Vivace in Canada

The last day in Athens, we didn't want to get up early so we had breakfast at the Hotel, got ready and left for the ancient Kerameikos.
The Kerameikos was the most important and official cemetery of ancient Athens from as far back as the Prehistoric period. In 478 BC the Themistoclean Wall that surrounded the ancient city divided the place into and inner and an outer Kerameikos. The part within the wall became a residential area, and the outer part a burial ground.
A stele in the Kerameikos.
The stele is replica, the original is relocated at the Museum; this is the stele of two sisters.
Sacred Way, the road followed by the procession of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Tomb of Dexileos. Dexileos was killed in 394 BC in a battle near Corinth.
Bull of Marble.
Stele of Hegeso. 
 
 
Themistoclean Wall, the City Wall.
The ancient city wall of Athens.
Dipylon Gate, and the Sacred Gate are the two best known Gates of ancient Athens.
 
The hallway outside of the Museum of Kerameikos.
The original Bull of Marble.
We left the Kerameikos at around 12:30.
There was a flea market right outside of the Kerameikos.
We slowly walked back to the Plaka area.
This tiny pita store 'Anthonys' was very famous, but we didn't plan to come, we were hungry when we walked by, why not give it a try! We were so hungry that we had to eat two pitas each.
The new Acropolis Museum was under construction, it was right outside of the Acropolis Metro Station. From 10:00 am to 12:00 am on weekdays, the lobby was open to the public.
We kept wandering around the area, and did gift shopping on the very last day in Athens.
We had our late dinner at a new restaurant 'To Kati Allo', it was small, the plating wasn't fancy, but the price and the food was very good.
The very last night in Athens, I was glad the spotlight at the Acropolis was on again; even now, I still miss Athens so much.

It was time to return to Athens, we took Hellenic Seaways High Speed boat at 11:30 am, the boat was scheduled to arrive at Piraeus (Athens) at 15:00 pm.
We left for the new port of Mykonos around 9:30 am, there was nothing around our hotel that we could have breakfast at, luckly there was a tiny stand in the new port, we bought coffee and sandwiches, and had breakfast while we were waiting for the boat.
A boat came in at 10 after 10, we thought that our boat arrived early, we got on the boat and put away our backpacks, a clerk was checking the tickets at the entrance to the passenger deck, he pointed out that we were on the wrong boat, we quickly took our backpacks and got off the boat, we didn't even know where the boat was heading.
Our boat arrived on time, we left Mykonos at 11:30 am.
 
12:15 pm, our boat stopped at a small island Syros to pick up more passengers.
Syros looked like a very nice island, we heard a copule on board was saying how come they didn't come here, we actually had the same thought.
There were lots of vehicles and people who got on the boat.
 
3:10 pm, we were very closed to Piraeus.
This building had a very interesting advertisement.
The yellow colour building was the Piaeus Metro station.
This was the boat that took us from Mykonos to Athens, we arrived Piraeus 30 minutes late.
We took the Metro train from Piraeus station to Acropolis station. We stayed at Acropolis View hotel again, too bad we didn't get a room with an Acropolis view this time. We couldn't wait to walk around Athens again.
 
We went to the Roman Agora which we didn't have enough time to go to at the beginning of the trip.
 
The famous Kyrristus' Clock, also known as Tower of the Winds.
 
The clock of Andronicus Kyrristus, constructed in the 1st century BC, it was a hydraulic clock. On each face of the clock can be seen bas-reliefs of the eight winds.
 
We walked by The Ancient Agora again, took a picture of the Stoa of Attalos building from different point of view.
We had dinner at the Vitro restaurant again, then wandering in Plaka area until sunset.
On the rooftop of our hotel, the moon was rising.
That night the soptlight for the Parthenon wasn't on, because of a play or show that was held at the Odeion of Herodes Atticus.

The second day in Mykonos, I was very excited to start the day, going to the island that I highly anticipated to visit during this entire trip. We woke up early and had breakfast at a cafe in Mykonos town.

We finished our breakfast and headed to the port to catch the boat, we saw the mascot of Mykonos island: Petros (a Pelican), the size of it was very huge.
We got on the 10 o'clock boat to Delos.

It was still very windy. From Mykonos to Delos took about 35 minutes by boat. Delos is a small narrow barren island about 5 kilometers long and 1,300 meters wide, located at 2.5 kilometers southwest of Mykonos island by sea.
Delos island is one of the Cyclades, Cyclades in Greek is Kyklos, means 'circle', because the islands surround the sacred island of Delos, according to Greek Mythology, it was the place Leto gave birth to Artemis and Apollo.

Delos is one of the most important archaeological sites in Greece, around 700 BC, Delos was a major religious centre of the lonians. It is now an open air archaeological museum.

House of Dioscourides and Cleopatra, two statues represent the couple Cleopatra and Dioscourides, who lived here in the 2nd century BC.

This huge, vaulted cistern located at west of the theatre, collected rainwater draining from the theatre and supplied part of the town.

Theatre, built in 300 BC to hold 5,500 spectators, the theatre was sited in a natural amphitheatre, and was destroyed in 88 BC by Mithridates, king of Pontus.

House of the Dolphins, this house of the 2nd century BC contains a mosaic of two dolphins with an elaborate Greek key design and waved borders.
 
On the way to the top of the Mount Kynthos, we stopped by the cave of Kynthos, is also the Sanctuary of Herakles; Kynthos is the highest elevation (112 meters) on the island.

A view from the top of Mount Kynthos, Sanctuary of Zeus Hypsistos.

Part of the island and the port.

On the way down, looked back the stairs we took, it was quite a long walk.
 
Temple of Hera, and an unknown statue.
 
Inside of the temple, the statue of Hera.

Lion Terrace, they were set up to over look and protect the Sacred Lake. Originally were 9 of them, but now only 5 remain. Those are replicas, the real ones are relocated in the Archaeological Museum.
 
Inside of the Archaeological Museum.
We took the returning boat at 1:30 pm back to Mykonos, arrived the port around 2:00 pm.

We had lunch at Nikos Tavern, wich was a popular restaurant according to a few travelling websites; once again, we saw Petros the pelican, it attracted lots of tourists.

After lunch, we kept wandering in the Mykonos town, couldn't remember how many times we walked through the same area over and over again.
We tried to find a convenience store we saw earlier that day, to buy some food for dinner, somehow we just couldn't find it.

When we walked by Nikos Tavern, met the Petros again; we followed the Petros and saw it walked into the kitchen of Nikos, a cook looked at the Petros, turned around and opened a refrigerator, pulled out a fish and gave it to the Petros, the kitchen was just like the Petros' home.

We also asked the hotel arranged to drop us off at the Santorini airport, and took the Sky Express once again, flew from Santorini at 11:00 am, arrived at Mykonos at 11:30 before noon.
The landing was the most terrifying experience I've never had, It felt as if the flight went into a nose dive, I thought that we were not going to make it this time, the flight landed safely of course, when we stepped out the aircraft, immediately realized how windy it was to cause the awful landing, and it got me thinking, I had read so much before the trip, how come nobody mentioned that it was extremely blustery in Mykonos?
We planned to take a taxi to the hotel from the airport, but the line up at the taxi station outside of the airport was ridiculously long, plus a taxi came once every 10 minutes, we called our hotel Pension Matina to see if they could pick us up, luckly we did't need to wait in the line any more.

On the way to the hotel, my first impression of Mykonos was the houses looked so much like tofu cubes!
When we arrived the hotel, our room wasn't ready yet, we left our backpacks in the room and headed to the Mykonos town.
The distance from our hotel to Mykonos town was only about a 15 minutes walk, but we had to go down a very steep hill. First thing we did when we got to the Mykonos town was to find out the boat schedule for going to Delos the next day.

The town has tangle of dazzling white alleys and cube shaped houses, it was built in a maze of narrow lanes to defy the wind and pirate raids that use to happen there in the past.

We had pitas for lunch at a small food stand, then kept exploring the Mykonos town.

Little Venice, officially known as Alefkandra, the artists' quarter.
 
A very popular location for picture taking, five windmills lined along the shore. Also a nice spot for viewing the sunset, but we didn't have a chance to see it.

A corner gift shop in Mykonos town, the residents even painted the path white.

Paraportiani church, in the Kastro, part of it dated from 1425, the rest was built in the 16th & 17th centuries.
 
Old port area.
 
We got hungry again around 4:00 pm, so we had a snack at a cafe restaurant.

A boat by the restaurant, with lots of squids hanging on it drying out.
After eating, we went to the Hellenic Seaways office which was not too far from the Town Hall, to pick up the high speed boat tickets I ordered on line for returning to Atherns on the 16th.
 
An outdoor theater. We spent a lot of time wandering in the Mykonos town, but somehow I was not excited to be here.

An art shop, didn't open that day, but the art works were very attractive.

No one was watching, I could keep taking pictures!

I might buy something if it was opened.

Once got into the alleys, we didn't feel the strong wind.
We returned to the hotel around 7:00 pm, but after 10 minutes of climbing the steep hill back to our hotel, we lost  the desire of visiting Mykonos town later that night, so we had pizzas at a small pizza place near by our hotel, and called it a day.

The second day in Santorini, we ate breakfast at the hotel room since we had a kitchen. We planned on going to the old port today, which was beneath the cliff of Fira town.

This windmill was actually part of a restaurant near our hotel on the traditional path.

Walked pass this Hotel Galini few times, it looked so nice that I wish we had stayed here.

An ornamented boat on top of a hotel building, it bacame an attraction to all the tourists who had walked by.


We encountered lots of donkeys on their way to 'work', there are three ways to travel between Fira and the old port; one of them is taking a donkey ride.

Cable car is the other option, but the line up was few meters out of the cable station that day, we decided walking the winding path, wich is the last option.

Our Sky Express flight to Santorini took off at 10:00 am, we had to get up early again to catch it. The public transportation system in Crete was very convenient, one bus took us all the way to the airport from Amoudara.
The flight from Crete to Santorini took only half an hour, we asked for pick-up services from the hotel, we were staying at Reverie Apartments, I was happy that I didn't have to worry about how to get there.
Our hotel is located at Firostefani, which is about 700 meters from downtown Fira, the receptionist suggested us to take the traditional path behind the hotel, which was built for donkeys to walk on, and where we could see the white villages clinging to the side of the volcanic cliffs.
Walked out the back door of the hotel, we were right on the paved traditional path.
A restaurant right across from our hotel, the sign is neat, but we did not eat at the restaurant.
We walked toward to Fira.
A tiny church on the path, there were tons of churches.
Nea Kameni is a active volcano. Santorini is widely believed to be a candidate for the lost kingdom of Atlantis. We didn't know why, but the whole island looked foggy that day.
Ypapanti Cathedral at the heart of Fira. Walked into downtown Fira, had our lunch at a small cafe, Tim had severe sunburn on his legs from yesterday, we decided to slowly walk back to our hotel. 
Fira overview. Although I had been wanting to see this scene for such a long time, but I felt something was missing when it was right in front of my eyes.
A hotel structure on our way back. Returned to our hotel room, rested for a few hours.
We came out from the hotel around 4:00 in the afternoon, walked toward north to Imerovigli town.
Imerovigli is a little quite town, about 15 minutes walking distance from Firostefani, where our hotel was located.
A church in Imerovigli. We didn't stay there long, and walked toward to Fira again.
The bell tower of a church in Fira, we walked by this locaiton so many times. Sunburn on Tim's legs hurt him so much, we soon returned to our hotel again.
It was just passed 7:00 when we came out, the sun started setting, the whole island was dyed orange.
The color made Fira looked different.
 
Everything became yellowish.
The sunset was around 8:00 pm, we couldn't decide going to Oia or not, and we stayed after all.
 
The sunset in Firostefani was buautiful, but without going to Oia, we would never know how was the sunset like in Oia, then we decided to go Oia the next day.
 
After sunset, lights in Fira were on. We spent some time looking for a restaurant in Fira town.
Didn't know why, I felt like having lambs that night.
Fira town at night.

The third day in Crete, our big plan for the day, was sitting on the beach in Amoudara, and doing nothing.

Our hotel was by Gazi river, we walked passed it everyday, first two days we didn't notice there were lots of snakes in the river.

On the way to the beach, saw this unique-looking flower, and the bee flew into my shot.

Amoudara is 10 kilometes west from Irakleio, there are massive amounts of hotels, restaurants and gift shops in the area.

We started our day on beach at 12:00.

Spent 4 Euros on two beach chairs for a day, the price was very reasonable.

What a nice day to spend time on the beach, I didn't want to sunbathe, and hid under the umbrella. Tim was busy getting tanned. A vandor with a tray selling donuts on the beach, we shared a large chocolate donut for lunch.
 
Although I was already tanned, the umbrella was my protection from not getting darker.
Tim fell asleep under the sun, I did nothing but look at the water sports that were going on in the sea.
 
Windsurfing.

Parasailing.
Didn't spend too much time in the sea, we left the beach around 3:00 pm, went back to the hotel to wash up. After two nights of sandwiches, we both agreed to have dinner at a restaurant for our last night in Crete. Then returned to the hotel and got ready to leave for Santorini the next day.

 
When traveling in Greece, the hotels or restaurants often offered Continental Breakfast, we got tired of having cheese with ham and fruit everyday, so the last day in Old Town, we decided going to an English ownd and ran restaurant to have an English style breakfast that we had been craving.
It's very difficult to find a decent coffee in Greece, Greek coffee is very strong, and instant coffee was only thing we could get except Greek coffee; When we had a chance to have a nice cup of coffee in the restaurant, I couldn't help to order another cup (Refill? there is no such thing in Greece!), and the price we paid for coffee was more than our breakfast.
Finished breakfast, it's time to leave.
On the way out of the Old Town, we tried to catch more memories.
Once again, walked pass Plateia Ippokratous and Marine Gate.
A fountain in front of the Decorative Arts Museum.
Temple of Aphrodite ruins.
Looked at the Arsenal Gate, 'I guess that's it' I thought, I felf sad when walked out of the Eleftherias Gate; Good bye Old Town, good bye Rhodes, I loved this town more than I could tell.
Rhodes Island is so closed to Turkey, you could see it from the Airport.
We took Sky Express flight at 14:30.

Sky Express is a Crete based airline, only operates in between Greek islands. 
Included 2 pilots and 1 flight attendant, no more than 35 people on the flight, that's how tiny the airplane was.
Arrived Crete Heraklio Airport at 15:30, followed the direction that hotel gave us, took a bus form the airport to Amoudara, I didn't know Amoudara was a resort town until we got there, we stayed at Arhodiko Hotel.
Amoudara is about 15 minutes bus ride from downtown Irakleio. Usually we explored the area we were living at when we arrived.
We had a small kitchen in our hotel room, so we bought sandwichs, drinks and fruits, had dinner in our room, also picked up some instant coffee packs for the mornings.
After dinner, we walked along the main street in Amoudara, then walked to the beach not too far from our hotel.
Tim asked will we go to the beach in the next 2 islands, actually I didn't plan for that, Tim wanted to spend a day on beach, then we adjusted our itinerary a little bit.
Returned to the hotel, we jumped into the hotel swimming pool for a while. Waited for the next thing to come, to visit the ancient capital city Palace of Knosos.
This day in Greece, we didn't do much, and we enjoyed time off on the vacation.

 
'Lindos is the most popular excursion from Rhodes town, and the best way to arrive is by boat.' Our travel guide says so, but we took a bus instead. The bus ride form the bus station outside of Old Town to Lindos was about 1 hour and 20 minutes, it was around 12:30 when we arrived Lindos bus station.
Stepped out of the bus, the acropolis was right in front of us.