Greece

Having completed our brief tour of the south of England we wound up on a Sunday evening at the very start of June in the environs of Heathrow airport – which came as a considerable shock after the leafy and pleasant parts of the land through which we had meandered over the three preceding days.

Having handed over the keys to our hire car and settled into the Heathrow hotel which was to act as the staging post for the next phase of our adventure we spent some time consolidating all of our traveling chattels into the small number of bags that could be carried aboard our impending flight to Athens. This feat was rendered far simpler by the degree of planning that had been carried out in advance. I have always thought that I am no slouch in the organisational department, but the Kickass Canada Girl – as might be expected – knocks me into a cocked hat every time. My only consolation is that together we make a pretty good team.

Not a great deal of sleep was to be had that night because we had to be up again at crack of dawn to schlep blearily round to Terminal Five for our ridiculously early flight south. We wondered – as we did so – if we had somehow missed a trick that might have made the day more comfortable, but the fact is that time was always going to be tight. The flight to Athens takes around four hours and one must of, course, factor in another couple of hours for check-in. There is a time difference of two hours between London and Athens and it takes about an hour (even once one has cleared immigration and customs and located one’s driver in the mêlée outside the terminal) to get to Pireas – the port of Athens.

For our cruise boarding was carried out between three and six o’clock in the afternoon and the gentle reader will not need me to ‘do the math’ to work out the time at which we had had to set our alarm. We could – of course – have traveled the day before and stayed in an hotel in Athens, but that would have meant one less day seeing lovely friends in the UK.

A word about our ship – the Celestyal Crystal. If you have been put off the idea of cruising because you can’t stand the thought of being cooped up in a huge floating resort with thousands of other people then Celestyal might be more your thing. We chose this Greek line for two reasons: first, they are Greek – not only do they know the waters but at the moment they are one of the only lines sailing into Kusadasi in Turkey – and we wanted to see Ephesus; second, their ships are considerably smaller than many of the bigger lines.

It all depends what you look for in a cruise. If you want simply to float around in the sunshine being entertained at every moment without having to make an effort, this is not the cruise for you. If – on the other hand – your intention is to get off the ship as much as possible, with a view to wallowing in all of the antiquity and mythology that the Greek islands have to offer… then this is the one!

Besides – ain’t she pretty?!