We left Athens for Zaharos (Sugar Town) on the west coast on Tuesday. Em’s father grew up in a small village a little way from Zaharos and we’re here for their “final trip back” which was meant to be last year however we couldn’t justify leaving me and a new Grunge home alone while Em came along.

The train trip down was great, we were in a first class cabin on the train and got to see a lot of the small places along the way. The seats reclined to almost lying down and there were two foot rests on the chair in front, very nice! People live pretty much on the train line, in places you could have reached out and touched their houses. The train chugged through Petras where all the international ferries and liners pull in and we were about 30 metres from those boats, very cool.

We scrambled off the train at Zaharos station – station is a bit of a misnomer… a phone booth a metre wide concrete path and an old rusty caboose does not make a station; our new Merc taxis arrived and took us a few kms to out hotel.

The hotel is nice, pretty clean and the people are very friendly. They are all especially taken with Grunge which is cool. Our room is very small, it has a double bed, a single bed, a small fridge and a vanity unit so there is about a 40cm walkway around to the bathroom which has a hand held shower head at knee level and about a 50cm x 50cm cubicle for showering in. Apparently you aren’t meant to flush your toilet paper either, whoops.

We had a real hard time getting Grunge to sleep so we made her her own Gypsy retreat, two sheets hung from washing line around her bed to keep her sectioned off, so far it is working really well and she’s back to having a lunch sleep and a big ninighs sleep. She slept in the pram yesterday while we were heading back from the beach and tried to sleep in the pusher today coming back from the markets.

In the mornings I walk up to the bakery up the street and buy a loaf of bread for lunch and Em and I sit on the balcony with our tomatoes, cheese, oj and bread like real wogs

Dinners have been good too. We found a local place that makes great food and they are really proud of what they do cook. Last night the owner was kind enough to let me bumble my way through our dinner order (a yiros without meat with chips and 3 soulvlaki and two kokojeros) and makes the tastiest yiros

We’re in Greece and all doing well – both girls are napping so I thought I’d add a bit of information on what we have been up to.

We flew from Adelaide to Changi Airport in Singapore on Sunday the 31st; the flight wasn’t bad at all and Em tested out her new no motion sickness bands which worked a treat. Grunge slept well in her car seat; we were really surpried. The flight attendents were lovely and gave Grunge some toys, nappies and wipes. We arrived at Changi around bed time and checked in to our Transit Hotel inside the airport for our 6 hour lay over. The hotel was lovely and gave us a cot for Grunge to sleep in so she jumped in the shower with me and then went to bed. The hotel is next to the movie cinema and butterfly garden inside the airport and upstairs from lots of shopping including a Giordano Junior store We caught the skytrain to the next terminal for boarding and set off for Athens with Singapore Airlines.

During the flight I was playing with the onboard entertainment system and found an old Japanese puzzle game and worked out how to play it – both Em and I got addicted to it and played on and off for the rest of the 11 hour flight. The interactive system is built on Windows 3.11 and I got to watch our rows system reboot as the overhead lights and call buttons didn’t work. Watching DOS boot on an aircraft is a little daunting

It was pretty cool to know we were flying over places like Dubai, Mumbai and pats of Iran and we landed in Athens on Monday morning after about 24 hours travel. We got whisked through immigration, found our bags and went to find Em’s parents. There was no security at all! We trained it to the hotel in Omonia and all went to bed.

We had a quick tour of Athens seeing an awesome red sunset, the flea markets and the acropolis from a distance. Overall it was a bit of a hole however an interesting place; we’ll be heading back for a few days next week.