Our taxi driver was a Greek woman with a strong Aussie accent. She had moved to Australia with her parents in the sixties. She asked me what part of Sydney I was from and I said Potts Point. As coincidence would have it, she also lived in Potts Point where her parents owned two houses before moving back to Kalymnos. Some of her relatives moved to Darwin, NT to work in the uranium mines and to help rebuild Darwin after it was heavily bombed by the Japanese during the war. Darwin is the sister city of Kalymnos, the original name of Pothia. The people of Kalymnos were the friendliest of all the people we have met throughout our many visits to Greece and it also felt the safest.
We got to the airport far too early. It is situated high up between the mountains. It took 25 years to flatten a mountain to create the airport. Our prop plane took us to Athens where we had a four hour layover. We headed to a lounge for drinks and food thanks to our Scotiabank credit card - the lounge was fabulous. Our next flight was on Lufthansa to Frankfurt with a tight connection to Toronto. By the time we hiked to the Air Canada gate, which was quite far, everyone had already boarded. We made it in the nick of time. We travelled with just carryon bags so our exit after breezing through customs in less than ten minutes was a joy. Red Car took us home.
It was a lovely holiday, although a sad one with Roy on our minds. We were grateful for the comfort we got from the cats, Muchka and Mishka. It was nice to be home.
Welcome home!
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