Moving up the Greek Islands

Kos and Kalymnos to Thessaloniki (8-11th July)

We spent the morning looking around Kos, it's various Roman ruins and a castle built by Knights of the Crusades. It's starting to get very hot during the day now, well into the mid 30s. We took the hydrofoil across to Kalymnos which takes about 30 mins, we're staying here for 1 night and catching the late(10pm) ferry to Thessalonaki on Thursday. Sonia from Pension Alexis organised the accommodation for us at Greek House, we have a small studio which looks out across Kalymnos' capital of Porthia. Spent the afternoon relaxing before heading out for a swim at the beach where all the locals cool off in the evening at about 6pm.

The monastary above Porthia, Kalymnos

Thursday - it's hot, 29 degrees by mid morning, in the evening the locals at the bar said it reached 39 during the day. Spent the morning looking around town and visiting the museum, lunch down by the harbour. In the afternoon we took a bus up to the monastery that sits above Porthia, the view from there is fantastic, walked back down into to town afterwards and headed straight for the beach. The sunburn from Rhodes is starting to dissipate, still very pale compared to the locals.

Boarded the ferry at 10pm, we had a 4 berth cabin for just the 2 of us, very comfortable and the 20 hours flew by with the help of a few cans of local lager, leftover pizza, and a movie and some TV episodes on the netbook. Arriving into Thessaloniki at 6pm on Friday, no surprise it's hot, we wandered around looking for our hotel for far too long. The city is mainly boring/ugly concrete apartments, but has lots of lovely old churches dotted everywhere and the main bar/restaurant area is really cosmopolitan and relaxing.

Our cabin on the Ferry

Saturday was spent visiting museums and so forth, have now seen enough broken pots and reconstructed graves to sink a very large ship. A short but violent thunderstorm hit late afternoon so got a bit wet, was quite welcome though as the shower at the hotel leaves a lot to be desired, water for example. R in a bit of a flap when she realised she'd thrown out a crucial bit of our InterRail passes, so a speedy trip to the Train station and some rather confused people at the ticket office, and managed to get replacements, so we dont get fined 50 Euros each for messing up the tickets! Note to self, even if it looks uninportant, don't throw anything away!

Agia Sofia, Thessaloniki, Greece

Our train to Sofia in Bulgaria leaves at 7am Sunday morning, another late night (most people seem to start eating around 10pm in Greece) and early start on the cards.

More photos to follow! Yes, there will be some of us, and no, there are no '18-30' type photos, we're much too old for that kind of carry on haha. The whole collection is on flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rachaelr/collections/72157620533221612/

Lovely Kos (Κως)

Arrived in Kos town last night, on a ferry from Rhodes.

The island is beautiful, as most Greek Islands seem to be! We're staying at Pension Alexis, which is fantastic. Large, clean rooms (ours has a balcony overlooking the port and Castle!), and a very friendly welcome from Sonia and her son, who run the Pension. Dinner was at a local Taverna recommended by Sonia.

Today we hired scooters and drove out to Mastichari Beach in the morning, where I had a quick swim, and we had lunch at 'El Greko' restaurant, where my sister L. used to work 5 or 6 summers ago (photo on the left was taken there, mix of salads and dips, yum!). The owner Catherine was there, and she remembered both L., and Mum, who was a holiday rep there at the same time. Lovely food, and a beautiful location right on the beach.

Drove back to the Askipillion, where Hiprocates used to teach apparently. Almost had a problem with taking the camera in, which was weird... no tripods OR 'professional' cameras, tho I've seen 'pros' working with point and shoot cameras, and total incompetents with the big 1DS Canons, so the type of camera really doesn't determine what you'll be doing with the shots! Was ok tho, took lots of 'snapshots' with us in them, so there is no way we could have been mistaken for 'professionals' haha! Bit more driving around in the afternoon, then found a cafe with free wifi.

I've been quite impressed with the wifi and internet access in the Greek islands so far - fast ADSL connections, and most cafes leave their wifi open to use as long as you're drinking. Beers are around 2.50-4.50 euros for a 500ml, so it's not too bad, esp as we were going to have a beer anyway!

Booked up ferry for tomorrow afternoon (hydrofoil!) going to Kalymnos, the next island over. And also booked a cabin on the big ferry from Kalymnos to Thessenolaki for Thursday night - takes about 20 hours, but a lot of that is overnight (leaves at 10PM, arrives at 6PM the next night), and we have a private cabin to hide in with air con, and there are plenty of bars aboard to keep us entertained.

Next post may be from Kalymnos, or from the Ferry to Thessenolaki, even the ferries have internet here!

Rhodes, but where's the Collossus?

Arrived in Rhodes, Greece on Sat 4th July, after a rather boring flight from Cyprus to Athens, a delayed plane (not sure why), then sitting on the runway for another 2 hours while security threw a group of Greeks off the plane. Wish we knew what they were saying, was rather heated for a while, with some fists being thrown about.

Weather is much more forgiving than Cyprus, only a lovely 22-24 deg, and a nice breeze. Got up really early this morning to take some photos before the hordes of tourists came piling off their cruise ships. Cats everywhere, most are strays. Staying at 'Mango Rooms', a nice budget place with double rooms, and a bar right in the middle of the twisting Old Town alleyways in a lovely square.

Found a fantastic taverna last night, Taverna Kostas, which is in the Loney Planet, so not that off the beaten track, but the food was good price and really nice and rustic (spicy meatballs YUM!). Today we trawled the tourist trap shops for a while, and we both picked up knock off sunglasses for €6 each (Gucci for me!), then up a tourist-trap clocktower (which did happen to have the best view in the Old Town), and onto the Palace of Knights, which is full of mosaic floors 'borrowed' (forcibly removed?!) from the Island of Cos (Kos).

K is off on his own now doing some exploring, as I'm too tired to go out in the sun.

Next stop, the island of Kos, via ferry tomorrow afternoon.

First stop - Cyprus

We've arrived at our first stop on the mammoth tour of Europe, Cyprus!

Our first stop was Pafos for a night, staying in a Holiday apartment right on the harbour/beach, with a very welcome swimming pool.

Yesterday we hired a car and drove up to Polis and the rather disappointing 'Baths of Aphrodite', had a nice ocean swim, then back down to Limmasol and through to Lefkosia.

The weather is fantastic, it hit 34 deg C today in Lefkosia (Nicosia), which might not have been the best choice of day for a walking tour outside the Venetian City walls. We've been all over Lefkosia today, including into the Turkish occupied section of the city, where we looked at the mosques and indoor markets. To cross into the North of the city, we had to get issued Turkish visas on a piece of paper to keep in our passports - the short 20m walk through the UN 'green line' zone was like walking into another country all together, from a modernised, busy city, to a small Turkish town. Dinner tonight will probably be at a Taverna, which doesn't really get going until 9.30-10pm.

Tomorrow we fly to Rhodes, from Larnaka Airport, so we have about a hour to drive tomorrow morning to reach the airport.

No photos online yet, we need to find an internet cafe or connection we can upload some pics from, hopefully soon.

Edit: Uploaded some pics, and added to post

Baaaa! UK ad filmed in Wellington Train Station

Keep seeing the Trainline ad come up on the telly, and always thought it had been filmed at Wellington Train Station (in New Zealand).

Turns out it was! And they're not hiding it - there's a note on their site:

The advert was shot in Wellington Station, New Zealand. Why? Because sheep in the UK don't have woolly coats in the summer.

I've always liked the main building at Wellington Train Station - bit of a shame the platforms are so rubbish tho! They've managed to hide the supermarket that's taken over one end of the main entrance, and some of the old drycleaning shops etc (are they still there?!). The timetable board shown in the Ad isn't there tho, must have got that from a UK station and spliced it in.

Here's the ad for anyone that hasn't seen it:



The trainline.com link.

A few (?!) years ago while walking through Wellington, we spotted another UK ad being filmed, for Sugar Puffs. Starring the 'Honey Monster', he was jumping down onto a skip in an alleyway just off Courtney Place. Not knowning who the Honey Monster is, it looked rather weird to us! Been looking on YouTube, but can't find that ad. Let me know if anyone finds it?

Row row row your boat..

... or not, as the case may be for these poor boats!

Taken at Lake Windermere, Lake District, England.

and we're off!

next group of ebay auctions have just started...

broken MacBook 13" (white)

Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop

Crumpler laptop bag

Wireless keyboard and Optical Mouse

And my beloved Canon 350D + a whole lot of accessories and 2 lenses (going to miss you! *sniff* *sob*)!

My life as an eBay'er

We've decided to have a HUGE clear out of stuff we don't really need anymore, and the eBay'in has started. 2 days of shredding laptop hard drives, reinstalling Windows (euck!), dragging out old dusty boxes, looking for those install and driver CD's that I *swore* were still in the box, a few hours crafting up the listings in GarageSale (a rather nice Mac OSX app for creating eBay auctions), and a photo-shoot later, and we're ready to go.

First item up: a copy of Partition Magic 7 (with cd, licence key and user guide). Bidding starts at 50p (postage extra)... bargain!

Still to come this week:

A Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop, my prized Canon 350D+18-55 kit lens with extra lens and accessories, a Crumpler laptop bag, wireless keyboard + optical mouse, and a Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop.

Later in the month/early June:

2x APC UPS backup systems, a Samsung 17" LCD monitor, and anything else we find while packing up.

London Marathon 09 images

Shots from the London Marathon.

Update- a selection are now up for sale on Alamy.com.
Celebs, the elite, and the plain ol' wacky :)

G20 for sale!

Totally forgot to post that my g20 images are up for sale on Alamy.com.

All available under Editorial licenses only.

I'm shooting the London Flora Marathon this weekend also (got myself a press pass), so they will also go up on Alamy. If anyone out there wants me to look out for them at the finish, drop me your runner ID, and estimated finish time - if I'm still in the Media Gantry, be sure to wave as you go by :)