After our lunch, ocean fun and ice cream at Perissa, we were back in the bus climbing to the top of the hill on this side of Santorini to go to the Monastery.. a few hundred years old, this place had reclusive monks who did not want to contact outside world for some time. They even buried their dead inside is what our guide told us.
They did open up and have a store near the outside chapel eventually. The whole place was interesting and quiet. Then it got pretty windy and we were told not to have high hopes for later in the evening, given rain clouds were rolling in.
We saw everyone go kiss the same objects and pictures.. couldn't have been good during COVID times! The small chapel was really beautiful.
While we were being told that, a kitten walked out of nowhere and decided to sit on my lap. I love animals. They seem to love me too.. however god has played a cruel trick. I am almost allergic to all cats. Initially the family panicked. They did not want me sick before the last stop. A few people tried to lure it away, but no! The kitten just sat on my lap for a good 10 minutes. Finally the little one grabbed it and placed it on the floor and we had to leave. Apparently six kittens were just born a few weeks back in the Monastery. This was one of those six. Did have watery eyes for a few minutes later in the night, but didn't get sick as everyone expected.
We got amazing views of the Perissa beach from the Monastery.
The little one was still mesmerized by the cat...
Then we drove down to Kamari beach area. Guess this tour has a tie up with some wine makers in Santorini. So we stopped at a rest area near the black beach, and were offered three wines or Cherry juice. Skipped it and ate the crackers. For some strange reason we were hungry. We walked to the beach across the street and took pictures. This beach was full of pebbles but there were no people on this side as far as the eye could see! There were pistachio trees here other than olive trees in this area.. that was a change!
Caught the little one in one of her moments..
We did get to see a real donkey on the way to this place..Apparently there was a time when every house had a donkey to haul things up and down the hillsides of this island !!
A video clip of this leg of the bus tour!
After this short break, we were off to to go up and around all the way to Oia.. the last stop and grand finale for the tour!
After the ruins our next stop was the largest village in the middle of Santorini island called Emporio. It included a small castle, beautiful small walkways (that reminded me of the Galli's of Varanasi) and a village center with a rebuilt Church.
This all blue and white combination gave us the best family pictures on this trip..
we had a good laugh over this sign..there was a lot of potential at this place.. but a lot of hard work to be done.. given my history of house remodeling projects, the family kept mocking me for a good 10 minutes..
fortunately we arrived at the next photo spot
The whole place seemed to be desolate with no inhabitants (a few of these old places are now Airbnb's apparently) but we did not see a single resident in that walk.
After touring the old Emporio area, we walked back down and headed to Perissa. Saw this "cheese" church on the way down!
There is a beautiful black sand beach here and a lot of eating places around the beach. If you eat in a restaurant, they let you use the beach umbrellas for free (in some cases 10 Euros).
We observed that most of the folks who were waiters and ushers in these restaurants were Syrian. There is some Syria Greek connection we don't know about. These folks were extremely nice and kept making jokes and made us laugh as we tried to decide our lunch location..
it was a bad idea to go into the water after a heavy lunch.. but went into the water with the kids for a good 30 minutes. That was part of the tour and the break. Almost everyone in our group had someone from the family go into the water as the rest of the party sat on the reclining chairs and were taking photos of their feet while sipping drinks!
Jr. ventured into the water with me (as did the little one for some time) and took pics of me doing yoga poses on rocks. One of these is very slippery and I got my legs cut up in a few places..
It was a pleasant afternoon, thanks to the clouds!
Post water, we had some yummy ice cream and we drove off to our next stop!
We said bye to Aquarius and started back on the bus tour to the next stop..
saw more churches and blue domed houses on the way..
A short video of this segment of the trip..
The next stop was a drive up the hill to the tallest point on the other side of the island with a lot of weird history!
We were almost at the last leg of the Europe tour. We had visited Lords, gone to South Wimbledon to meet friends, put on a sad face and made it back to Kings Cross after England lost the semi final of the world cup.
Day 12 was going to be interesting.. Would the people of London bounce back or would it be a day of mourning? We were booked on an all day tour with Evans and Evans to catch the best sights of London. It was a 7AM to 5:30 PM tour...
We were up bright and early and made it to the train station. We had to go to Victoria terminal to catch the bus tour. The kids raced ahead to do the ticket entries (we would just do the credit card sliding at the end) and they had checked out local London maps and they really enjoyed figuring out the London Underground.
We made it to the bus stop where all Evans tours left and found breakfast there. Then we were off with a bus full of folks and a very chatty tour guide. She was nice and made sure she crammed an all day tour with all the jokes in her script. It was almost like she was auditioning for a late night talk show job with us.
We sat at the back of the bus with a Canadian mom and her two daughters who were the same age as Jr. and the Little one. This was good for us as we took family pictures for each other throughout the tour.
The first stop was the cathedral. It was very cold and we did not want to hang out. It was also early in the morning. So we spent little time there and went to our next stop, the Palace to see the change of guard.
After so much hype for this by the tour guide, we were almost there when a Palace employee who recognized our guide gave her some information in private. She turned to us and apologized. Apparently the guards will not be there that morning as last minute security changes had been made. DJT was visiting London and it was a surprise. We were all upset and there were lot of jokes from the group. We made it to the Palace, took pictures, then walked back along a park.
There was still one hope. There was a horse guard change that we could catch if we all walked fast enough. Walk we did and were not disappointed!
Then it was time to board the bus again and go to the St. Pauls cathedral. We went through it but I really wanted to go to the whispering dome. During an earlier visit to London 20 years ago, I had been up to the whispering dome and it was interesting.. Still remember trying out the whisper thing with my friends who kept experimenting multiple times till the whisper came back with the exact message sent out. (note to self, should find out what Weeshie is up to these days!)
We were however told that there was a narrow staircase and we had only 20 minutes to go back so there would be no climbing up. I tried to tell the lady that the same thing had happened at the Eiffel tower and we did make it up and down by running, but she would not let us go. She said there was no time. We all had to go down to the crypts! So off we went to the floor below the church to see all the famous people in their resting place and the history behind it. The kids enjoyed that part of the tour.
This was followed by a quick lunch outside where there were long lines in every restaurant thanks to the local business folks standing in line. We were all to gather outside in a courtyard after finding lunch. The courtyard had a big screen TV playing tennis matches and there were seats for people to just come sit and enjoy during lunch. The whole place had a relaxed atmosphere and the coulds made sure some of the heat was not felt.
We enjoyed waiting there for 20 minutes for everyone to gather and went to our next stop. The Tower of London. On the way we were passing Trafalgar square, Picadilly circus, etc. etc. and got a lot of interesting tidbits from our guide.
The tower of London was interesting and hindsight being 20/20 we should have just gone and seen it on our own. A lot of folks in our group split as soon as we entered the tower. ONly later we found out why. It was the last official stop and after that we got tickets for a Thames river cruise that would take us to where we wanted. We walked with the group and found that the tour was dragging.
Then we also took our cruise tickets, stood in line to go see the "crown jewels" which were mostly taken from India, all the while shaking our heads in disbelief on how the winner always gets to rewrite history. There was no photographs allowed in the crown jewels museum. The security guards actually went after folks who took pictures and made them delete it off their phones. That automatically challenged a bunch of tourists in front of us to go take cell phone pics when no one was watching.. we found the whole thing to be very amusing..we went up to one more tower where two kids were said to have been killed in the succession wars and walked towards the cruise stop.
Here are some slide shows from the day..
The weather was perfect, contrary to what we keep hearing about "London weather being drab" and we thoroughly enjoyed the ride along the Thames.
Got some nice pano shots from the slow moving boat..
When we finally got off, we had to go to the closest underground station to meet San's college classmate for dinner. He lived 40 mintues from London but worked in the Charing Cross area. It was going to be one more exercise to find the right station and get there.
We ended up in the wrong station! We took another train and finally found him. It was another busy area with a lot of restaurants close to the Opera house. It also started raining heavily by the time we reached there, but it was pleasant. Picked a mexican place to eat dinner. The food was very yummy and we said our byes and walked back for one last subway ride for the day.
It was a very good day as all day tours went. Would definitely recommend Evans and Evans for this tour. To quote my grandma "alangaama kulungaama kootindu ponan" .. it was a no stress tour with the right pace and right breaks.
A video of Day 12 is here..
Day 12 was great. We walked a lot but some how were not tired. We were smiling throughout the day, enjoying the sights, having a good day. I learned that it takes the family almost a dozen days to hit true vacation mode and to let go of little things and be okay.
The last day of the tour was Day 13 and was to be THE highlight of the London leg.. Hogwarts!
The first time I saw amazing stained glass windows was in a Church somewhere in the Ohio/Kentucky border when I went to present something as a grad student in Cincinatti. We had half a day and I was on a package tour as a grad student and remember going to a magnificent church with stained glass windows.
After traveling a lot more, have seen many more churches and stained glass panes, but the ones in the Notre Dame cathedral are by far the best I have seen.. Mind blowing large and intricate pieces that bring on a light show as the sun moves across..
The previous post on this series is here... Yes, we are still on Day 9 part 3 and it was a packed day!
We went from the Eiffel tower with smiles all around back on the boat to the cathedral. The views of the place from the boat gave us a sense of grandeur that was to follow.
There was no "jump the line" tickets at Notre Dame and the tour guide told is it was free and therefore everyone had to go stand in the line. There were a 1000 people in the line in front of us and the line went to the other side of the yard in front of the church which was the size of a football stadium.
We were walking slowly listening to the guide on the headphones about the history of the place, how many times it was built and rebuilt and extended, etc. etc. and before we realized were at the entrance.
There was a wedding photo shoot going on and we watched it for a few minutes
and it was our turn to enter..
This is one beautiful place of worship! You see hundreds of people sitting in silence and that silence has a power. Whatever can hold that many people to silence commands respect!
The slide shows hopefully do justice to the views we got.. but it will not reflect the sense of awe felt inside the halls.
We sat there for a while and walked out with the group. Most of the folks were very silent. We had not got this introspective even at the Vatican!
The tourguide told us that the guided part of the tour was over and we could use the boat ticket to hop and off on any side and keep seeing Paris..
The girls who had so far been giggly and happy were tired at that point. It was almost 5PM. We had to find dinner and go to my next planned stop..
The next blog post might come under heavy editing by the Censor board of Traveling Narayanans, so I will choose my words carefully..
The previous post on the Europe trip series is here...
Day 3 of the Europe trip was visiting Pisa. Now Pisa is neither here nor there on the big city list. So we did not want to stay overnight in Pisa.
The plan was to take the first available train to Pisa from Rome (which is via Florence with a 10 minute window to change trains) and leave the luggage in the cloak room at Pisa station. Now you know why each of us was allowed only one check in bag and a backpack.
We dragged the check in bags from train to train and from train to baggage room. My suitcase handle broke. I had to improvise and used Jr's bandana as the handle and dragged the suitcase along. We were on a tight schedule. Once we paid and gave the luggage in (6 euros per bag), we had to go to the leaning tower by 11:45 and that meant 45 mintues to walk there.
It took us almost 35 minutes to walk and we did stop for 5 minutes to get some ice cream for the kids. They were tired. We did stop for a few seconds every now and then to take pics on the way..
If you are going up the tower, you have to book it well in advance. They have a limit on how many people can go up and down the tower and you have time slots. We reached at 11:45 and found out that no backpacks allowed (even a camera backpack). So we walked across the field to a locker and put the handbags/ camera bag there. When we walked back to the line, it was our turn.
It is a narrow walkway with pretty much one person at a time except for few niches where you could let someone pass through. We climbed up and got beautiful views of Pisa and the Cathedral.
After coming back down we went to the cathedral. The tickets were included with the tower. So we didn't have to stand in that line. We strongly recommend buying tickets well in advance for this or you cannot cover the cathedral and get back to train station if you try to do Pisa as a half day stop. Remember the Florence to Pisa train is a local train that is not fast and most trains to other important places are from Florence.
This cathedral was beautiful. Amazing ceiling, altar, paintings on the walls. We spent 30 minutes walking to the sanctum and back.
From the top of the tower, realized that we had taken a longer route to come to the tower. So on the way back I suggested a shortcut. The family came along reluctantly. Then I made one mistake. That almost proved costly as it took us to a city center courtyard. Once we figured it out we were off by one block. Luckily I asked for directions and we were back on track. I got yelled at for the next 15 minutes by all three for losing the 5 minutes. We ate lunch at a quiet restaurant. The service was excellent as was the food. For a guy who eats cheese sticks at Denny's, cheese balls were a novelty. Had that for the first time in Pisa.
Here are two slideshows with pictures..
and a Pano slide show. The Panoramic views at Pisa were amazing!
We made it back to the train station and waited for our luggage to be handed out. The cloak room is all the way in the back of the platform. So yet again we barely made it to our train to Florence and then to Venice.. I was already limping by then with the hardened skin in my foot hurting me every time the foot touched the ground.
The video highlights of the trip.. including a time lapse of my entire walk down from the top of the tower..
So it was a relief to sit on the train and catch our breath!
Monday, January 1, 2024 at 3:37PM ;)
They did open up and have a store near the outside chapel eventually. The whole place was interesting and quiet. Then it got pretty windy and we were told not to have high hopes for later in the evening, given rain clouds were rolling in. ;)
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