European Honeymoon Leg

Chapter Eleven - Marriage

22 – London, Greece, Yugoslavia, Venice, Switzerland, Paris, California, Austria

Upon our return to London, we stayed with the Dale-Thomas’s in Clapham, the family Laura had stayed with when she visited. We got to the Clannad concert but they have very ethereal music which can be sleep-inducing when you have jet lag. I managed to keep my eyes open but Laura went out.

We wanted to get Eurail passes, which allow you to travel on the train anywhere in Europe for the period of time for which you buy them. Unfortunately, the maximum age to get a Eurail pass was 25. Laura was 26. Instead, we got plane tickets to Greece and a train pass back to London that allowed us to stop anywhere along the way for up to two months. Our only deadline was to get to California in time for Carolyn’s wedding. 

Being the cheapskate that I am, I got the cheapest plane tickets I could find which was an overnight flight. We got to Athens very early in the morning and took a bus to the center, near the Acropolis. We had a broad outline of a schedule to visit friends along our route back to London but nothing set in stone. So we were kind of winging it.

Since this was before the internet, I couldn’t find hotels online. What I did was leave Laura in some square with our luggage while I walked around to all the different hotels in the area, asking them how much it cost for the night. When I was satisfied that I had found the cheapest one, I booked a room and went back to get Laura.

Laura was a trooper. These were the kind of places that did not have attached bathrooms. It was a room, a bed, a sink, a desk, a chair and maybe a closet. They usually did have a balcony though and the balcony in Athens looked out at Acropolis hill.

After the flight, Laura had not been feeling very well. She went straight to bed. Then she began to throw up. And since we didn’t have an attached bathroom, only a sink, you can guess where it went. We were scared, wondering what every newly-married couple wonders when the wife starts throwing up even though we were using birth control.

I hung out with her for a while but finding that I couldn’t really do anything to help, I used my leave-in-critical-moment skills once again. I was in Athens and I didn’t want to let the opportunity go to waste. I went for a walk around the hotel and found an outdoor movie theater nearby playing the movie, Throw Mama From the Train.

Laura was feeling better the next day so we went and saw the sights in and around the Acropolis before heading to the port of Pireaus. That is where we had lived during some outreaches when the ship had been in Greece. It’s where you catch the ferries out to the Greek islands. One of the waitresses at the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory had told us that she and her husband worked at the beach in the town of Faliraki on the island of Rhodes every summer. She told me to come visit them if we made it out there on our honeymoon. We decided to visit the island of Crete first before heading to Rhodes. 

We landed in the town of Chania, on the northwest side of Crete where I found another square for Laura to sit during my hotel search. This one had a nice fountain which is good because the hotel room had no balcony. Chania is one of those idyllic European seaside towns with a U-shaped waterfront filled with restaurants and colorful fishing boats. We soaked in the ambience at one of the waterfront restaurants. 

The next day we took a day trip to the amazing Samaria Gorge. A bus took us to the beginning of the Gorge from where we hiked the ten-mile trail down and through the beautiful ravine. A river winds its way through the striking rock formations. May was a good time to go as the summer can get very hot and crowded.

It took us about six hours to hike through, ending at a rocky beach on the Libyan Sea. There are only two ways to get out - back through the Gorge or by ferry. We opted for the ferry which took us to a spot down the coast from where we could catch a bus back to Chania.

Hiking through Samaria Gorge


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