Ever feel like taking a real break from the stresses of modern life? That's what Irish Timesjournalist COLMA KEENAdid when he and his family took off Tto Europe for four months
ABOUT A YEAR AGO, the idea was floated in our house that it might be an idea to take some time out.
Work had been pretty hectic over the previous few years, what with writing about tribunals, political and banking scandals, and the near collapse of the economy.
And the children were getting on, with our daughter started in secondary school and our boys halfway through primary. If we wanted to spend some extra time with them while they were still children, it was time to think seriously about it.
Permission to take unpaid leave, the stitching together of all my paid annual leave, and an unexpected bequest that could have been used to chip a small percentage from the mortgage but wasn’t, and we were off. Michele and Robert, aunt and uncle to the children, joined us for the jape, providing welcome extra company and some crucial splitting of costs.
In the first week of May, we boarded an Aer Lingus flight to Athens. The children were particularly delighted, given that their friends were still in school. Our ratings as parents were on an upward curve.
Athens in May has much to recommend it. We climbed around the Acropolis in light jackets, free from oppressive heat or overwhelming crowds. When we visited the Panathenaic Stadium, where the Olympic Games were revived in 1896, we were close to being the only ones there. We raced a circuit of the track, and I came last.
Our first lengthy stay was on the island of Syros in the Cyclades. Sometimes you strike it lucky and we did with the house we rented there. It was on a rocky hump on the edge of a fishing village called Kini. Just about every window in the house looked out onto the sea, as did the various terraces.
It was still cool, and the sea was the sort of temperature you might expect in the west of Ireland in early summer. But as the weeks passed, the days grew warmer and the water did too.
We stayed for a month. Each day started with a swim and breakfast, followed by some home-schooling on a terrace. Afterwards, the children were allowed head off to the village, where they might buy soft drinks and ice creams and sit on a low wall under a tree and chat and swing their legs.
The boys got to know some local lads, despite not having any language in common, and an evening hour of football on the beach became part of the daily routine. One of the local boys was called Achilles.
Our diet was all tomatoes, olive oil, greens, lemon juice, feta, and fresh fish. And, of course, retsina.
AFTER SYROS we travelled by ferry to Ikaria, where the Colonels used to send communists on internal exile during their dictatorship. After a week there we got a cheap flight back to Athens and hired a car for a tour of the Peloponnese.
Driving along the motorway out of Athens was pretty scary, not least because of the local practice of driving at speed along the hard shoulder, even when coming up to the ramps for cars joining the motorway.
The Greeks do a terrific job on their ancient sites, which are often in empty countryside, with the surrounding facilities such as car parks, admirably simple. It was June and often we found ourselves alone – or as close to alone as made no difference.
The children sang Shakira's Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)to test the acoustics in the ancient theatre in Epidaurus, and ran another race along the ancient track at Olympia. Walking through the second millennium BC city of Mycenae was more interesting than it might otherwise have been, because of the popularity of ancient Greek history and myths in contemporary children's fiction.
Our next major stop was Ithaca. It was July and getting seriously hot. We had a house about a 10-minute walk from the small seaside village of Frikas. There were pebbly coves along the coast where we could swim.
We were struck by how Greek families went for a bathe. Often comprising a number of generations, they would swim out to sea, some still wearing hats and sunglasses, then tread water at the edge of the cove, and have a lengthy chat.
A night-time picnic and swim under the stars in one such cove provided one of the many highlights of our trip. Near the end of our stay, Felicity and I snuck down for an early-morning swim and found we were sharing the cove with an elderly Greek man. He had a bushy grey beard and a wide-brimmed straw hat and was standing in the water up to his neck, by one edge of the cove, using a long stick to prise sea anemones from the rocks at his feet. The egg-producing gonads are, apparently, the bit that you eat.
WE LEFT GREECE from Patras, sailing in a ferry past Corfu and up along the Albanian coast until, 36 hours later or so, we caught sight of Venice. Guided by a tugboat, the huge ferry made its way to the city’s port, passing alongside the Grand Canal as it did so.
The transition from Greece to Venice was both strange and wonderful (not least because both Syros and Ithaca were part of the Venetian Republic). Within an hour of arrival, a water taxi had dropped us off at a quayside cafe and we were ordering Americanos within sight of the Rialto.
After Venice, we travelled by train to a village in the south of France where we normally go for our summer holidays. We were surprised to hear the children announce that “now” the holidays could really begin!
A little over a month later, driving to Rodez for our Ryanair flight home, we overheard them talking about how close they had become over the previous four months.
It certainly feels as if we have built up some family capital. Memories from the trip should last long into the future, providing us with some escape when the skies over Ireland hang low and grey and damp, and show no signs of going anywhere.
Can you afford it? Counting the cost of the great escape
We flew from Dublin direct to Athens with Aer Lingus. In Greece, we did much of our travelling by ferry. Although not outrageously expensive, the price adds up when there is a posse.
Our internal flight in Greece was really cheap and luxurious compared to a Ryanair flight. What we found expensive was car hire. On Syros, we managed without cars, save for two days. However, in Ithaca it cost close to €1,000 over the month on the car alone.
As we were going there early in the summer, and spending a month in situ, we managed to get a good price on the house in Syros. The one in Ithaca, because it was July by the time we went there, was more pricey.
In between, we did some travelling, which was really expensive. Hotels, car hire and eating out all the time really clocked up the euros.
On the other hand, we found the pattern of settling somewhere for a month, then going on a trip, then settling somewhere for a month, worked well.
During our time in the Peloponnese, we spent a week in the seaside town of Koroni, where we hired an apartment, but otherwise we stayed in hotels.
The children preferred the settled periods to the touring, as they were able to grab more independence. We stayed three days in Venice, and spent a fortune.
Overall, our flights to Greece and home from France cost about €1,000. We bought InterRail tickets, which we used for the Patras to Venice ferry (you had to pay a supplement) and the train journey to France. They cost about €1,000.
We also spent about €2,000 on car hire and ferries in Greece, and car hire in France. These figures don’t include Michele and Robert’s costs, and having them along helped cut ours.
Felicity located the houses on Syros and Ithaca through homeownersdirect.co.uk, which she found to be much cheaper than other sites she explored. The houses averaged £500 (€576) per week each, a cost we shared with Michele and Robert. The family’s weekly budget was €600 per week.
Time to wind down
One of the more surprising aspects of taking a break from your life is how hard it is to extricate yourself from it. Jobs, money, the house, family routines, school etc, all have to be dealt with. The first week of the trip was spent recovering.
Luggage was a bit of a killer. Once the hot weather came, we put clothes in a large box and sent it back to Ireland by post. It cost about €60 and took some of the pressure off our backs.
We offloaded books as we read them, and used Amazon.com and Poste Restante to order up new ones that we collected when we arrived in France.
We had no access to TV or the internet while away, though our daughter discovered she could e-mail her friends for free on her mobile phone. Getting away from the world’s problems was a big part of the attraction of the trip.
Four months seemed to be a good period of time as far as the children were concerned. The time away from the pressures of school and social life seemed much appreciated, but by the end of the trip they were quite pleased at the thought of returning and seeing their friends again, even if it did mean a return to homework.