonable priced. There is no sign of Greece turmoil there, its just typical island life. Our place was a little strange at first being that we have western expectations, but once we realized that a clay shower with no door or curtain, no internet (which the ad lied about), no TV, strange overpowering laundry smells, and lots of bugs (hate bugs) was just the norm there, the place really grew on us. By the end of the four days I think all 3 of us loved it. We did 2 active tourist things, 1 by walking from Oia to Fira in 2 hours, and one by driving up and then climbing around Ancient Thira town. It is incredible that people ever lived up there, its ridiculously windy, there is no food, you have to trap your own water, and I have no idea where they got the stone to build things from. Crazy place for sure.
After Santorini we went to Crete, which ill gloss over cause it was nothing special compared to Santorini. They highlights were me puking on the 2 hour ride over on a catamaran (which cost 50 euros, WTF), and me getting 20 mosquito bites because we were had a drink late at night on the deck and I couldnt feel them... Brutal welts still (have I mentioned how much I hate insects?) Also Jess got what we think is Blephitis (sounds cooler than saying dry eyes), because she has a crazy eye itch sand in her eyes problem. We just got eye drops for her today about 6 days later, hopefully it goes away soon.
Now we are in Bahrain against our will (more on this in a second), and at this point I could also add that my stomach hurts again for some reason like it did in Nice... Not nearly as bad but some really nice Saudi guy gave us 11 beers when he left this hotel (because he cant take them over the border) and we cant drink them because I dont want to mess up my stomach. But dont worry everyone we havent been drinking that much! I swear! I just wanted to mention that tidbit!!
So that brings me to Dubai and why we are in Bahrain. Because Canada is retarded, and Dubai doesnt seem to care about Canada, we are basically in a feud I found out. Apparently the turning point was whe Emirates airline wanted to land more planes in Toronto from europe. Canada said no because they didnt think that many canadians were on the flights (and I think, although I dont know, they want to protect stupid Air Canada), so Dubai said F you, now your citizens cant get free visas. To get one now, you have to pay between $62 if you fly Emirates airline into dubai (how ironic is that) $250 for a tourist one, or up to $900 if you want to stay more than 1 month. You have to put in your application 2 weeks before you get there, and it takes at least a few days to process. We trusted this guy my brother was referred to who ran a touring company and does his GF's companies work visas to process them for him. Long story short the guy must have been retarded because not only did he not do it in time, he led us on for days that it was fine and they would be done. We spend hours in the airport twice waiting to figure out what was going on and trying to change flights, lost 2 flights after spending tons of money just to get to bahrain, spend money on a hotel near the airport, and lost 3 days of our trip. I cant type it all out accurately enough because it would take hours, but basically nothing oculd have gone any worse at any point, and we lost so much time, money, and jess cried at least twice... see what im saying!!
I guess thats it for now, sorry I didnt really proofread this hopefully it makes sense.
Back to Athens tomorrow for mass protests and strikes wooO! Also, we are staying at Meteora June 21-23 which is going to be a massive highlight, cant wait for that.
Finally, for the record, I am surprised not at all by the riot in vancouver, but by the police and everyone involved in admin that they couldnt see that coming. I mean come on, 100,000 revved up canuck fans? We all know how quickly 90% of canucks fans jump on and off the bandwagon, so give me a break.. My hope is a lot of them that were caught on camera and video are fined and penalized. ugh!
Owen
