Travel Tales

I love travelling...the excitement of planning a trip, what to do where to go.I tend to plan my trips about a month before I plan to go on leave. Not like 12 months or 6 months.
Of course if its heading overseas the only thing I don't like is the 20+hours to get there, hanging around Singapore airport for like some 6 hours for a connecting flight to Europe.
In the late 80s I travelled with my father and my brother to Greece for the very first time. First time for my dad who had not returned back to his homeland since he had migrated to Australia in the early 60s.I have so many memories of this trip. I want to share some.

The plan for this trip was to visit my dads family in Athens, " the Village" in Arkadia, see my grandparents, uncles and aunts. Also to do a few days to my mums village which was on the other side of the mountain in the region of Lakonia.
I can remember the very long drive from Athens to the village it took a very long time over 6 hours I think, not like now its only a few hours.
So we get to the village, lets just say, my brother and I thought it was primative and we knew we couldn't last there long. We soon discovered the only milk was from a goat, not milk in a bottle. I could just read my brothers mind..."f..k we aren't staying here for a week...2 days & we are out of here...I'm heading to the islands ASAP" he said. I looked at him and said "mmm don't think that's going to happen, dad hasn't been back for over 20 years and you want to leave after 2 days".
We lasted a week then we hit the islands.

The second time back to the village on that trip,we made sure we stopped at a local store. We stocked up on supplies. That register just keep ticking over. What didn't we buy, biscuits, salami, quick, milk and other goodies that we could survive on. I can remember the look on my grandmothers face when I stocked her cupboards with stuff she had never seen and probably would never see. "ti eine afta edo pou ehis feri" (sorry about greekenglish).

The plan on this trip was to go to Turkey, we had gone to the island of Chios, got a boat from there to either Izmir and then on to Cezmir or vice versa can't remember.
We got there, we were on the hunt to buy leather items. That was the rage back then.
I can remember wanting to buy some black leather pants. Unfortunately I was wearing jeans, it was hot, sticky, I couldn't get my jeans off to try the leather pants.
I remember the Turkish man who spoke Greek tugging at my jeans to pull them down. "Oh my god".. im like "WTF"..it was hilarious. Lets just say i didn't want to put the leather pants on after that, because that meant he'd have to pull the leather pants off as well.. I just said to him.."thats ok...i don't like the leather pants" I didn't even try them on.

We spent 7 weeks in Greece and I cherish all those memories. I can remember so much like it was yesterday.

So if there are people reading my blog, tell me about your travel tales. I have more and will post later on. (I nearly drowned white water rafting in Austria, nearly threw up at the Colosseum in Rome, locked out of my room in Hawaii)