Peter's Travel Blog

Today, we arrived in Souda Bay, on the Northern Coast of Crete, a mere shuttle bus ride away from Chania, Crete’s second largest city after Heraklion. We were on tour again; thankfully our earlier time-keeping error had apparently been forgiven and we were still on the escort payroll. The first hour of our five-hour excursion took us to a monastery,...

Today, we arrived in Santorini. It didn’t start out too well… Following our busy day yesterday, we decided a lie-in would be in order. I say ‘lie-in’, but I still set the alarm for 8:30am, which would give us time to get breakfast before going to check out today’s port. So; it was actually gone 8:30am, when I noticed a...

This morning, we arose to find (with some relief) that we were still in Piraeus, and I had my first tour escorting duty, which was to the centre of Athens, to visit the Ancient Acropolis. It was another early start, so we grabbed a quick breakfast to be down on the quayside in time to guide folks onto coaches. At...

It’s been a long day today. At 5am, the alarm on my phone went off, and we were up, dressed and standing on the pavement outside the Mercure Hotel, Heathrow, by 5:30am, ready to catch the Hoppa bus to the airport. I don’t do mornings… Fly-cruises are complex operations. I view them as a task list in which each stage...

On Tuesday the 27th of October, I will be joining Swan Hellenic’s MV Minerva, in Athens, for a two-week tour of the Mediterranean. Billed as ‘Landscapes of The Mediterranean’, the itinerary includes Piraeus (Athens); Santorini, Greece; Souda Bay, Greece; Valetta, Malta; Palermo, Sicily; Lipari, Italy; Stromboli Volcano; Catania, Sicily; Sarande, Albania and a passage through the ancient, and intriguing, Corinth Canal. I will...