Greece

I am really behind in my blog updates.  The next few days I will attempt to catch you up on all our summer travels - starting with Greece.

Nath and I had a day exploring Athens which we jammed packed with all the big tourist sites - Acropolis, temple of Zeus, Hadrians arch, and my favourite the Panathenaic stadium (home of the first modern Olympic games).

We enjoyed our Sail Croatia experience so much last summer we signed up with the same company to do Sail Greece.  We spent 6 nights sailing around the Saronic Islands. There were so many highlights from this trip that I will try to narrow it down to one highlight per Island we visited. 
Perdika - first night on the boat and big night out to start the trip.  Anna found a tambourine and wouldn't stop shaking it.
Ermioni - a rough days sailing for those that went a little too big the night before.  We had a welcome cocktail party thrown by medsailors. Nath got a nasty eye infection that warranted a trip to the doctors.
Spetses - when hired quad bikes to circumnavigate the 23km Island, stopping at beach bars on the way around.

Hydra - having a delicious gyros for dinner and watching the amazing sunset while drinking strawberry daiquiri at the sunset bar.
Poros - spending the afternoon on the water sports pontoon getting free beers  I went parasailing and really enjoyed the serenity of the experience. 

Aegina - spending the afternoon at a pool bar, getting my nails done and swimming in fresh water.  The Greek dinner and dancing finished the trip off nicely.

We arrived back in Athens with heavy hearts as our yacht trip was over.  Luckily Nath, Laura, Scott, Anna-Marie and myself were off to Santorini.  Nath and I stayed on our own and spent Saturday afternoon exploring Oia and Fira.  We walked down the 500 odd steps to the Old Port of Fira avoiding all the donkey poo as we went.  The donkeys smelt so bad the we decided to take the cable car back up rather than ride on a donkey.  On Sunday we rented a little red rocket car and picked the others up to explore the rest of Santorini,  We started with the prehistoric town of Akrotiri, before swimming at red beach.  We then found went to Pyrgos before finishing the day off at Santo Winery. 

For Nathan and I this was the end of our Greek Odyssey as we flew home the next day. Greece was my number 1 destination I wanted to visit before we left NZ so I am glad we got there.  It was amazing and I would love to go back.  I miss swimming in crystal clear waters, eating gyros and tzatziki, and the friendliness of locals is so welcoming.  

Wimbledon

I just found this blog in a drafts folder.  This was written in early July.
We had a fantastic day at Wimbledon.  We watched an epic 5 set match with Djokovic winning over Del Potro.  We then watched Murray v Janowicz which wasn't nearly to the same level of play.  Murray was the crowd favourite and won in 4 sets. 
It was very much a white England class system, which led Nath to ask if the tickets were balloted based on colour. 
At the beginning of the day we needed to drink out wine and beer as you aren't allowed glass on the show courts. So we found an empty court to sit beside and then you wouldn't believe it but Janowicz came onto the court to warm up.  Boom, winning at Wimbledon.  Also, by banking with HSBC we were entitled to free strawberry's and cream.  Nath & Mich 2, Wimbledon 0.
It was a long day out, we were at the tennis for nearly 10 hours, plus an hour travel each way.  Definitely worth the trek.  Now we are watching the final in the summer sunshine in our backyard, with the tv facing outside.  Summer has arrived in London.
I have one more week of work until my summer holidays begin.  I am so excited for our sail Greece holiday, cannot wait!

Waiting for ferry - Montenegro

Well we allowed ourselves so much extra time this morning we have arrived 3 hours before our ferry is meant to depart! Luckily we have found a cafe with wifi so we have been entertaining ourselves on the Internet.  Our ferry is taking us from Bar in Montenegro to Bari in Italy.  It is an 8 hour journey.
The last couple of days we have spent at the beach in Sveti Stefan.  A little town with an Island for the rich and famous that we weren't allowed on.  The beach was lovely - warm crystal clear water.  We are still melting in the day with temperatures hitting 37 degrees.  Sleeping at night can be difficult as we have the air con on and some are really loud!
We have found the food to be fairly average and expensive in Montenegro.  Looking forward to a decent pizza in Italy and especially fresh ravioli! Nathan flies into meet us in Naples on Friday night where we then go off to explore Pompeii, Sorento, Isle of Capri, and finally Sardinia.  I'm hoping the temperatures will be cooler in Italy.
When I get back to London I need to write a blog for our amazing Greece trip and fill you in on what we got up to.

Athens

Nathan and I had an earlish start to the day leaving the hotel at 9:30am to beat the crowds and heat to visit the Acropolis. After we wandered through the Greek Agora, which is an ancient market place.  We then found some more modern markets but didn't buy anything.  We had a look through the Acropolis museum, but by then our tummy's were telling us it was lunch time, so it was a quick visit to the museum.  For lunch we ate Gyros - basically a Greek kebab with the best yoghurt sauce ever.  Our day continued with a visit to Hadrians arch (incredible to think he built the wall in England-real globe trotter in his day), a visit to Olympian Zeus temple and finally to the Panathenaic stadium. The stadium held the first modern Olympic Games. Action packed day. Luckily we have been able to relax for an hour in the hotel before heading back out to find dinner.
On the yacht tomorrow - YAY. So excited.

Kew Gardens & Palace

We had a lovely stroll through Kew Gardens last weekend.  When I say stroll I mean 4 hour walk with no breaks for sitting down and no lunch stop!  We took in three massive glass houses, a mini aquarium, Kew Palace, Queen Charlotte's cottage and the tree top walk.  The temperate glass house is the biggest surviving Victorian glass structure in the world! It is closing in three weeks for a 5 year renovation so we were lucky to see it before it closes.  In total the gardens cover 121 hectares. 

 

Oval Cricket

Nath and I went with a group of 5 friends to the NZ v England Twenty 20 match at The Oval cricket ground.  It was a fantastic game with the result going to the wire, NZ winning on the second to last ball, as England needed 7 runs to win off the last ball.  It was awesome to be at a cricket ground that we had seen and heard so much about on tv.  We are getting around some very famous sporting venues.

 

Copenhagen

Nathan and I had a wonderful long weekend in Copenhagen.  We met Zane at the airport when we flew in, and pretty much spent the next three days catching up with him and exploring Copenhagen. Day one we walked up the Round Tower for views of the city.  We then walked to Nyhaven canal area and did a cruise around the waterways.  From here we wanted to hire bikes to cycle out to the Carlsburgh brewery.  The city is packed full of cyclists with cycle lanes everywhere, but it is nigh impossible to find anywhere to rent bikes from.  Eventually we found one shop that had scungy bikes for rent.  We cycled back to the canal area where we had spotted a restuarant in the sun where we had lunch next to the water.  From here we missioned it to the brewery where we did a whistle stop tour as it was close to closing time and we didn't want to forfeit our two 'free' drinks. We returned the cycles and found a nice cafe in a square to sit and enjoy a bottle of wine.  Then we did dinner with a friend of Zane's who we had met at Zane's wedding and had a big night with in Vienna.  It was cool to see Suna again and being a local he knew all the good places to take us.  I headed to bed as the boys went to a party on a little island.

Day two was pretty relaxed in account of the party the night before.  Suna had invited us around for a BBQ, so we walked around our area in the morning and got coffee before going to Suna's. On arrival I was pleased to discover 3 kittens and a 5 month old baby.  We walked to a red bull event (office chair racing) down the hill from Suna's house. After dinner we went to Christiana which is like a hippie area.  It is a free state where they don't pay taxes and tourists aren't allowed to take photos. It was pretty cool, they have a pretty central location so the land is worth mega bucks and the government is unable to kick them off the land.  Similar to the old squatters laws in England.

Day three started with a trip to Tivoli gardens.  However, 1) it was not open for another 15min, 2) you had to pay to get in, so as a result we carried on walking to the far end of town to climb up the bell tower of the Church of our Lady. The view was amazing from the top and we could clearly see the bridge to Sweden.  After, we did some shopping with Zane for Lena and Kai and then had an amazing lunch of open sandwiches in the sun before heading to the airport.
We had a very action packed weekend that was topped off with lovely doses of sunshine.  I was pleased that I didn't find Copenhagen too expensive as I had heard Scandinavian countries are really pricey. I would definitely like to visit Sweden and Finland and see more of Scandinavia.