Hey everyone,

Sorry it's taken me a while to post something I haven't had enough free WiFi power to post much.

Today was my trip to Santorini from Athens. I was lucky that I set my alarm the night before because I was very reluctant to woke up at 3.30 this morning! I only managed to snooze once. I got ready, packed my bags and made my way down to the reception area in time for 5.30 to roll around. The skies were still dark outside when my driver arrived. I was hoping for Dimitri again but I was out of luck. My driver couldn't speak that much English so it was a very quite ride to the airport.

When I arrived at the airport I had a bit of time up my sleeve so I went to the exchange change kiosk to change back the money I had left over from Prague. A 1000 Czech note was worth 28 euro, not to much at all. I didn't have to wait to long to check in my luggage. But I had a few issues with my carry on luggage. Olympic airlines have a strict policy of 8kg per carry on luggage. So I had to move something over to my main luggage. It was such a pain to only move one book over!

Athens security is so strange because they scanned my belongings as every airport does but they wanted me to take out my camera and lenses to rescan it. Then the lady wanted me to take the covers off each lense so she could have a look at each one... It was the strangest request I have had so far.

After repacking all my belongings back into my bag I made my way to my gate. When I settled in logged onto the free WiFi and I checked my bank account balance and realised that I needed to transfer some money. I logged on to my internet banking and went to transfer but I completely forgot that my internet banking sends a text message to my phone with a code to complete the transaction and I'm using a international sim card for my trip so I called my bank and tried that change my phone number. The lady was asking me some interesting security questions about my account. I think she thought I was somebody else trying to hack into my account. So I changed the number and they tried to send me a code to complete the change then I realised that there has been like a 4-5 day delay receiving text messages from people so that wouldn't help my situation at all.

So here I am at Athens airport waiting to board a plane freaking out to the max thinking I won't be able to spend anymore money!! I finally managed to transfer some money to Mum and Dad and asked them to transfer it onto my travel card. Then I kindly asked my dad to see if he would contact Telstra to activate international roaming on my normal number so I could complete the transfers. I should have listened to mum ages ago when she told me to transfer my money but never did. Lesson learnt: Always ALWAYS listen to your mum as they are ALWAYS right!!

The boarding time finally came around and a bus arrived at the gate and we had to board it to take us to our plane to take off. It must have been out at the end of the airport because it took forever to get to the plane. It was one of those small planes and my first thought was surely I wont get air sick being in such a small plane because I've never flown in one of those planes before. I finally settled into my seat and got ready for take off. Thankfully I had no one sitting near to me. Luckily this flight was only 45 mins. The other options was to catch a ferry and no way in hell was I sitting on a boat for 4 hour with the potential of getting seasick. Take off was taking forever. Including my flight there was a total of 6 planes all waiting on the run way to take off. Flights arriving in must take priority.

Once we arrived, I collected my luggage and went to find me driver. A lady was holding up my name then she took me out to my driver. We set off for Fira and as we were driving I swear I turned into my mum when I was learning to drive a car many many moons ago because this driver was talking, texting and using his phone whilst he was driving and every time we came to turn a corner, a bus or a car was driving towards us my hands were turning white because I was holding the door handle so tightly. The roads are horrible over here. There's not a lot of room to have two lanes comfortably the buses are huge over here and the drivers are just CRAZY!!!!

When my driver finally dropped me off. He got my bags out of the car, placed them on the sidewalk and proceeded to give me directions as to where my hotel was located. I could hardly understand him so I just smiled, said thank-you and started to walk down the MOST horrible pathway ever! The pathways were made up of small stones and trying to pull not one but two suitcases along was appearing to be quite difficult. I'm so glad mum convinced me to return my suitcase I originally bought because I would have struggled massively.

I eventually had to stop and ask for directions because I had no idea where the hell I was going. I was told to take the next right and it should be 50m down the path on the left...Oh my god people's measurements are very off and the hotels are not signed very well. I ended up walking down the stairs right to the end of the path that met the town square.. Time to ask for directions AGAIN... This time I went into the tourist information centre. I figured I would be able to understand them and they would have better directions for me. Well I was right! The lady said it was just back up the pathway on my left. I had to now attempted to climb the hill of stairs with two suitcases and a handbag. It was the worst thing EVER!! After working up a sweat I finally saw the tiniest sign for the hotel and the directions on the sign motioned up and around to the right. You guessed it.... MORE BLOODY STAIRS that I had to climb but first I quickly ran up to the top just to make sure I was going in the right direction. I saw the sign for the reception area so I ran back down and reefed both my bags up the stairs. I must have been providing some much needed entertainment because so many people were staring at me but no one offered to help out..

When I got to the top of the stairs I was greeted by a lady that I couldn't quite understand what she was asking or saying so I was just making it up as I went along. I figured I wasn't doing that good of a job because I would answer her questions and she was looking at me really strangely. From what I could make out she asked me how many days was I staying in Fira for. When I replied one day only she said "Not enough time, not enough time!". It was about 9.30 at this stage and I think check in wasn't until later on that day so she recommended that I get the cable cart down to the port for the 11am day excursion to the hot springs and the volcano then come back to the hotel for a little while then go to the top of the island to watch the sunset. I thought that was a pretty awesome idea so I got my backpack out of my suitcase and quickly packed my bag and set off for the cable cart. The lady at the reception did point out which path to walk down and I think I was about halfway along and got the feeling I was going the wrong way, so I stopped to ask for directions again.

I finally made my way to the cable cart station and only waited a short while for the next ride down the cliff face. I was the most beautiful view of the ocean and islands in the distance but I got a little freaked out because I absolutely hate the feel of falling so the quicker I got to the bottom the better that was for sure!!!!

I finally found my way to the pier and was actually about half an hour early so I sat down and waited for the boat skipper to call the 11am excursion. As I waited I put some sunscreen on and as I looked around, all the ladies were wearing bikinis and I forgot to pack mine. I contemplated going back up to the hotel to get them but I knew I would miss the boat. When the skipper called for the 11am session, I jumped aboard and found a seat in the sun up the front of the boat because I am still so white so I needed to work on my tan.

As everyone started to board two young girls from Australia sat next to me with the same idea in mind but they were much much tanner then me and also a mum and little girl from England also sat close by. I just LOVE the English accent and this little girl was so funny. I couldn't help but laugh because she was so cute. As we set off the view of the cliffs of Santorini was just amazing. The longer I spend away from home the more I'm enjoying taking photographs again. I should really look into doing the photography courses again when I get back home. The boat finally arrived at the hot springs and we stayed there for only half an hour. The water was a orangey brown colour because of the high concentration of minerals in the water. Other than that section the waters are a clear blue. It's such a beautiful sight. I don't think we have anything like that at home, the only place I knew of with water like that was Lake Mackenzie on Fraser Island. I really wished I didn't forget my bikini at this point because it was SOOOO bloody hot.

The skipper sounded the horn to alert everyone to return to the boat as we were continuing our journey to the volcano. When everyone was back on board a Canadian guy sat down the girls and started talking about their trip so far and their stories and their best pieces of advise. He thought I was with the girls but I told him I wasn't with them but started to join in conversation but hadn't introduced myself just yet. I said I was travelling Europe by myself and they kindly invited me to tag along with them when we got to the volcano. When we got to the volcano we purchased a ticket and made our way up the path with the rest of the group. The path was quite steep in some sections and my poor little calf muscles were in quite a bit of pain at this stage. We weren't really paying to much attention to where we were walking and I think we had lost our group because we the group we stopped with was a Italian speaking group leader. We all agreed that if we keep walking we will eventually find them.

We got to the top part of that section and we saw the group leader coming up the path to our left. We rejoined the group and made our way to the top. Down in the pit the temperature was 100 degrees and I think it's the only active volcano in the Greek Island but I'd have to Google that to double check. I also introduced myself as well. Kathryn and Eleni who are 18 years old from Orange NSW (I feel so bloody ancient around them) and Christian from Vancouver. It was quite nice to talk to someone from back home, I may have been going a little insane for a while there!

The group leader gave us half an hour free time to look around but there wasn't really to much to see. It was just an active volcano with the most amazing view! So we all decided to head back down to the boat. I desperately needed some water because I hadn't had any all day (rookie error) and I could tell I was having the beginning symptoms of heat stroke. All those primary school athletic carnivals I attended over the years has taught me what not to do and I was doing exactly that at the present moment.

We got back to the boat and I bought two small bottles of water for 1 Euro. The bottled water in the Greek Islands is really quite cheap starting from 50 cent Euro because the piping and water systems are not the best and it is not recommended to drink the water out of the tap. I finished those two bottles off as quickly as I opened them and I knew I wasn't going to be in the best shape later on that evening.

The whole trip back we heard about the girls Europe trip so far. They went to Scotland for a festival, London, Paris, Switzerland and the Greek Island so far. Their stories were very funny and eventful. We got off the boat and everybody wanted to take a donkey ride up the rock face to the top. I was just going to get the cable cart back up to the top. But decided you only live once, experience life a little with no regrets. All I can say is that it was a lot of fun. I'm glad I did it :-) I am amazed at how the donkeys can walk all that way with no help and they just stop at the end. I guess it's exactly like training a dog but instead carrying people up a rock face.

After we got to the top we were all dying for food. I had only eaten a airline cookie on the flight over. The girls loves their food considering they are both from food loving family backgrounds Greek and Italian. Kathryn was craving waffles with nutella which sounded so amazing so I decided to tag along. I ended up choosing waffles with nutella and vanilla ice cream. It was amazing. I am so buying a waffle maker when I get back home!!

After lunch we all parted ways. It was so loving to have some company. You definitely take that for granted whilst traveling solo! It was well into the early evening when I got back to the hotel. So I settled in, had a shower and went to buy some well needed water as my headache was in full swing by the time 5pm rolled around. I took some migraine tablets in the hope they will help, messaged my mum for some comforting words. She suggested a cool washer to take the heat away and try to get some sleep. The only nothing I had relating to a washer was the hand towel in the bathroom. That was as good as it was going to get and hand towels are not the best things to use. They are extremely heavy and wet completely everything! I couldn't be bothered to go out and get dinner. I just curled up in bed with my heavy wet hand towel on my head with the other pillow over the top and drifted off to sleep.

I work up close to around 11.30pm to the night life for Fira. It was like the valley in Brisbane but right next door. The music was so loud I couldn't sleep so I wrote a few blog entries. I was very worried about how I would go waking up in time and trying to find my way to the port for the sailing trip the next day because based on my past experiences when I have tried to pull all nighters I usually fall asleep an hour before I'm due to get ready, miss the public transport altogether and end up at the completely wrong port on the other side of the Island. Now that would most definitely be how things would pan out.

I guess the next entry will reveal what happens next.

Talk to you soon

Bye for now!

Love JB xo