During a tour to Olympia on Sunday, 17 July, our taxi driver advised us there was to be a taxi strike in all of Greece beginning the following day in response to the transport minister's decision to change taxi licensing requirements at the height of the tourism season. We had a taxi tour booked on Thursday, 21 July. On Monday, we called John Arvanitakis of
athens-taxi.org. He told us it was by no means certain that the strike would last through Thursday, but that he would not leave us stranded.

On Wednesday afternoon, talks between the union and the transport minister broke down. (We were on board Oceania Nautica, and the cruise line did a magnificent job of keeping passengers informed. They also managed to put on extra buses to the airport and set up a shuttle service to hotels, thus getting every passenger who needed help to their immediate post-cruise destination.) We called John, and he confirmed that he had arranged a bus to pick us up, along with passengers from Celebrity and MSC for our half day tour and transfer to the hotel.

On Thursday, the bus picked us and the other passengers up on time, did our half day tour, (George, the driver, was exceptionally pleasant and attentive.) and dropped us at our hotel on time. On Saturday, a we were picked up as originally scheduled, taken to the airport, left at the car rental return to avoid enforcers at the departures level, and made our plane on time.

I think I am as willing as most posters in this forum to complain about a problem. It is a pleasure to be able to commend a vendor for reliability, thoughtfulness and kind attention to our anxieties for a change.