Tonight is our last night of the tour, and it has been a wonderful time in Greece and Athens in particular.

We left the pretty village of Olympia on Tuesday after doing a few touristy things. Jen had a visit to ancient Olympia, the site of the original Olympic Games. I had to bail at the last minute with a slightly erratic digestive system which prompted Dr Jenny to prescribe gastroblock which is guaranteed to fuse the intestinal contents solid for about a month. The tour organisers feel compelled to show you local crafts and the like and while some are interesting, it does feel a little like being arm twisted to dish out a few Euros to the local community. All part of the tourism industry.

However it was most interesting to visit Mycanae and its acropolis. I had not realised that acropolis is a generic term to refer to a hill top city and fortification, not just the Athenian Acropolis. The engineering of the Greeks of 2500 years ago is astonishing. And the artwork and wealth that was poured into making these places so beautiful. Our destination was Nafplion, a town of around 30,000, a port city on the eastern side of the Peloponnese peninsula. That is, the large part of Greece on the southern part of the mainland, but connected by a narrow isthmus of about 6 kilometres. I am not sure why we needed to stay in Nafplion as we would have preferred to stay in Olympia for some extra day.

Of course we are getting to the closing stages of our tour, and already, Athens is our goal. On the way we paused at the crossing of the Corinth Canal. The 6 kilometre isthmus has actually been sliced through with a canal, a 90 metre deep incision to create a nautical pathway from east to west. I think that the canal was mooted around 700 BCE and Julius Caesar turned the sod in 67 AD and put an army of Jewish slaves to work to dig about 700 metres of canal. The final construction began in the 1880s. It is too narrow for modern ships, but is nevertheless an impressive piece of engineering.

Before we came, our thoughts about Athens were mixed, as we have not had many good recommendations, and of course the media had given some negative commentary. However, I have to say we have been impressed. Apart from the more appealing Greek culinary experience, the people seem very friendly and accommodating; the expected traffic and pollution has not been a problem, and we have thoroughly enjoyed having a couple of days here, visiting the Acropolis with its superb architecture and engineering, the many ancient ruins, the fantastic Acropolis Museum, and of course, modern, dynamic Athens with its shops and cafés.

The culinary recommendation probably does not extend to the cafe a couple of doors from our hotel. We had gone in search of a restaurant, particularly one that served soup. Jen was very keen to have a nice vegetable soup. As we walked by, Petros, alert for a possible victim, emerged and invited us in. Of course he did not have soup, but Madame, we can make you the soup. We explored further and in the end thought we might reward Petros for his willingness to meet our needs. When we got back, sorry, there is no soup and he seemed puzzled that we would ask for something not on his menu. Nothing we received seemed to match what we thought was on the menu: Jenny’s steak turned out to be a hamburger patty, which Petro assured us was beef, beef, pointing to it vigourously, and I half expected it to stir a little and respond with an obedient “mmooo”! Beryl’s fish looked like bait – but, yes it was fish, so how could we complain.

We were having dinner with Ravi and Beryl and their children Mark and Michelle (whom I have dubbed “Young Athena”). I have previously written of their adventures some years ago on an Italian holiday that ended with Mark having to live with paraplegia. They are brave and resilient, but occasionally they drift into fairly harmless bickering. But who could blame them, the stresses are tremendous, and moving around these cities which are not sympathetic to disabled access is quite challenging. On Thursday, we walked up to the Acropolis. It was fairly steep in parts, and the path has some helpful steps every now and then, but our group has rallied strongly to help with pushing the wheelchair, lifting and carrying and being very supportive. Michelle, who insists on doing most of the pushing is quite petite but the Acropolis climb proved too much for her and the others did the heavy lifting. Venice and its bridges was a nightmare for them.

Poor old Iraj, our Iranian/Canadian/American friend was getting a bit uncomfortable that the Persians were getting blamed for the destruction of Athens. I think her prefers to think of himself as Persian rather than Iranian. Anyway, he took it on the chin, but I had to extract a bit of embarrassment from him.

Thursday night was our last group activity. We drove up one of the highish hills around Athens which gave some fantastic evening and night views of the city. A band provided traditional music and a troupe of folk dancers entertained us with Greek dancing which ended up involving most of the guests, including about 30 young Americans. Some of our young folk got young Mark up to participate in the dancing, and the look on his face while doing Zorba’s dance was just about worth the price of a holiday. It was a rather good night, complete with plate smashing: I reckon we went through at least a hundred plates.

We are finally on our own. Probably our initial views of some of our compatriots has moderated. There was one who continued to be a bit loud and I still felt a compulsion to be apologetic on behalf of the other 23 million Australians. But she has a good heart and apart from making me cringe at times, was pretty harmless.

We were pottering along the street near our hotel when we came across a passport on the pavement. It was a British passport and inside were 40 Swiss Francs which will come in handy during our time in Switzerland. Well, it would be handy if we kept them. There was a police station not 300 metres away, so we left the passport and the cash with the Inspector on duty. We thought it might be useful to report the found passport to the British Embassy, but they are closed over the long weekend. So we thought that maybe an email to the consular contact in Athens would help, but we received a form response listing what to do, but nothing relevant to a found passport, and a stern warning that no information would be forwarded to anyone at the embassy/consulate! The only matters that would be dealt with had to involve a death, arrest or terrorism. Feeling a bit helpless, we had to leave it at that and hope that someone may possibly deal with it next week. Pretty hopeless situation though and I was sort of hoping I might recognise Mr Mills in the street and be able to tell him the good news. No such luck however.

We got a taxi from the city to the Athens Sofitel, just a short 2 minute walk to the Athens departure terminal. Our cabbie was the sort of character who insists on talking with all available limbs, including those that should not be used when driving in busy city traffic. We got here safely in a beat-up old Opel, and now resting up for the morning flight to Amsterdam. We have spoken with Steven, now settling in to his digs in Manchester, and Fiona who tonight boards a flight to Paris. We will be seeing Fi and Don in France in about two weeks when they join us for our adventure navigating River Villain in Brittany.

The one redeeming feature of the Sofitel is its proximity to the airport. The relentless plodding of tourists has worn the carpet threadbare and there is a tired look about the place that a lick of paint would improve. Still, it is just a stroll to the terminal, and that is what we wanted and paid for.

Herete.