“Excuse me? Is this your receipt?”

Mykonos

                After checking into our hotel up a mountainous hill overlooking the town, Sara and I began the descent and began trawling our new set of shops. We fell in love with the jewellery and artwork and even bought a few things... that night Dad picked his new favourite bar and bought a book on Greek Mythology which he read over the next few days. After dinner, Sara and I thought it was time to check out the night life and left the parentals to do their own thing. We bar hopped to a few places, each getting more expensive than the next but eventually settled at the Jackie O, gay bar where we talked to some other tourists and got our dance on.... after that... things get a little blurry... Sara and I are not proud of this. Though neither of us has EVER forgotten an evening, so surely we are entitled to one night in our adult lives to... well... forget...

Hellloooooo Santorini!

We set off for Athens airport, having left our big bags at our hotel. Sara and I managed to cram our week’s worth of clothes into a day bag each, and Mum and Dad shared 1 of their suitcases so that we wouldn’t have to lug all our winter clothes and other useless items to the islands, as we would be returning to our hotel in Athens for one night before sailing to Venice. We caught a busy train to the airport, checked in our bags... and got in the queue for the airport scanners... it was not until we began emptying our pockets that Dad noticed his wallet.... was missing! Argh! 4 days into his holiday and he’d already lost one of his most important possessions... He could not come to terms with the fact that his faithful button on the back of his boardshort-like pants had not secured in his wallet. He was certain he would have felt someone unbutton it if that were the case. He decided it must have fallen out on the train... not been pickpocketed... because of his faithful... button... not wanting to rub salt in his wounds, Sara and I tried not to explain the missing logic in his theory and decided it best to accept that while his fortress-like button would have saved him from being pickpocketed, it was still flimsy enough to undo itself to allow his wallet to jump out at its own free will... yes... that is the logical answer... Ok so Dad is right now seething while reading this so I will move on... We continued through airport security and made our way to our boarding gate. Sara then began the calls to the train’s lost and found department before we all boarded our flight to Santorini.

The Awesome Foursome… together…

Athens

                Dad had arrived in Athens a few hours before us, so he had explored the transport system and a lovely restaurant for our reunion dinner. Mum, Sara and I arrived at the airport, took the wrong bus, and eventually found our way to the hotel to meet Dadda. Once again it was weird for Sara and I see a familiar face after 6 months of travel, and we were able to again retell our trip stories, in unison... After we dropped our bags we all went out for a family dinner at a local Greek restaurant. The food was delicious so Dad picked well. Another great thing about Dad arriving... Aussie food! Because Mum had been travelling for a while before meeting us, she had left some things with Dad to bring over... Tim Tams! Mint Slice! Twisties! Vegemite! and JATZ!! Oh how we had missed Aussie snack food! Most countries we have been to have really tried their best at making yummy snack food but nothing compares to the food we have grown up on. We did very well not to eat it all at once and managed to make it last the 5 weeks with the parentals, before needing to unload our baggage for the our flight to London...

“Are you ready?? Are you really really ready??”

Sorrento

We arrived in Sorrento in the afternoon, and trudged our bags through the streets and up to our hotel. We then began exploring our new surroundings by wandering through the tourist shops all along the small winding streets. We stopped for dinner at a small pub, an English pub! We thought we had struck gold to finally find a restaurant that served food other than Italian... but the chicken burgers we ordered were more like green scrapings from the factory floor, so Sara and I sent them back. We then continued to wander the streets and came across a parade down the main street. Priests, men and boys marched along with flags, incense, candles and crosses. I’m not quite sure what it was for but interesting to watch nonetheless.

“Back in old Napoli, that’s Amore”

We awoke on our final day in Sienna with many hours to kill before our midnight bus to Naples. We checked out after breakfast and left our bags with the reception before heading out to explore anything we had missed in Sienna. We went to the post office and sent home yet another box, trawled through the shops again and then sat in the main square to people watch. With still so much time to kill we decided to ask the tourist office one more time if there was anything we had missed. Their response was “have you been to this church (while pointing at the map), or perhaps this church? Or maybe this church? Or there is also this church??” to which we replied, “yes, yes and no but I think we’ve seen enough churches, is there any other attractions we should see?”.... the tourist office lady looked at us confused and said “it’s a very small town”...