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So I’m now back from a week and a half’s holiday in Greece, and I’m almost back to normal. Ben’s now headed off to Canada to start his PhD, so my wanderings around London will be lonely for a while :-(

Greece was fantastic — I have always wanted to go but when I last had the opportunity it would have only been for a day or two, and I figured it was better to wait for the opportunity to go for a longer time.

If you read the guide books they will tell you that August is a bad time to go to Greece. I can’t support that from what I saw. The fact that we spent most of our time in ruins rather than beaches may have helped to avoid the massive amount of toursits, but even so we had no problem with accomodation or crowds (although after the Northern Line in rush hour crowds are not really a problem anywhere :-)

I’ll tell the highlights of my trip later, but the worst bit was getting there. I made the mistake of going out for drinks after work on the Thursday, before going to Heathrow. The plane wasn’t leaving ‘til 22:30 so it seemed OK.

More fool me.

I left the pub at about 8:15, and caught the train to Paddington to get the Heathrow Express. Got that at about 9:10 and knew that it was going to be close, but I should still be an hour before depearture, which is (normally) fine.

So I get to Heathrow and the TV system on the train is broken and there’s no written signs saying what terminal you need. There are on the Picadilly Line (Tube) but not the Heathrow Express. But the filght number on the ticket is ‘T4 XXX’ and the train conductor I asked assured me that I want Terminal 4. So I wait for the train to pull out and 10 minutes later I’m there.

It’s now 9:40, and there is no counter for Hellas Jet - in fact the place is deserted. I’m starting to worry now. I find out from the guy cleaning the floors that only British Airways leave from thhere and I definitely need Terminal 1.

Back on the Heathrow Express - but its left, and the next one is in 10 minutes. That is 9:40. Still 45 minutes ‘til departure time but cutting it awfully fine. Since I once caught a plane from Newark (NY) to London by getting there 30 minutes before takeoff I figured I should still be OK, but I was starting to panic.

Back at Terminal 1 and there is a very long corridor to walk down. I get to the Hellas Jet counter at 9:50 — it’s deserted. So is the Cyprus Air counter (which if you look at the website is associated). A security guy takes pity on me and bustles me through security towards the gate — he stops to ring the gate but the plane is pushing back and the chase is over.

For me it was back home on the tube to a sleepless night — and to wonder how Hellas Jet manage to leave the airport 40 minutes before the scheduled time? I’ve never known anything like that before. The next day I caught an Easyjet flight from Luton and they didn’t even start boarding until 40 minutes before the flight left. (Needless to say I was there about 2 hours early :-)

I guess it had to happen one day (missing a plane I mean) given the number I’ve caught and the routineness that I now treat it with — but I still feel like a complete dag.

I met Ben at the Moroni fountain in Iraklion. It was built by the Venetians when they were there in the 1500s. The Venetians had a thing for fountains — providing public water was a sign of good government — like roads to the Romans I guess.

The lions are very similar to the lion of Venice, and in particular that outside the Doge’s palace. And that’s ironic too, because many believe that the lion was looted from Constantinople, and is actually an ancient Greek original. It inspired the Venetians who, when in Greece, placed public sculptures after the same style — in the very place that style originated 2000 years earlier.

The sun was coming up as I got in to Iraklion, Crete, on the morning ferry from Athens. The view is of the Venetian fort and the old harbour. (Not, of course, the ancient harbour - that would have been about 1500BC — gotta love a place where the dark ages were from 1000 - 700 BC).

OK so its 21:50 and I’m prevaricating. What I should* be doing is getting ready to fly out too Greece for my week’s holiday tomorrow. What I *am doing is this. Oh, and waiting for the kettle to boil for a cup of tea.

From the roof of St Mark’s Basilica, a view of the Campanile, with one of the horses (actually a reproduction) stolen from Constantinople (Istanbul).

From the Scientific american website, a good article on the Delphic Oracle: Questioning the Delphic Oracle

I’ll be visiting it in a couple of weeks too…

To help interpret the possible effects of such gases on human subjects in a
confined space, one like the adyton, Spiller, a toxicologist, became a
member of the project. His work with “huffers”—teenage drug users who get
high on the fumes from substances such as glue and paint thinner, most of
which contain light hydrocarbon gases—had shown a number of parallels with
the behavior reported for the trance state of the Pythia.