In the footsteps of Odysseus

One of my earliest memories is my parents reading a book to me called “The Wooden Horse of Troy”. That retelling of “The Illiad” was to have a profound impact on me by firing my interest in the Ancient Greeks and their mythology. Odysseuss with his wit and cunning became one of my idols, in no small part thanks to the excellent “Odysseuss the Greatest Hero of Them All” by Tony Robinson.

In just over a week Kath and I are flying to Turkey to begin our own Odyssey and I am very excited, particularly since on top of being in one of cradles of civilisation we are going to be married on the Greek island of Santorini, overlooking the same blue Agean that once thronged with warlike black ships of the ancients.

We are spending a few days in Istanbul visiting the famous mosques and the Grand Bizaar and then going to Selcuk to visit Ephesus the great Roman city before travelling south to Bodrum. From Bodrum we will catch a ferry to Kos and then another to Santorini. After 8 days and a wedding there we fly to Athens for one night, long enough to see the Acropolis, and then home.

Kath has rather brilliantly arranged everything and so, things going according to plan, we should have all of our hotels, ferries and flights ready and waiting for us.

I plan to take thousands of photos, eat loads of interesting food, smoke a few hookahs, be mesmerised by immersion in totally foreign cultures and feel the sense of being a tourist that Bill Bryson describes as feeling like a five-year old again.

Needless to say I will be blogging our trip regularly, so stay tuned.