Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

Retirement Trip Number Five took us to the Eastern Mediterranean, to re-visit the Greek Islands, ferry-hopping around as we did for the first time back in 1980. We flew from Edinburgh to Santorini, the spectacular volcanic island which we first visited in 1983.

Nostalgia often clouds one’s judgement and so, at my behest, we stayed in same family-run hotel in Thera as we had in 1983. We arrived towards midnight, to find they had given our allocated room to someone else. As we were about to go for our first ferry/hydrofoil, I was hit by a nasty bout of food poisoning.

This led to us arriving at our beautiful accommodation on Folegandros with me clutching a plastic bag full of vomit. Folegandros proved to be a ruggedly beautiful, and much quieter and less visited member of the Cycladic Island Group.

Then another ferry to Paros, which we last visited in 1991. Our villa was fantastic, but the island also had a jaded, tourist-saturated feel to it, though not quite as pronounced as Santorini. Chilling by the pool was the order of the day, with barbecues on the large terrace with a great view across the island.

Another ferry took us to Piraeus, the huge sea port of the Greek Capital Athens, where I failed to go to an Olympiacos basketball match. Then on to the fabled island of Hydra, which we missed out on back in 1980. Hydra restored our faith in Greek islands, despite the vertical hike to Leonard Cohen’s old house.

Back to Piraeus for another night, then off to Athens airport for a flight to Mahón, to round off the trip on our second home on the island of Menorca.

With a 70th Birthday trip to Malaga and Cordoba early in 2025, we started to lay plans for Retirement Trip Number Six in the late Autumn of 2025.

Having had lots of discussions about visiting Japan, we ended up booking an MSC cruise for 16 nights from Barcelona to Buenos Aires, finally returning to our planned trip in 2020, which was thwarted by the COVID pandemic. This means that we’ll start the trip off at La Gardenia in Menorca, before popping over to Barcelona to board the MSC Fantasia.

First stop will be Tangier in Morocco, a place we’ve always been quite keen to visit. Next up is the island of Gran Canaria, which will be our first time in the Canary Islands. A few days at sea will bring us to the historic city of Salvador in Brazil, then on to the fabulous Rio de Janeiro.

Next stop is Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, where we’ll get to visit the stadium in which the first World Cup Final was held in 1930. And finally we’ll arrive in Buenos Aires, where we’ll stay for about a week before moving on for a couple of nights in a country Estancia de Maria (polo ranch). Back to BA to fly west to the famous wine region of Mendoza where we’ll have a four nights in a nice hotel in Mendoza city.

Back to Brazil and São Paolo to catch our flight back home via Paris to Edinburgh.

We look forward with keen anticipation to our first visit to the Sub-Continent of South America!

The itinerary for this trip, and the series of links which relate to the relevant blog posts, can be found at Retirement Trip Number Six: Index of Blog Posts