Martin's Travel Journal (Public view)

We arrive in Melbourne at 6am after we get through customs we meet Debbie and Rosie for quick coffee and catch up before our 8am flight. Sarah Rachel and Robyn are waiting for us at Launceston airport – good to catch up and we have to spend a bit of time as Keira has left her handbag on the plane – first ti...

A long long day more airline food, inflight entertainment a bit of a sleep and a brief stop in Hong Kong

We arrive at the Athens port of Piraeus at 7am and have disembarked by 7:30. Take a taxi to the train station where we get the train to Monsteraki station in down town Athens, where we put our bags in lockers for the day. Its quite cold in Athens and has rained over night so after rugging up a bit we head to the ancien...

Arrived Agios Nicolaos 7am. Off the boat quickly and walked to the heart of the town which sits around a beautiful lagoon – lake Voulismeni. After a look around the lagoon the fish life is amazing we walked to Agios Nicolaos church on a headland overlooking the town then to the Cretan Olive Oil farm where we have...

Arrived at Rhodes early 7am – had breakfast on the boat overlooking the old city before heading into town on foot. Quite an amazing fortified city, the base for the knights of St John in their medieval crusades to the holy land. Walking up the avenue of the knights you could almost imagine them living here, maybe...

Arrive at the Island of Patmos at about 7:30am. We grab a taxi ride to the Grotto of the Apocalypse – a small cottage built on the side of the hill around a cave where it is claimed John the evangelist wrote the book of Revelations. Very impressed by the cave with very Greek orthodox decore. After the cave the ta...

After sailing overnight from Istanbul we arrived on the island of Mykonos at 3pm. After disembarking at the ferry port we walked about a km to the centre of town. Before looking around the area known as little Venice. Through beautiful narrow streets and lane ways of whitewashed box like houses and shops. Then we head ...

 Catch the tram from Tophane where the ship is moored to Saltanahmet – basically the centre of all things cultural in Istanbul. First stop after a shoe shine the Blue Mosque an active mosque with an exquisite interior, then across the square to the Hagia Sophia Museum a former mosque and before that christian chu...

 After setting sail at 6pm on Friday night we cover 360 nautical miles which is about 600kms by 3pm the next day when we arrive at Istanbul. On the way we have sailed north across the Aegean Sea through the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara and the Bosporus. We entered the Dardanelles at the tip of the Gallipoli pe...

 After breakfast we checked out leaving our bags at the hotel walked along to Syntagama Square overlooked by the Grand Parliament building – filled by idiots – according to most Greeks we talked to about politics, even worse than Italy) From here we walked through the national gardens, not much to write hom...