We are back from our trip to Greece. We arrived in Athens and stayed there for a day and a half. That was just enough time to visit the Acropolis and do some site seeing in the old part of town. We also enjoyed a dinner together with Lefteris and his wife one evening. Great fun to meet in person again after all the virtual discussions.

Next we took the ferry to the island of Naxos where we stayed a couple of days. We just did you walking and drove around the island one day. You could clearly see that the end of the tourist season was approaching, since it was not super crowded anymore.

On one of our walks I made sure we passed by the airport, since I wanted to take a look at it. The island has a small airport, with only a 800 meter runway. That should be more than enough, since there is only one scheduled flight a day anyway.

After Naxos we took ferry to Amorgos. Since it was a nice and sunny day we enjoyed sitting on deck and viewing the different islands of the minor Cyclades that the ferry stopped at along the way.

At Amorgos it was even more clear that the tourist season is almost over, we were the only guests in our hotel. We felt a bit sorry for the owner who was every morning waiting to serve us breakfast. Just like at Naxos we did some walking around the island and drove around it one day.

Renting a car to drive around the island was another example of how the end of the tourist season affects things. The rental office in our town was closed already, just having a sign to call their other office on the island. After doing that we were told where to find the key of the car parked in front of the closed office, so that we could drive to their other office to sign the rental contract. I guess those things only happen on small islands.

Another surprise was that the island only has three ATMs. That in itself is not a problem, but none of them accepted any of our cards. It turns out that not all ATMs in Greece can handle the new bankcards with a chip that they are giving out in the Netherlands. This island just happened to have ATMs of a bank that had not upgraded yet. Luckily we found out that one of our credit cards still worked in the end. Else we would had to drive to the other site of the island to try our luck at the bank office.

After one day with a lot of wind and rain, we were happy to see that the weather was much better on the day we were travelling home again. First we took the ferry from Amorgos to Paros, where we transfered to the airport to fly to Athens.

Just like Naxos, the airport of Paros is also quite small. There are only three scheduled flights a day. When we arrived by bus there was no personal to see in the terminal building yet. They appeared after a while and checked in the 15 or so passengers for our flight to Athens. So even the DHC-8-100 was only half full with that. We even left 15 minutes before scheduled time, I guess because everybody was there already.

While waiting I made photos of the terminal building, in case I want to model it for FSX later on. If I need another test airport for the gPoly tool later on, this might be a nice candidate.

In the aircraft the stewardess seemed to intend to break the record for the fastest airline announcement, trying to do all safety announcements in 30 seconds (in both Greek and English). This did not really improve the understandability. But the rest of the flight was very enjoyable, we even got a drink and small snack on this 30 minute flight.

So after this vacation I am full of energy and ideas again. In the coming days I hope to be working on the gPoly tool a bit and do some preparations for the upcoming FSWeekend as well.