Leavin' on a Jet Plane



We are planning a family trip to Greece in a week and a half. Though this choice of destination is not as frugal or cheap as the ones mentioned in this post at Mother in Israel, it's not as extravagent as it sounds. We are using my husband's frequent flier miles (the ones mentioned in my first post) and we are renting a house I found on this site .

What about food, you ask? (which of course is always my number 1 concern!). I'll be bringing a pot and a pan to make eggs, pasta, rice, etc and I also ordered some chicken and turkey dishes from Chabad of Athens which actually has a kosher catering service.

So how did I come up with Greece? We were orginally planning on going to the States with M's miles. However, we didn't get around to calling up about tickets till the middle of June, which is way too late to book for the summer ( I had a bad feeling about that). I was very disappointed because not only did I want to get to the States to see my Zayde, whom I haven't seen in 3 years, but I just wanted to get on a plane and get out of the country for awhile (it has been 3 years since I've seen an airport).

After being depressed for awhile, I remembered we had neighbors back in Jerusalem who went to Greece for a week in the summer, and I thought, why not, we have the miles? So I started digging around about hotels, rentals etc. I found the vacation home rental site and thus started my mad rush to plan a vacation. I discovered that June is pretty much very late to plan anything for following two months. People book these homes a year in advance!

It became an obsession for a few days and required a lot of coordination between the flight and the availability of different houses. (There is a reason that travel agencies are still in business) But I finally came up with a match and we're leaving in a week and a half!

We are staying on the island of Zakynthos, which is one of the Ionian Islands on the western side of Greece. We are flying to Athens, which takes about one and half hours, renting a car and then driving over the Peloponnesus (like the Peloponnesian War! Remember that from high school history class?) and taking a ferry to the island. The drive and the ferry should take about 5 hours, but I'm sure we'll stop on the way.

We don't have a lot planned yet, but there will be a lot of beach and pool time on the schedule. And I'm hoping to see the sea turtles! A friend who is a professor of Jewish history informed me that there is actually an old shul and Jewish cemetary on the island and that there was a functioning Jewish community on the island until the 1950's. You can read more about that here.

Wish us luck!

12 comments:

Common Sense said...

Luck! It sounds amazing - I've used Chabad meal services when traveling and they're usually great!

Leora said...

Greece sounds marvelous. Enjoy and take pictures for us folks who are working all summer!

Commenter Abbi said...

Common sense- good to know! The rabbi who I've been in touch with sounds nice. Hope he knows how to cook. ;)

Leora- Hopefully we'll remember to take our camera and take pics (i'm always the nerdy mom who forgets her camera at gan events ;) ) I hope to have some entries for all those blogger photo memes!

Lion of Zion said...

have fun

do they still have a ferry from haifa to greece? when i was in yeshivah i almost went by ferry to cyprus, but it didn't work out in the end.

"Hope he knows how to cook"

more likely the rebbetzin?

Commenter Abbi said...

Thanks for stopping by LOZ! I don't know if they have the ferry, we were going to look into it but then the airline tickets worked out.

I was just kidding about the Rebbi cooking; according to their site, they have an experienced chef doing the cooking.

Common Sense said...

Lion of Zion, Are you some sort of Reggae artist? ;-)

Anonymous said...

Oh, I hope you post a review--I think I have the "wishful thinking tourist's" lust for Greece: blue skies, blue water, white buildings. (Too many movies?) And now that we're moving to Israel it will be close and, hopefully, inexpensive.

Commenter Abbi said...

onetiredema- I will definitely blog the results of all this planning! I don't think there's internet at the house we're renting (which is a good thing for me, I have got to disconnect!) so no liveblogging will be happening. If we remember to take pics, they will be included with the posts.

JJ said...

Hi Abbi, congrats on the new blog! High time you started one :-) Enjoy your vacay, it sounds great- and just think how nice it'll be to have such a short airplane trip instead of the loooooooong one to the US.

Baila said...

Just came over from Mom, so excited to see you are finally blogging. I'm hoping this doesn't you'll stop commenting though.

We're dreaming of going to Greece one of these days. In the meantime, I'll live vicariously through you--so take that camera!!

Commenter Abbi said...

Thanks RR and Baila! Baila, I can give you the whole lowdown on Greece now, I've researched homes one nearly every island in that country. And the whole rental thing is a lot cheaper then hotels, definitely something to look into.

Yes, RR, I'm very excited not to be on 12 hour plane ride with a 14 month old!

And don't worry Baila, I will definitely try to maintain my active commenting life! :D

Jameel @ The Muqata said...

Nu?! How's the view?

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