Several months ago, while stuck in Christchurch dreaming of places far, far away, I bought a bunch of Lonely Planet’s to aid in the inspiration process.  Once of them was for Copenhagen, for no particular reason other than that I’d talked about going somewhere in Scandinavia for ages and Denmark seemed to get rave reviews from anyone that had ever been there.  Long story short, that’s how Dean and I ended up on Easyjet flight 3465 from Stansted on Friday afternoon.

Amazingly for a budget UK airline, the plane left on time and without hassle (although they did change the departure gate three times…).  Passport control and baggage collection was a doddle, figuring out the train to the city was a no brainer, and even humping the packs to the hostel was simplicity itself.  Pretty much a description of Copenhagen itself really – everything just works.  Very Nordic, I guess, but it’s hard not to like a place where style and efficiency seem to be the number one priority.

Read the rest of this entry »

Away by just after 9am to Hammersmith Station, where the Group of 4 said their goodbyes – Pete was off to Wales and then Ireland, Trudz was headed for Paris (maybe) and Dean and I were making for Cambridge.  Amazingly everything ran to schedule and we arrived in the university town at 11am.  Jay picked us up and we pretty much messed around all day – walked into town, had a mediocre lunch at Wetherspoons (yes, that will be the last time I eat there with any luck), a general wander round the shops and then emails, blogs, washing and other such excitements in the evening.

The following day we spent all afternoon at the Duxford air museum  (near Cambridge) being plane spotters.  It’s pretty pricey at 16 quid, but there are just an incredible number of planes and helicopters, weapons, interactive exhibits, historical info and all kinds of other stuff.  Including an overpriced and very average lunch.  Hmm, I’m sensing a theme here.  Highlights (other than the meal of course) included walking round inside a Concorde, the B52 bombers, a Harrier jumpjet and the Blackbird stealth jet.  As well as seeing an Apache helicopter gunship doing laps of the aerodrome for ages.  All in all, a good way to spend three or four hours I reckon.

Up, up and away around 10am for an easy couple of hours motoring to Fiskardo, on the island of Kefallonia.  I helmed for quite a while, which was awesome!  After tying up and having lunch, we hired a little VW and drove along some suitably hair-raising roads down to Assos, a picture perfect little town of brightly coloured buildings perched beside a hilltop Venetian fortress.  We hiked up to and  around the castle, which was heavy going in the afternoon heat but made for some stunning views over the township and peninsula.  Back down to the waterfront for a well-deserved Mythos before tackling the roads again for the short drive to Myrtos Beach, one of Greece’s best apparently.

Gorgeous aqua coloured water coupled  with a bargain on sunbed hire (well, it was getting late in the day and it must have only been a chilly 28 degrees or so) took care of the next few hours til sunset.  Given the high prices in Fiskardo for, well, everything, we opted for dinner at a roadside taverna on the way back into town – an inspired choice as it happened, the food was great (and cheap), the beer was cold (and cheap), and the sunset was  gorgeous (and free).  Back into town, dropped the car off, and proceeded to sit on the back of the boat and get drunk into the small hours, watching the world go by a few metres away in the waterfront bars and restaurants.

After the obligatory ‘roll out of bed and into the sea’ first thing in the morning, we headed out of the harbour and down the Meganisi channel, stopping halfway to row into a cave in the rocks for a look around and a swim for a while.  Back out into the channel and it was such an idyllic scene seeing all of the other yachts under sail that we just had to do the same.  Sails were unfurled, the motor was cut  and there were, sailing on the cool and bright clear water, as the Little River Band would say.  As the Little River Band did say, in fact, given that Cool Change was featuring heavily on the playlist at the time.  It was truly heavenly, and strangely both incredibly relaxing  and highly exhilarating at the same time.

We moored at Frikes, a lovely little village on the Ithaca coast, early afternoon and had plans to go exploring.  Plans that were well and truly scuppered after we bought several bottles of both blue and red vodka, and discovered that one of the girls on the boat moored beside us also had a birthday the next day, and was turning 21.  The music was cranked up, vodka was consumed and the next 12+ hours became a drunken blur.  We moved between the yacht, Penelope traverna (owned by a likable Greek guy named Stavros) and the Orange bar a  little further along the jetty.  Which I’m sure isn’t it’s real name, but it’s orange, and it’s a bar, so … yeah.  I think the fun finally stopped somewhere after 4am, by which time I was a year older, and considerably drunker, than I had been the day before.

Read the rest of this entry »

After leaving a suitably cold rainy day in Putney, Pete, Dean and I met Trudy at Victoria and took the train to Gatwick.  In typical British Rail fashion, it cost the same amount to buy four tickets as it did for two, so long as we travelled as a group.  After being referred to as ‘The Group of 4′ by the ticket agent, the guys at the barrier gate and the train conductor, we decided to adopt that name for the rest of the trip.  Never gets old.

Checked in with First Choice Airlines to Preveza (which, despite one of the check-in staff’s suggestions, is not in Zimbabwe…) and pissed around for a while in the delights of the Gatwick North terminal, stopping only long enough for Trudz to have half the contents of her carry on luggage confiscated by security.  You never know, she may have been planning to blow up the plane with that 200ml of sunscreen.

After that fun was over, we boarded the flight and headed for the Ionian.  As we came in to land, first impressions were spectacular – gorgeous deep blue water, yachts sparkling in the rays of the setting sun, heavily wooded islands rising steeply out of the ocean and a cloudless blue sky as far as the eye could see.  Sound like heaven?  Well, it is.