July 20, 2021

My husband and I were on our holidays in Greece.

The pandemic made a fairly big imprint on our rather ambitious plan of flying into Athens, and then touring by ferry 3 different islands. To fly into Athens we needed a PCR test, that was straightforward enough, but the documentation for island hopping was hopelessly confusing. We finally divined that we were supposed to fill out a health declaration and do a self-test before each trip, although there were no checks while boarding, just the usual brusk workers hoarding us on the boats as fast as possible. But we just read this morning the ferry boat operators have been reprimanded and there has been a crackdown, so they have started to check papers, which many tourists don’t have in order because of the confusion. It is so heartbreaking, tourism in Greece has collapsed because the pandemic, and this type of needlessly confusing paperwork puts off well-meaning people from travelling there.

BUT on the other hand once we got settled anywhere, our trip was lovely, lots of French and Danish tourists, not many from the UK or Americas. I overhead an American woman saying to a Norwegian, “at least you can trust the Norwegians to do the right thing… unlike the Swedes” I assume she was discussing C19, although perhaps she was still focussed on WW2.

My healthy son, recently recovered from his mild covid, is now in Mexico, hoping to make his way to Canada by late August.

All is well here, most of our light restrictions and recommendations have been lifted now. And not a whiff of domestic vaccine passports. Our case rate is 30/100,000, below the 50/100,000 where Tegnell said the crisis would be over.