July 2023 (London, Santorini and Naxos)
Euro Adventure Chapter 3 – London:
Rewind to the end of June/beginning of July and we ticked off a bucket list item together being attending the second Ashes (cricket) Test at Lord’s. Andrew remembers growing up as a kid in Glen Waverley (I grew up there too!), going to bed with a transistor radio and tuning into a faraway place called England to listen to the Ashes. He also vividly remembers hearing ““Welcome to Lord’s where the covers are on. It’s raining and the start of play will be delayed.”
To actually be at Lord’s for the Ashes is a dream come true for him. A dream I actually made come true four years ago when I insisted that he take our sons (all three are cricket tragics!). Our sons were coming to the end of their university studies and, before work got in the way for the boys, I wanted the three of them to have a special experience together. In return, I booked my place for 2023!!
Both Andrew and I were very excited to be in London (a city we both love) and to attend each day of the Test. We walked there each day (about an hour’s walk from our hotel in Bloomsbury) and were lucky enough to see five days of cricket.
The first day started with pitch invaders and the last day was marked (some would say marred) by a controversial stumping of an English player which led to the, “Same old Aussies, always cheating” chant which persisted for the rest of play. A lot has been written about all that so I won’t labour the actual cricket drama.
Instead, I want to mention what I thought about attending the Lord’s Test.
First of all, the London Summer weather! We barely saw the sun in five days. We had misting rain (I learnt a new word - “mizzle”) four out of five days, one day I froze (my fault for not bringing a warm jacket) and we had a few rain delays. The Lord’s Hovercover (a cool hovercraft to protect the pitch) got a good workout!
That aside, the Test was full of colour – from the colourful candy-striped blazers and ties to the various food trucks to the picnic area to the green sloping cricket ground. The slope is hard to get your head around – in Australia, cricket grounds are flat.
Also hard to get your head around is that you can take alcohol into Lord’s. There are rules but the only that applied to me was a bottle of champagne per person per day! It was so odd hearing champagne corks pop all day and the cheer if a cork made it on to the ground! Seemed rather dangerous to me but it was novel and fun!
Despite the level of alcohol consumed (brought in or bought at Lord’s), I thought the crowd behaviour was excellent. Nothing like the rowdy crowds I see at the cricket or AFL in Melbourne. Certainly, the crowd is smaller (Lord’s holds just over 31,000 people) but it was more than that. The crowd was largely quiet and “educated”(about cricket). You weren’t supposed to move around except at the end of an Over or during breaks in play. It felt more like going to the tennis. Yes, it did change a bit on Day 5 but I have a theory on that.
Days 1- 4, the tickets are very expensive and hard to purchase. Basically, you need to be a Marylebone Cricket Club Member or win the right to buy a ticket in the ballot or buy an expensive package. That rules out groups such as the Barmy Army from attending and/or sitting as a group. On Day 5, however, the tickets were much cheaper and were sold at the last minute, making attendance much more accessible. Day 5 also fell on a Sunday.
I think the difference in the crowd composition mixed with the pressure cooker of the Test result being on the line and the controversial stumping all combined and resulted in some not so nice behaviour.
All I can say is that we found everyone so lovely from the MCC staff offering to take photos, wishing us a good day and hoping that we’ve had a good day to the people we met at the ground, in the supermarket and on the street. To us, the English people were curious and chuffed that we had made such a long trip and wanted to wish us well. We felt very welcomed.
Last point on the Test Match – the women to men ratio (to me) seemed about 1:5 so there was never a queue to the women’s toilets!
The Test finished on the Sunday and Wimbledon started on the Monday. We had missed out on the Ballot but kept checking for Returns and landed two tickets for Day 1 on Court 3. What a sport watcher’s dream – Lord’s then Wimbledon!
The weather continued to impress…not…and we lost about an hour of play but we managed to see great tennis and have a good look around the event. We had a Pimms and lemonade and we had strawberries and cream. It was a wonderful day!
Three full days to sightsee London remained and we walked our feet off! Some highlights: ABBA Voyage, High Tea at the Ritz, “Les Miserables” at the Sondheim Theatre and the Warner Brothers’ Harry Potter Studio Tour.
ABBA Voyage was amazing – it was the next best thing to seeing ABBA live and the ABBA images were so realistic and life-like. Definitely a must do if you’re an ABBA fan. Our crew aged 19 – 55 all loved it!
I had been to the Harry Potter tour in 2015 but the others had never been so we were all excited. You walk through real sets that were used, you try flying on a broomstick (optional!), you drink Butterbeer (also optional and very yum – reminds me of creaming soda!) and you get just a bit of an idea how complex film-making actually is. Well worth a visit!
Happily exhausted, our party of 5 flew to Santorini for some beach time.
Euro Adventure Chapter 4 - Santorini and Naxos, Greece:
Our 10 day beach break was perfection. We slowed up on the walking and amped up the lounging, reading and swimming in the Aegean Sea! Very worthwhile pursuits given the mid 30s heat.
We stayed on a black pebbled beach in Santorini. – Kamari Beach. It is the longest stretch of beach on Santorini and is close to the airport. After buying “water shoes” for about 10 Euro (which should really be called “rock shoes”!), we could hop in and out of the water without wincing.
We loved Kamari Beach – there were heaps of tourist shops (some tacky stuff but also some lovely things), restaurants and bars. Lounges and umbrellas line the beach and are free or minimal cost if you eat or drink at the restaurant behind. That also means that you can use their toilet which is very handy if you spend the day at the beach. You just need to pay attention as to whether you can flush toilet paper or not! (Tip - usually not!)
There are also loads of little hotels with swimming pools out the front facing the Aegean Sea. We would have needed to pay for 3 rooms for our party of 5 so, instead, we rented a really cute apartment. It was on the main street (but there was never any noise) and a 5 minute walk to the beach. It was incredibly relaxing!
We worked out that hardly anything opened until 10 or 11am. The beach is empty until then too so, if you get up before then, you can have your pick of lounges! Dinner, on the other hand, was as late as you wanted! We never made it up past 11.30pm but Kamari Beach was still pumping then!
The local bus (which are actually air-conditioned coaches) stopped right opposite our hotel but, since we were a party of 5 and we wanted to explore a few beaches, we hired a car. It ended up being so hot that we only used it to visit Perissa Beach (we spent a day there), Ammoudi Bay (at the foot of Oia), Oia (for one sunset) and Fira (for three sunsets). Certainly the car gave us flexibility but I’m not sure that it was worth the cost.
I don’t think Perissa is as nice as Kamari. There are less restaurants and shops than Kamari and the beach lounges are not free. On the positive side, it is naturally beautiful (as is Kamari) and the pebbles on the beach are smaller so it is more comfortable to walk on with bare feet.
The highlight of Santorini is the Caldera and the amazing sunsets. Each night, we were mesmerized by the glowing ball turning from yellow into orangey red into hot pink as it descended and then seemingly dropped out of the sky. Against the black volcanic rock, the blue, blue sea and the whitewashed buildings, it is truly one of the most magnificent sights I have ever seen.
Fira and Oia are the places on Santorini to go to to watch the sunsets. The sunsets at both are really indescribably beautiful. There are also loads of shops, restaurants and bars. The shops and restaurants in Oia seem more exclusive (read expensive). One day, I want to stay in one of these towns (my favourite is Fira) in a hotel with a pool overlooking the Caldera. It will be my treat to myself…for something!!
We spent a lovely day at Ammoudi Bay - at the foot of Oia. We stumbled across it 13 years ago when we went to Santorini with our kids, went back on a cruise 4 years ago on our own so wanted to go again with our daughters and E. It is a bit of a rocky scramble to get there (confession – I slipped and grazed my hand and legs coming back – very embarrassing!). Once there, the brave souls (Andrew, L and E) jumped off a high rock. The rest of us swam off the rocks – beautiful.
On our last night in Santorini, we enjoyed a dinner sunset cruise on the “King Thira” on the Caldera. From the boat, we looked up at Santorini and marvelled that we were floating on water where land had been until the powerful volcanic eruption thousands of years ago.
With “the kids” gone home to Melbourne, Andrew and I tackled the crazy chaos that is a Greek ferry! Ninety minutes later and we were in Naxos— somewhere we had never been.
Staying on a sandy beach, our biggest decisions for the day were when to next eat the delicious Greek food and which book to read next!
In the evenings, some restaurants clear away the sun lounges and umbrellas and replace them with tables and chairs. We ate at one of these restaurants on the sand every night and watched more gorgeous pink and orange-hued sunsets.
We loved our uber-relaxing stay in Greece. Bathed in cloudless, blue skies, it was beautiful.
We flew from Naxos to Budapest via Athens. Arriving at Naxos Airport two hours ahead, we found a teeny airport and a teeny 46 seater plane. Lucky, it was only 30 minutes’ flying time to Athens!
Refreshed and ready to pick up the pace again, we started the Final Chapter of this holiday - a Viking river cruise from Budapest to Amsterdam. I’ll talk about that next month.
In non-travel news, I have had two articles published this month which is very exciting. Both articles feature our beautiful dogs who I do miss when we’re away –https://www.australiandoglover.com/2023/06/desperately-seeking-harry-how-to-keep.html and https://www.goworldtravel.com/road-tripping-australia-with-dogs/
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