European Highlights - Greece & Turkey

Our halfway point was in Greece. We visited the Acropolis and had a yummy dinner in the Plaka district. We saw the changing of the guard in front of the tomb of the unknown soldier and heard a demonstration by teachers wanting a 40% pay increase. (No, that's not a typo!)

We had a very relaxing time on a cruise among the Greek Islands. We had a plush cabin on the top deck of the ship that overlooked the bow – with a fantastic view, of course! Mykonos (these pictures), Rhodes, Kusadasi (Turkey) and Patmos were our stops. Patmos was where St John the Evangelist was exiled towards the end of his life, so we went to see the chapel at the cave where tradition says he recorded the book of Revelation. Kusadasi has whet our appetite for seeing more of Turkey, particularly some of the biblical sites, so we are looking forward to visiting in a week’s time.

European Tour Highlights Continued

On to Italy, via the French Riviera & Monte Carlo. Italy is an amazing country but we wouldn’t want to live there! A lot of people and their sense of order is quite different from our expectations. Some of our highlights included seeing the Coliseum, viewing the Sistine Chapel (but the crowds weren’t much fun), visiting the excavations of Pompeii, and having a fantastic lunch at a mozzarella farm. We have here the Leaning Tower of Pisa and us in front of the Pantheon, designed with a hole in the roof!

European Tour Highlights

We have spent a month with a fantastic bunch of Kiwis & Aussies (plus 1 Korean) and made lots of new friends. Even our tour director, Gerry, came from Levin originally. We made our way through 13 different countries. As we’ve done so much, the following is an overview of what we got up to!

Our first stop was Paris. Here we climbed the Eiffel Tower, saw some of the other sights (like the Arc d’Triumph), cruised the Seine River, and tried French cuisine. Frogs’ legs taste like fishy chicken and it is hard to describe escargot.











From Paris we headed through the Cognac & Bordeaux regions to Spain. We stopped in Pamplona (famous for the running of the bulls), then went on to Madrid. We spent a day in Toledo, the original capital city where Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in peace for 400 years. Then we moved on to Barcelona. We saw some fantastical buildings designed by Gaudi, including the still-to-be-completed Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) Church. You can see why Walt Disney was inspired by his work!