A slight change of plans...

To start things off here are a few pics from our Greek travels:


The view of Santorini from the ferry.


The red sand beach that Jordan spoke of.


We rode our ATV's to the top of a hill in Santorini and got this lookout...


And this one.


Jordan on his ATV.


This is Fira, the main city in Santorini. This is also the place where we had lunch.


Jordan stands in front of Oia, another city on Santorini.


At one of the beaches we stopped at for a dip this dog came running at Jordan barking. Slightly startled by this Jordan sat up and the dog promptly sat down on his towel. It took quite a bit of work to retrieve the towel from this stray mutt but we finally did it.


This is the last pic we took on out ATV trek, another shot of Oia.


Just before leaving Mykonos we came across this disturbingly large pink pelican.

Well, as the title reads there has been a slight change of plans...actually, more like a big one! We posted not long ago that we had booked a couple ferries and a flight that was to take us from Santorini to Myknons and then back to Athens where we had a flight to Venice. Unfortunately, GA Ferries had a different plan for us. We had tickets for an midnight ferry out of Mykonos which was delayed one hour. No delay is fun but 1hr we can deal with, especially with rumors flying around that due to the weather the ferry might not even show up at all. So, we happily boarded the ferry on our way back to Athens. Well, about 2hrs into our journey they pulled the boat in to the port at Syros island and told us they couldn't go any further until the weather improved. At this point we had about a 6hr cushion before we were in danger of missing our Athens flight so we weren't panicking too much. Well, 6hrs came and went and the boat still had not moved. So, at this point we have missed our flight out of Athens and we are stuck on a boat that we cant really get off of for risk of it leaving at any moment. We tried to sleep away as much of the time as possible but there are only so many ways you can try and position yourself in the extremely uncomfortable chairs we were sitting in. We sat there for nearly 28hrs before they finally announced that the boat was about to depart, we were ecstatic to say the least! After another 7 hours on the boat we finally docked in Athens. Happy to finally be on dry land we hurried to the airport to see what options we had to get out of Greece. We wandered the airport for about 6hrs shopping for our best option. The original airline we had purchased from could do nothing to help us so we had to kiss that 147 euros goodbye and buy new tickets with Alitalia. Unfortunately these tickets were considerably more expensive and flew to Milan rather than Venice. But we obviously wanted to make it Oktoberfest on time so Milan it was. We are going to try and make it to Venice after we are done in Munich.

We arrived in Milan around 10pm and took a bus into the downtown district. By now it was about 11:30pm and we wanted nothing more than a shower and a bed. We found the nearest hostel in our travel books and headed towards it. We found the spot where the hostel was meant to be but all we found was a large graffiti covered wall with a gate, a buzzer, and a tiny sticker with the name of the hostel. So, we buzzed and the gate swung open to reveal the most disgusting trash filled courtyard I think I have ever seen. We made a split second decision that no matter how cost effective this place may be we will not stay here. So, we turned to leave as the gate swung shut. In the dark we struggled to open it but couldn't....it was like something out of a horror movie, we were just waiting to be grabbed from behind. In panic mode I scrounged through my backpack for a flashlight....I found it!!! With the light we found the latch and hurried on to the street, safe at last. At this point time was rapidly passing and we had nowhere to stay yet so we opted to stay at a hotel, despite the price. We found a 3 star hotel that was willing to drop the price for one night to 100 euros since we were checking in so late. This was way above what we normally pay for a night but we really had no choice. Our room was a glorious sight! It had two huge beds, a huge bathroom, and everything else we could imagine....we had the best sleep of our whole trip here.

Morning came way too early and we booked a night train to take us to Munich (Oktoberfest!). We now had the day to kill in Milan so we hit the streets. Milan doesn't have much to offer in the way of tourist attractions, it mainly just caters to those with ridiculous amounts of money to spend on clothes. This is a picture of the Duomo, one of the rare tourist things there was to see:



We have now arrived in Munich after our 12hr overnight train from Milan and we are about to head over to the Oktoberfest show grounds where we will also be celebrating Jordan's birthday tomorrow. We will be sure to report on that very soon!