Leaving Rhodes

It's the morning we are going to Santorini. I manage to drag out of bed half asleep and a sore throat. We storm into the breakfast hall and I grab some tea and honey. This then leads into a tea/honey operation. We decide we need to stack up on tea and honey as Im suffering here. We take turns in pocketing the items and get caught up in the moment that we take butter for the hell of it as well. I can't remember the final count but they took up a huge spot in my suitcase.

After smuggling the goods into our room, we decide to take the morning easy and relax by watching TV. We still had a while to check out. This is when some auction antique show comes on TV. We decide to watch the bloody show only to end up laughing in tears.

This cow rocks up to evaluate her painting. Standing there looking like she's about to hit jackpot I ask "Do you reckon she stole that painting?". The response I get "The slut probably slit someone's throat to steal that painting"... No comment! I'm on the floor laughing...

This only gets better. Another woman rocks up with some item which her best friend gave her on her death bed. The item is worth a few thousand pounds. When the woman finds out she gets extremely happy. They ask her whether she is willing to part with the item and before the guy finishes asking she screams yes. Like this is supposed to be something sentemental to her. Its from her best friend - like what the ?

As much as we loved this show we had to finish packing up to check out. But before we leave...
One last revenge session for our neighbours. We started banging the doors again to wake them up before running out of the room laughing.

So we leave our luggage with reception and decide to wander around shopping for the next few hours before we head to the airport. Along the way we decide to get our photos burn to a CD. Hence the problems start. The previous day we found a few shops that actually did this. We walked into this old bags shop and asked if she could do it. Even though we knew she had no idea on how to use a computer, she told us she could.

So here we are standing in that old bags shop again with our memory sticks. She shoves the memory stick into one of thoses kodak do it yourself machine. Now how hard can it be to burn it to CD as you only have a few options. This woman some how manages to screw up the operation and then claim that she can't do it with our memory stick. Apparently she has never had this problem and its our memory sticks that don't work. Then she claims it's her son's machine and that we shouldn't force it incase we break the bloody thing.

She then has the nerve to direct us to her husbands internet cafe or something. So we just storm out of her shop and enter the first photo camera place we see. Luckly they manage to do it here for us. It only takes them like half an hour and in that time we discover the Rhodes Casino.

By this time it was time to hit a cafe for lunch. So we discover this joint where you basically order your food over the counter and then either you hit the salad bar and pick what you want or you order food such as steaks and burgers to which they have to make on the spot. This is when we discover the chef nazi. I swear this is a scene out of seinfeld with the soup nazi. The chef nazi has a ordering process to which we had no idea of.

His screaming his head off at everyone in Greek. We reach the chef to order burgers and the next thing we know he screams at us that we should pay at the counter now. Anyone that approached him to order got screamed at to pay at the register. This was actually quite funny. Trust us to find this lunatic.

After ordering the food we didnt know whether we should take a seat or wait at the counter. So we chose to avoid the counter due to this psycho chef and found a table to settle down in. From memory the burger wasn't too bad for Greek Style.

After lunch we decide to head back to the hotel but not before I buy a Rhodes handbook. I have a habit of collecting books on places I travel to and you know what I never read them. Its quite funny because when I travelled Europe in 2004, I have tones of theses books and my luggage was always heavy because of them.

We arrive at the hotel to pick up our luggage and to organise a cab to the airport. We ask the woman to call us a cab and confirm how much it will cost. She picks up the phone to call and we plant ourselves on seats near the reception. Now note the last question we asked was "How much is the cab?"

While were sitting, she's still on the phone when she screams out to us 285. We stare at her like what the f...? She repeats 285! Were in complete shock, thinking $285 Euros to get to an airport. How is that possible. Thats like $600 AU. We reply saying 285? She must notice that were panicing at this stage so she responds your cab number is 285. Now that makes sense. The bitch nearly gave us a heart attack.

We race outside to wait for our 285 cab. Finally a cab pulls into the hotel. We immediately confirm the price with the cab driver before jumping in. He confirms its $15 Euros. Feeling satisfied with this price we jump in. Its a final farewell to Rhodes. It was good while it lasted.

We arrive at the airport to notice that we are way too early and no check in counter is open for us. So we decide to sit down and wait on the left hand side. Meanwhile I race to the information desk to ask them about our check in counter when the information desk tells me to go ask one of the security guards. Like what the hell? Your information desk woman. Your supposed to tell me theses things.

Anyway we soon realise that we are in the wrong area. Were actually sitting in the domestic side of the airport where as we need to be in the international side. The side we were on is to fly to other islands. Since we were going to Athens to swap planes to Santorini, we had to move to the other side.

When the check in counter opens we storm over with our 15 bags to line up in this jumbled up queue. We unload our luggage into the security xray machine when a woman starts yelling something about one of my hand luggages. She pulls me aside, so I try to explain to her that its actually my asthma machine. I'm about to open the bag to show her when she shoves me out of the way and unzips my bag. She starts searching through it madly. Next thing I know she starts pulling random stuff out of it and tossing it aside. This is when I get concerned realising that I have 2 vodka bottles in there and she can smash them any minute. Finally she stopped rampaging my bag. For a minute I thought she was going to start sniffing my bag as well. That was one hell of a security check.

After my security excitment we line up to check in. So were standing in the only line open to get our luggage weigh.The woman behind the counter notices the huge queue and is starting to get annoyed since were quickly reaching boarding time. This is when we notice that the couple in front of us had more than 20kgs for their suitcase. The woman behind the counter decides to charge them for the extra kgs. This is when we start to panic as we know that our luggage is close to 30kgs each.

Luckly at that time a new counter opens and seeing as we are the next to be served, I get pushed and shoved into the new counter. We slam our suitcases on the machine and the woman barely even looks at them. She passes our boarding tickets to us and we race off. Its every man for himself at this stage. The plane's about to board and we need to find our gate quick smart. This is when we realise we have no boarding gate AGAIN!

So were like lost puppies trying to find this boarding gate. Were panicing and theses vodka bottles are starting to get heavy. Soon they annouce our boarding gate and we storm across to it, practically throw our tickets at the collector and board the plane to Athens.