Greece and Italy Recollections

 The trip home had a treat.  We got some unexpected refunds from our trip that was cancelled due to COVID.  I used some of the refund to upgrade to first class on the way home.  Besides the benefit of travel lounges, getting of the plane first puts us ahead of 200 other people going through customs, which allowed us to catch an earlier bus home.

In Greece, we rented a car to drive through Peloponnesus (unless you take a bus tour, there is really no other way to travel).  It’s beautiful.  We avoided the National Roads (like freeways, except there are tolls) and stuck with the backroads.  They can be a little intimidating, especially driving through towns.  Parking is a problem, everywhere.  Double parking is a way of life!  Having GPS was essential because roads were not well marked, and many of the road signs were so heavily “tagged” that they were illegible.  Greek food (especially lamb) was delicious and inexpensive, but there are unwritten rules about what to eat, when, that we never really got.  We learned that noon was time for coffee, and dinner was about 7:30 or 8:00, breakfast was pretty early.  Everything else, we just winged and suffered the huffs of the wait staff.

We did not rent a car in Italy, and probably never would.  Most towns and cities are restricted to residents only.  The trains go everywhere, but you need to figure out what train system you need to take.  Travel is on the honor system, except when it isn’t.  You can either buy tickets ahead of time and have them on your phone or get a paper ticket from a machine.  The paper tickets need to be punched by another machine before you board, but obviously you can’t have your phone punched.  It took us four nights to get from Peloponnesus to Cinque Terre:  a night in Patra, GR, a night on the ferry, a night in Bari, IT, and a night in La Spezia, IT.  Not sure what we could have done differently, but it was the only part of the trip that seemed to drag.

Pisa was not on our planned trip, but was fantastic.  We were really glad we went.  We took a wine tasting trip into the villages of Tuscany.  We went through little towns, they had a few hotels and a few eateries, it might have been fun to spend a night at one of them.   Especially since Cinque Terre and Florence (the two places that we stayed for about a week, each) were very crowded. 

Next trip is the Rideau Canal in Canada.