We Made it to Greece for our Honeymoon!
  
Turns out a trip to Greece had been on both our 'bucket lists' for a couple of decades. It was the first destination we talked about and it was an easy decision...so off to Greece we went for our 16-day honeymoon.
It was a long way to go, with the longest leg of our trip being a nine-hour direct flight from Montreal to Athens, but well worth it. We spent a couple of days at beaches in Naxos and Crete and on a sunset catamaran tour of Santorini, with pretty much the rest of the time being spent sightseeing ruins dedicated to Greek Gods like Zeus, Apollo, Athena etc.
For the first time in a long time, we traveled with just 'Carry-On Luggage' and it worked out well, especially when it came time to island hop using walk-on ferries. The photo above was taken in Santorini with the iconic blue roof tops in the background.
We had such a great time, it would be easy to go back as we only visited three of the over 200 inhabited islands. Who knows, maybe some day we will go back but there are so many other places we want to see. We just might need a longer lifetime extension!
International Cell Phone Roaming Charges
For all of my international vacations prior to my recent honeymoon, I have spent over a $1,000 in roaming charges. My last vacation to Mexico, included roaming charges of $17/day to receive and make phone calls and texts. This hurts when you add it to the already high cell phone bills for regular service compared to so many other countries.
Let me introduce you to Wi-Fi calling. When I travelled to Greece I took two phones with me. My current I-Phone 13 and an older Android. Upon arriving in Greece I bought a SIM card with unlimited data and put that SIM card in the Android phone.
I then turned that Android phone into a private hotspot and connected my I-phone to it through Wi-Fi. My I-phone was set to "Airplane Mode" so I would not incur any roaming charges. The I-phone was also set to "Wi-Fi Calling". This meant I would receive any regular calls or texts made to me, and I could also send texts and make calls back to Canada without any roaming charges.
This saved me the $17/day in Rogers Roaming Charges. Now, I did have to carry these two phones with me when I was out and about, but using my cell phone camera to take pictures I was going to have the phone with me anyway. There is probably a technical way to have used an ESIM but that was a little above my techy comfort level.
So happy not to have to contribute more to Rogers' profits than I have to with this new feature called "Wi-Fi Calling" and the calls were as clear at I would have experienced on roaming for a fraction of the price!
A Little Thanksgiving History
The first Thanksgiving by Europeans in North America was held by Sir Martin Frobisher and his crew in the Eastern Arctic in 1578. They ate a meal of salt beef, biscuits and mushy peas to celebrate and give thanks for their safe arrival in what is now Nunavut.
Since the beginning of the Thanksgiving holiday, its date has moved several times—from mid-week in April to a Thursday in November—until 1957, when the Canadian government officially declared that Thanksgiving would occur on the second Monday in October.
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