In the land of Ouzo and Zorbas

During our lazy days in Samoa we had some time to plan our next move. We went through all kinds of route plans including Japan and USA among others but ended up booking a flight from Auckland via Sydney via Singapore all the way to Athens, Greece. One of the reasons was that the tickets from Singapore to Athens felt dirt cheap being less than 300€ per person. And besides, who doesn't love Greek food ;D

Before going to Europe we stayed two nights in Auckland in a lovely airbnb place nearby the airport. We ended up taking a taxi there after many failed Über tries (the drivers didn't want to take such a short trip). Our Airbnb had lovely hosts and a lovely house, but when its dark and you're in a new place it can be tricky to find the right house. Not saying that we intruded some random Samoan resident's home when the front door was open or anything... 🙄

We didn't have much time in Auckland between our flights but still we were still fortunate enough to visit Pasifika Festival and meet our friend from Brisbane and some of her family members also. It was precious and we are so much looking forward for meeting again hopefully in the near future, maybe in Finland this time :)

The following day we took public transportation to Auckland airport. Our layover in Sydney was short but in Singapore we had to wait for few hours.. The company we flew to Europe with was called Scoot and as you might expect there were no personal touch screens or other luxuries included in the 266,19€ (with luggage!) price. Luckily the 11 hour flight left early in the morning around  3 am and we got some sleep during the journey.

We got to Athens March 27th around 10 am and went for a morning coffee straight away as there was no service on the plane and our journey from Aucland had taken nearly 26 hours. There was plenty of time to plan our route to our accommodation as our check in at Olympion Hotel started from 1 pm. With our caffeine-filled minds we had no trouble figuring out the best option and went to buy the train tickets to our destination. We did some waiting and after getting on the train and riding half an hour or so we got to the station we had googled. It seemed a little empty when we got off but we didn't pay too much attention on that at the moment although later on there was some trouble...

From the station there we had less than 10 minutes walk to our hotel.We checked in and almost immediately went to look for a grocery store. We found one nearby and being there shopping groceries in Europe using euros it felt weirdly familiar and foreign at the same time. Among other groceries we bought Ouzo which I've always hated but when in Rome (Athens)...

Back in Europe!

The essentials

After traveling all the way from New Zealand to Europe and not getting too much sleep we didn't do any sightseeing on our first day in Athens. One place we did visit though was a nearby restaurant called Fagourio. They didn't speak too much English there but we got our order through and the food was absolutely mouth watering and amazing! It was just a simple little place but it's very often the case with some of the best experiences. Little street food stalls in Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur, a modest bar in Koh Tao serving tasty Tom Yam, little sea food restaurant in Gdansk, tiny hole in the wall serving those tiny but so, so tasty tacos in Mexico.. Those are the places that stick to your mind.

Our first real taste of Greece

The next day was our only full day in Athens so we decided to visit Acropolis. It didn't take long to walk back to the train station where we arrived the day before. But when it was time to buy tickets there was no place to do that. The ticket machines were out of order and there was only a guard in the ticket booth so we continued our way along the tracks. After walking a while we got to another station and there... we faced the same situation. Only after a considerable walk we found a bigger station and there we got tickets for the train. We bought tickets for the next day also because our own station was a ghost place. It was a bit rainy when we got to Acropolis but we decided to visit there anyway. There were some Finns in the ticket booth queue so we tried to keep our silence :D

Views from Acropolis

Rest of the day we just strolled around Athens and looked for two restaurants that Mark Wiens had recommended in his vlogs. The restaurants worth visiting for are called Kostas Souvlaki and Mam. Kostas offers tasty gyro pitas and Mam delicious cheese pies (mm my mouth is watering just thinking about what we ate..). The next day we packed our stuff and took a train to the airport (luckily we had the tickets ready..). There we took the short flight to Rhodes.

Our ride to Rhodes

From Rhodes airport it was an easy bus ride to the center of the city. And our hotel was located very center indeed, it was conveniently named The Perfect Spot Luxury Apartments. If you're staying in Rhodes for more than few nights we highly recommend checking the place out. It was spacious and relatively cheap and, well, on the perfect spot.

We spent the next few days in Rhodes center and Old Town. If you're around and feeling hungry, be sure to check out Stavlos.

On Sunday we had a full schedule. First in the morning we took a good walk and visited Acropolis of Rhodes. Then we went back to our hotel to play some Tantrix and get ready for Throne of Helios 9D show (and Starbucks next door, gotta keep collecting those mugs ;p).

Morning walk near Acropolis of Rhodes

A game of Squiggle (Tantrix)

If you ask me to think Greece the first thing comes to mind would be a small tavern filled with people, live music and delicious food. The place we had dinner in (Kathopoulis Family Restaurant) was just like that and we really enjoyed the night! (usually stereotypes are bad but we'll let this one slip).

On our last day in Rhodes we hopped on a bus and traveled to Lindos. The place was full of cute small streets and the main thing there was to get all the way up to the fort but of course with out the help of the poor and cute donkeys.. We walked though. We saw the ruins from the outside and decided not to pay the touristy price for the ticket. So we went back down and visited a nice restaurant on the way instead. Greek salad and tzatziki never fails, really :)

Lindos

After Rhodes its was time to leave the clear blue waters behind and hop on the airplane and travel to Nyköping where we got a ok priced bus ride to Stockholm. There it was easy to navigate our way back to Finland. The ferry ride went through icy grey waters which felt so familiar (ugh) and also somehow very distant. And BAM. Then we were back home. Just like that. It was weird.. It was like we hadn't been anywhere but at the same time with all the memories of all the great places.

Memories from our trips together on the wall

What an amazing journey! <3

Afterword

If you have a travel bucket list, it just might happen that during your journeys the list does not shorten but instead grows longer. In our original plan we were supposed to stay 3 weeks in Philippines and fly home from Hong Kong. So I guess those go in the list. And when we were musing on our route options back home we grew more interest in visiting Japan. I've heard so many good things about Nepal, too, and that would be in the same general direction so add those too.. And of course the list is long already including places in Europe, Africa, Central and South America and who knows where. Maybe we'll write something here during some of our future trips. Or maybe we won't.
Traveling is a passion nonetheless and it's been it's own journey writing this blog, surprisingly time consuming for sure but a nice way to assemble our experiences. Thanks for our readers for traveling with us, we hope you liked staying with us. See you next time!

- Matias & Sini

Our route so far

NZ North

Me and Matias arrived to Auckland fairly late on 31st of January. We figured we'd need sim cards and some data as the two of us were planning to stay 6 weeks in NZ. After immigration etc we found booths for Spark and Vodafone and based on some Google search we decided to go with Spark. But at their store I learned that their sims may not work as they should with my Honor 8 so I ended up taking Vodafone and Matias opted for Spark with his Samsung Galaxy S7. They cost the same amount and had 3GB of data for 2 months with 200 min of calls and 200 sms in NZ. (We didn't notice any difference with the connections but with Spark you can get 1GB extra data per day in "phonebooths" a.k.a wifi hotspots in bigger towns, so that's a nice bonus)

Hotspot

Getting away and to airport

The easiest way is probably to take the SkyBus which operates 24/7, but it does cost 18$ one way (17$ online) and it's a bit cheaper if you buy the return ticket also right away. But if you feel more adventurous, want to save some cash and have some time then you could take the 380 airporter bus  and change once if you are going to/coming from the city center. Without local transportation card (AT Hop, also available online) that will cost around 13$ and with Hop less than 8$. If you're traveling with more than two persons in a group, taxi/Uber would also be an ok option.

So yeah, this time me and Matias hopped on the SkyBus and went to stay in Bamber House near Mount Eden and my mum and sis went to a hotel in the city. The first 36 hours we didn't get to do much as the weather was really wet and grey. After Australia's sunny days we thought "uh oh.. is it gonna be like this the whole 6 weeks..?" luckily that was not the case.

Lovely weather in Auckland

Cruising around

On Friday the sky opened up a bit and that was nice as we went to pick up a SUV from Ezi car rental. (We got a tip from a kiwi living in Brisbane and this was the company she uses the most. The car was a really nice last year's Toyota RAV4 with adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitor, rear cross-traffic alert, back up cam and a smart key so we can definitely recommend this company).
We drove to pick up my mum and sis, packed ourselves and our stuff to the car and started our journey towards Whitianga. We only stayed there one night and in retrospect two nights would have been better, but in short time one can only do so much.
The drive didn't feel very easy. It was serpentine road up and down and when I wasn't driving, I got a bit nauseous. That was also the case with the backseat members so at some point we had to get our minds out of the serpentine and feeling sick (or cuckoo). So we started to play a game. A game that I remember playing as a kid, which gets kids (and adults) to focus on something else as the time flies.. what was it, you may ask.. :) So everybody picks a color and gets a point for every oncoming car that's the color you picked :) Soo simple! And then you just select a score like let's say the one with 21 points wins. My sis picked a successful color and was pretty much unbeatable the whole time. And the time went little bit faster 👍

Whitianga & Hot water beach

Once we got to Whitianga we unloaded our stuff (me and Matias stayed at On the Beach Backpackers Lodge and mum and sis a little bit further from the beach) and then we decided to drive to Hahei Beach and more specifically to Hot Water Beach. We knew that there one needs a shovel to dig deep enough to get to the hot water and in order to make a nice pool for you and your mates. We didn't find a shovel rental place so we just went on checking the beach.. and what did we see.. loads of people digging and chilling on weird pits. We were little skeptical at first but as we walked closer and then stood in a hot water vein for a bit (like a second, it was freaking hot!) we were convinced that the water is actually really hot there! We found one abandoned pit and stood there for awhile. It was fun and enough for us. Our feet got a nice burn and must have gotten younger as the skin almost peeled off :D

Hot water holes

In order to have a full hot water beach experience you should have some time, shovels and beer but we didn't have any of those so we headed back to Whitianga for some food and chilling.
I really liked Whitianga and our hostel. It was basically on the beach so we finally got to witness a sunrise with Matias :) also with more time, we could have gone kayaking as they were free of charge in our hostel 👍

Hot water beach

Sunrise in Whitianga

The smelly town of Rotorua

After Whitianga we headed to Rotorua. The drive was something like 3 hours, mainly because of the serpentine roads. Getting closer to Rotorua the scenery got really unbelievable.. all the green humps and bumps with sheep and cows.. it just looked like Hobbiton and I could just imagine little hobbits wander around, drinking Hobbit beer and have fun all day long (except the few fellows with the ring and all..)

Humps´n bumps

When we got to Rotorua we instantly noticed the smell.. it was like the whole town had eaten beans and eggs for breakfast :D
Little by little we got used to the smell but still from time to time we got a little whiff of the interesting odor and wrinkled our noses a bit :D
First day was for strolling around in the center and the in the park there. We soaked our feet in a thermal pool and witnessed some bubbly ponds. We didn't have too much time as mum and sis wanted to chill in their hotel's spa area and we wanted to see how did the Rotorua disc golf park look like.

We have found out that there are quite a few disc golf courses in NZ, but it was a surprise that many of the courses did not have permanent baskets or proper tees. This one in Rotorua for example offered a good place to practice but it was difficult to find all the tees and we weren't able to play the whole round.

Wai-O-Tapu thermal wonderland

The next day we woke up rather early and started the engine again. It was time to see some thermal action! In Wai-O-Tapu area there are few free options if you want to experience natural hot pools and see some bubbling mud lakes. There is also the thermal park that offers a chance to see a geyser show, or might I say geyser blow as they briefly talk about the geyser and then activate one with some sort of powder to make it shoot water high up. After the geyser show we headed to the park and it was like walking into some child's colored book. There were pools filled with boiling mud and water pools colored from bright orange to toxic green.

Thermal pools

On the way back to Auckland we still had a little bit of time left so we drove to the place where they had something called OVO aka putting one or two person inside a ball and throwing it down a hill (this was supposed to be the original place where they started this madness). Matias wanted to have it a go and had a good time sliding down the hill :)

Ready for rollin'

Auckland Auckland

For the last days together in NZ we rented an Airbnb in Kingsland. It was so nice that my mum and sis finally had their own rooms, we had two toilets (always a luxury) and a nice balcony with a view.
We went sightseeing around the city and strolled around in the Winyard Quarter which was really pretty. Mum and sis visited the zoo as me and Matias tried to find a frisbee golf course from Monte Cecilia park, but there weren't any permanent baskets unfortunately so we just hung around there and threw some shots just for funzies.

Kingsland

Winyard Quarter

All good things come to end and we had to say bye byes to my mum and sis. We had at this point two months to go and it sure felt really empty after they left.
It wasn't fun to be in Auckland anymore as the place reminded of them and I missed them already. Luckily we only had one more day in the North and then it was time to fly to the beautiful South island :)

Travel light

- Sini

Our route so far