Colaboard OverBottle!

And if you understand the name of this post then you must be none other than "Mix Master" Mike F! Howdy boy.. all is good in the Wah Hood!

Greetings to the rest of you... special mention to Taryne... the chef I met at Santorini on my birthday!

If you are interested in hearing my birthday audio blog then jump on over to girlclumsy's site and look for the one labelled "Birthday Blog"

Wow.. Greek Islands... wow.. Mykonos, Paros, Ios and Santorini. Each island different to the last.

Mykonos is the touristy island with much tourist tack to look at.. and it was a full time job holding back girlclumsy ;). It also has fabulous resorts to stay in (with prices to match).. much swimming and surf-skiing to be done. The main town had windmills and churched and crazy streets used to stop pirates in the past

Paros is the quiet island with large hills to climb (at the top a monastry!). The rooms we stayed in were a little crap but Mix Master Mike aided ventilation by punching a hole right through the front door.. shine on you crazy scouser diamond! There were also cheap eats to be had here. I now eat tomato! But i prefer it to be drowned in Tzatziki sauce. We wandered the crazy lanes (also anti pirates) and found all sorts of weird and wonderful shops.... and found another EVEN BETTER shop that sold the hallowed ONE EURO GYROS! sweet! any day you can buy a vege-kebab for 1 Euro is a good day indeed.

Ios is the party island... cheap rooms (that were beautiful) and cheap food, free entry into the night clubs and cheap cheap drinks.. $3 for two cocktails and a peach shnapped shooter... good gods I was absolutely leathered by the end of that night! I even had a flaming Lamborgini.. this is a cocktail that is basically on fire. And dont forget the lay-backs we all did.. including girlclumsy. We had to walk home in the dark down a 'goat track'.. Im sure goats can handle such a vertical walk but i doubt they can do it utterly rat-arsed and singing Bohemian Rhapsody! We went out again the next night but i only had a couple of drinks (due to money being tight.. somehow i seemed give all mine to the bartender the night before).. i am glad we only had a few drinks as a tornado hit Ios and flooded the town.. and the town is ON TOP of a bloody greta hill. Mike, Girlclumsy and myself were running through white streets that looked like waterfalls in the driving rain looking for the rest of the tour who had gone to a different pub (we went to the one with the cheapest drinks... always trust a Liverpudlian to sniff out cheap drinks). On the way to the next bar the power went out and so we were stuck, in the dark, by ourselves, in a tornado.. FUN! We hit the bar drowned like rats and giggling like schoolgirls.. all good! When we got back to the reosrt we discovered it had been destroyed by the toranado. Basically everone had lost their bungalows to the driving rain.. except GC and ME! a-ha! upgrading to a double room paid off in spades! Ios was a fun fun time.. I would recomment anyone interest in drinking and beaches to come here but dont come in the high season.. come in september.. it is cheaper and the beaches aren't cluttered with people.

Santorini is the VOLCANO ISLAND! ooooooh yeah baby! This bad boy blew its top 3500 years ago and was the second biggest volcano eruption in recorded history. It sent a 200m tidal wave all the way to egypt in 4 minutes! cool! It was my birthday the day we took a boat over to the slightly smoking island caldera. We walked up and down the obsidian rocks and i put my arm in a hole that was pumping out hot sulpher... it was hot.. and smelled bad :) We then took the boat to a hot spring in a bay. We had to jump overboard and swim all the way into the bay and lathered ourselves with sulpherous mud and enjoyed the warm water from the sleeping monster volcano that lies 2km under the island.. humans really do live in funny places! (hi to all people in San Francisco!). That afternoon we took a bus and had a picnic overlooking the sea. My tour had a surprise for me.. a birthday cake. Girlclumsy had been running interference all day fo the tour leader (Hey jeremy) who had bought the cake. The whole group (hi guys and girls!) sang me happy birthday and then EVERYONE at the picnic lookout spot applauded me! There must have been about 100 people there... i felt so special aaw :) I, of course, took centre stage and thanked all my international guests for coming to my birthday. I also blathered other stuff which I am sure was comedy gold but i dont remember it now. A nice Korean man gave me a pendant for good luck as it was my birthday and I met Taryne and her mum Wendy who were wondering who the strange guy dressed in black was and why did everybody applaud him :) We all watched the sun go down over the Mediterranean..

It was the best birthday i have ever had.. and I have had some doozies! Thank you to everybody that made it to good.. from Girlclumsy, to the guys and gals from the busabout tour, to Tracy and Jeremy for organising the secret cake and to the nice Korean Man and Taryne and everybody else that will never ready this blog that was there.

We are now in Meteora. 4 1/2 hours north of Athens by train. It is the place where the monks built their monastaries ontop of giant Uluru like rocks. Yesterday we hiked through the forest to get to tof these places. Fantastic views from the top and the churches and gloriously crazily perched ontop of mountains! When we go to the top of the first one we discovered there a road on the other side of the mountians and you can take a coach bus to the top along lovely paved roads... oh well.. i declare anybody that didnt hike for over and hour through rain and rocks and supposed packs of wild dogs (though we didnt see them) SOFT AND FLABBY. The pain in my body meant i really enjoyed that monastary.. honest. Today we took the local bus to the top of the mountain and hiked down (much easoer than hiking UP and Down) looking at the other 4 monastaries.. i enjoyed the less toursty ones which shouldnt be a surprise.

Tomorrow we are off to Delphi.. i shall be asking some probing questions, let me tell you

Best wishes to you all