Greece 2011, Ios to Antiparos

Although we were travelling to Antiparos today the ferry wasn’t due to leave until very late afternoon so we had most of the day ahead of us to spend on Ios. After our final breakfast with more delicious figs we packed our bags in preparation for later departure and then walked to the harbour.

This morning we walked to the white sentinal church on a headland overlooking the harbour, the church where we had been a couple of nights earlier to the wedding and the christening and the church where we walk to everytime we stay on Ios. Usually there is a reason for this because we are beginning the walk to Valmos Beach a couple of kilometres further on to see the naturists but today we had no such intention so it was a rather unneccessary thing to do. We have photographed this church from every possible angle and captured every single detail but Kim wanted to go again just in case there was the remotest possibility that we had missed something on the previous five visits.

There wasn’t of course and after we had eventually satisfied ourselves on this point we walked back down the harbour, past the campsite that was now closed for the summer, the Carrefour supermarket, the swanky boats rolling around on their moorings and clinking their masts like ouzo glasses and back to the village where we spotted Martin at the Octopus restaurant and joined him for a while and shared a Mythos moment.

Eventually we left him there and walked along the blue flag beach and paddled in the shallow water at the edge of the sand. I imagine this beach gets busy in summer but it was only sparsely attended today and there was plenty of space for everyone including Lisa who we came across sunbathing in a Robinson Crusoe sort of way far away from everyone else. The season was coming to an end on Ios, the clubs and discotheques were all closed and the hotels were beginning to dismantle their beachside sunshades and put away their loungers for the winter and there was almost a sense that they would be glad when it was all over and the final ferry took the last holidaymaker away from the island.

We didn’t make the mistake of going for lunch today but walked back up the hill to Homer’s where we spent the rest of the afternoon around the pool drinking, chatting and taking the occasional swim in the hot afternoon sunshine. But soon it was time to leave so we said our goodbyes, did our final last minute packing and, under pressure from Kim, I agreed to dispose of my favourite blue tee shirt. I had had it since 1995 and it had been to Greece with me thirteen times but I had to agree that it was showing extreme signs of wear now so I thought the Greek islands was the appropriate place to leave it!

It was a High Speed ferry to Paros so it only took a little over two hours to reach Paroikia but at eight o’clock it was dark and busy and we couldn’t find the passenger ferry to Antiparos just around the corner so we had to take a fifteen minute bus journey to an alternative car ferry which left at eight-thirty and got us across to the small island off the west coast of Paros in just a few minutes where we were met by the owner of the Hotel Kastro and driven to our last accommodation on the islands for this year.

From a previous visit in 2008 we knew where we wanted to eat but three years later and in the dark we just couldn’t find it so when we came across somewhere similar we changed our plans and ate there instead. The food was excellent but we had the slight misfortune to sit on a table next to a large party of French folk and whilst this wasn’t a problem in itself what was irritating was that they seemed to be in a sort of who caught smoke the most cigarettes competition and although the tables were semi outside the acrid smoke kept blowing across out table whenever they lit up. To compensate for this irritation it made me smile when I overheard that they had to order their meals in English – I bet that stuck in their throats as much as their foul smoke collected in my nostrils!

At the end of the night, after our excellent meal we were about to leave when two of the waiters suddenly appeared with bouzoukis and started to entertain with the first instantly recognisable chords of Zorba the Greek. We couldn’t possibly leave now so we switched tables away from the drifting smoke, ordered a second carafe of red wine and stayed for another forty-five minutes or so to watch the show and finally when it was all over we left and made our weary way back to the hotel.

Greece 2011, Various Ways of Travelling to Homer’s Inn on Ios

Antonia and Vangelis – Homer’s Inn Hotel

If one thing was an absolute certainty it was that day twelve of the holiday was going to be very similar to day eleven but without the rugby football in the middle of it. Martin was going to watch the grand prix but not being a big fan of formula one racing and with Kim not being a big fan of sport of any kind we declined the opportunity to join him. To be honest, I considered myself fortunate to have watched the match the day before and I didn’t want to push my luck!

First thing we went down to the harbour again to buy our final ferry tickets, from Ios to Paros on the next day and Paros back to Athens on Thursday. It was a good job that we bought the Blue Star Paros tickets to Piraeus today because the man in the ticket office said that out of the one thousand five hundred passenger places on board there were only forty tickets left! If we had left it another day then we might have been thrown into another transportation dilemma.

After a deliberately long drawn out breakfast with fresh figs that Vangelis had picked specially for us that morning from his garden and which tasted delicious we just sat for a while on the balcony and then made our way to the swimming pool in anticipation of a completely unremarkable day.

Now, we have been visiting Ios since 2006 (missing only 2010 when we went to the Dodecanese islands instead) but that is no achievement at all compared with Martin, Lisa and Robin who have been returning to Homer’s Inn every year for nearly a quarter of a century. Robin, being a solo traveller, is not surprisingly more adventurous than most and this morning he entertained us with his tales of his various ways of getting himself to the island. Ferries of course from mainland or nearby islands and flying, but by a variety of alternative routes and different carriers including on one occassion, a seaplane into the harbour; by train and part way on the Orient Express via Sarajevo, and bravest (or maybe daftest) of all by car, driving through central Europe and the Balkans, through Serbia, Kosovo and Bulgaria. This year he had flown to Athens and today was his last day as tomorrow he had to return to the mainland where he was planning to stay in Piraeus for a couple of nights while drinking some of the bars dry!

Robin, Panos (Homer’s Inn Boss), Martin and Lisa

It was hot again now so we decided to leave the harbour and as we walked past the reception Vangelis stopped us to talk about the weather. Being an ex merchant seaman he has an unusually big interest in the climate and he gave us a forecast for the next few days. I understand why we in the United Kingdom are fixated with meteorological conversations but I don’t really expect it in Greece but he explained in great detail about wind directions and what difference that was likely to make to daily conditions. “Tomorrow will be sunny with a little breeze”, he explained in his throaty growl, “and the next two days also, but after that I am not sure”. To myself I presumed a wild guess that this would also be sunny with a little breeze because generally in Greece I find the weather to be very, very reliable!

Down at the harbour we thought we might have a drink and eat some calamari at the Octopus restaurant but we were a bit late and they were shutting down the kitchen for the afternoon so we had to find an alternative in the main square where we sat in the shade, had a bottle of Mythos and a rather unnecessary lunch which when we had finished we hoped wouldn’t spoil our evening meal.

For the rest of the day we did very little, walked back to Homer’s, sat at the pool bar and went occasional swimming, later Kim’s astonishing good run of luck at cards continued for another day and as an indication of just how leisurely the day was, in the early evening, we counted the goats in the next field which had been brought there with bells clanging noisily to graze for a while on the surprisingly green grass in the fields in the middle of the village.

Later we returned to the Octopus and ordered the plates of food that we had watched the local fishermen eating the previous night and we had a thoroughly pleasant evening in the company of local people while we saw the fishing boats being prepared for the night’s work ahead, watched the moonlight dancing on the water and listened to gentle lapping of the water against the harbour walls. Perfect, but sadly our last night as tomorrow we must leave for Anti-Paros.

Greece 2011, Rugby World Cup and a Baptism

After an early night we woke soon after sunrise so with an hour or so to wait until breakfast we walked down to the harbour to check ferry times and watch the place starting to prepare for the day ahead and then returned to Homer’s for breakfast on the terrace.

I wouldn’t normally watch TV while on holiday but was prepared to make an exception today because England were playing Argentina in the Rugby World Cup and it was being shown at a bar in the village at eleven o’clock so we made arrangements to meet Martin and Lisa there and then went for a walk to the village for an hour or so before it started.

We walked to the top and admired the views of the port and on the way down stopped to talk to some fellow travellers. As we exchanged stories I saw what I thought was a lizard but quickly realised that it was a snake. Olive brown and about a metre long it slithered by and disappeared into a tiny crack in the steps. Later I asked Antonia who was surprised to hear of a sighting in the town and told me that a local naturist had reintroduced these serpents to the island and that they were poisonous. I am all for preserving the natural environment but that is just plain daft, as daft as Eugene Schieffelin introducing the starling into the USA or Thomas Austin releasing rabbits into the Australian outback. Daft also because although there is a medical centre on Ios for anything serious the only treatment is on the mainland and a snake bite would mean airlifting by ambulance back to Athens.

We walked around the steep and narrow streets and alleys to the windmills and through the shops that line the main street through the village and back to the main square and the sports bar where we duly watched England kick off their world cup campaign with a nervous and unconvincing victory against the South Americans. When the match was over we returned to Homer’s down the dusty track and after a short sojourn went for another walk to the harbour and along the coast road to the little church on the headland.

The road out of the village runs past the business end of the harbour and there were some brightly painted boats that had just landed their overnight catch and were negotiating sales with local people and restaurant owners in a babble of animated activity. It looked like a good night’s work and the trading was brisk. The fish looked interesting and on closer examination of the produce it soon becomes clear why we have to put up with stock shortages whilst the most of the rest of Europe have such an abundance of choice; we are just far too fussy about what we will eat and our preference for fish is restricted to two or three species that we have fished into crisis and near extinction whilst in Greece, as elsewhere, they will eat a much greater variety of sea food. We like to buy our fish in little blue polystyrene trays without heads, tails or entrails and ready for the frying pan but here the trays were brimming with fish so fresh that it was still alive and flapping about and winking at the prospective purchasers who were examining it.

On top of the church there was a Greek flag that was flapping uncontrollably in the wind and trying desperately to separate itself from the pole that was hanging onto it. The blue and white flag of Greece is called ‘Galanolefci’, which simply means ‘blue and white’. Originally it was blue with a white diagonal cross but the cross has now been moved to the upper left corner, and is symbolic of the Christian faith. Being a seafaring nation, the blue of the flag represents the colour of the sea. White is the colour of freedom, which is something that is very important to the Greeks after years of enslavement under foreign domination. The nine stripes of the flag each symbolise a syllable in the Greek motto of freedom: E-LEY-THE-RI-A-I-THA-NA-TOS, which translates literally into ‘Freedom or Death’.

There were preparations at the church for a wedding and a christening and later Kim returned to see the wedding and I joined her later for the baptism to see the ceremony of a little girl being accepted into the Christian Orthodox Church, which is a major event in the life of any Greek family. A Greek baptism is a sacred and religious rite that is performed on a baby to cleanse the soul and renounce Satan. The baptism is a complex initiation that starts with an exorcism and officially ends forty days later when the baby is presented to the congregation to receive Holy Communion.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to stop for the full forty days and we began to feel a bit like intruders on a private family event so before it was all over we left the church and returned to the harbour and instead of going to the Chora, tonight we ate next to the fishing boats that were being prepared for another night at sea at a place called the Octopus where, at pavement tables next to the fishermen, we were served excellent food and we were left wondering why we had always insisted on going back to the Mills restaurant on all of our previous visits.



Greece 2011, Sick, Suicidal or just Anti-Social

This year in our hotel room on the island of Amorgos I was amused to find in the guest information folder a helpful copy of the Regulations, Article 8 of the Law 1652/30-10-86 which is a list of rules associated with renting a room. These made amusing reading and these extracts were the pick of the bunch:

Article 1

“The hotelier may refuse the leasing if the clients a) Looks conspicuously ill, b) is under the influence of alcohol or c) has an untidy appearance.”

This seems a bit harsh, whilst I agree that a hotel might not want to let a room to a drunk what if someone who needs a room had suffered from sea sickness on the ferry and was looking a bit green or was just a bet dishevelled at the end of a long day back packing? Who decides what constitutes being untidy I wonder?

Article 8

“If the room is leased for a fixed time the hotelier has not the right to break the lease unless the client a) transgresses the regulations, b) is taken ill suffering from a contagious disease or any other disease causing inconvenience to other clients, or c) behaves against the commonly accepted moral law.”

This seems a bit unfair on anyone feeling a bit unwell or has a cold with an annoying cough for example and I would be intrigued to know exactly what the commonly accepted moral law is?

Article 20

“The client on arrival at the hotel must hand over to the hotelier or to the competent director the precious or of considerable value articles and the money that he carries with him, against receipt.”

Can’t help thinking that is going to be a bit inconvenient, especially the money bit, how are you supposed to eat?

Article 21

“In case of illness due to an infectious or contagious or mental disease as well as in the case of death or suicide of a client the hotelier is entitled to compensation by the client for the expenses he underwent as a result of the happening.”

My advice is try not to have any sort of illness that might be messy, such as diarrhoea for example, and if you are going to kill yourself do it in a way that is quick to clear up otherwise your family are going to end up with a large bill. On the other hand I’m not sure how relevant this illness rule is because under Article 8 a sick client will already have been thrown out on the street and that includes the mental cases who might do themselves in.

My personal favourite:

Article 23

“It is forbidden a) the preparations of meals or decorations by the clients in the hotel room also the taking of meals in the room with the exception of sick clients, b) the use of petrol engines or electrical appliances, c) the use of electrical current for other purposes than lighting or shaving”.

You will have spotted the inconsistency here because clients aren’t allowed to be sick (see article 8), who in their right mind is going to use a petrol engine in a hotel room and why is it ok to use electricity to shave but presumably not to dry your hair?

It goes on “d) the washing of linen or clothing, e) the placing of luggage in the corridors, f) the changing of position of the rooms furniture and the operating of holes into the walls for hanging photographs, g) the keeping of domestic animals, h) gambling, i) noisy music and songs which might cause inconvenience to others.

This is a pretty comprehensive list of don’ts and I have personally broken at least half of these rules. I have certainly eaten food in my room, used electrical appliances, washed my dirty underpants out in the sink, played cards for money, encouraged a cat to come in, reorganised the furniture on the balcony and put my bag down for a moment or two in the corridor. On the other hand I haven’t ever used a petrol engine or a Black and Decker drill to make holes in the wall or organised a rave in my room.

Article 24

“If the client violates the provisions of the regulations, continually makes noise and behaves in an improper way he may be considered as undesirable and asked to leave the hotel within twenty-four hours and evacuate his room”

I wonder why, if someone was behaving so badly, they get twenty-four hours notice to leave when a sick person, it would seem, has to vacate immediately – this hardly seems fair!

Greece 2009 - Day 14, Ios, Beaches & Walks

There was a good start to the day with a blue sky and no wind. Robin was up early and in the breakfast room but he wasn’t fully recovered from the previous night’s drinking and he joined in the conversation only intermittently and with vaguely relevant contributions.

After breakfast we walked down to the harbour and headed south towards our favourite beach. After the rain what grass there was seemed much greener and I am sure there were some new shoots taking advantage of the unexpected watery bonus. On the way we bought our ferry tickets to Naxos and stopped for a drink and met some people who by chance happened to come from the same village as Kim, which meant an incredible thirty minutes of ‘all our yesterday’s’ and ‘down my way’.

The road out of the village runs past the business end of the harbour and there were some brightly painted boats that had just landed their overnight catch and were negotiating sales with local people and restaurant owners in a babble of animated activity. It looked like a good nights work and the trading was brisk. The fish looked interesting and on closer examination of the produce it soon becomes clear why we have to put up with stock shortages whilst the most of the rest of Europe have such an abundance of choice; we are just far too fussy about what we will eat and our preference for fish is restricted to two or three species that we have fished into crisis and near extinction whilst in Greece they will eat a much greater variety of sea food. We like to buy our fish in little blue polystyrene trays without heads, tails or entrails and ready for the frying pan but here the trays were brimming with fish so fresh that it was still alive and flapping about and winking at the prospective purchasers who were examining it. The colours were fantastic, sparkling silver, gleaming green and radiant red and I looked forward to being reacquainted with one later on my dinner plate.

The little beach at Valmas is delightful with a shaded terrace that overlooks the shore and the little bay and it is run by an old woman who probably should have retired years ago and who has a limited but interesting menu and with the sort of prices that I really like. Going to the beach and the taverna is part of the Ios routine and everyday we did the same things as the day before, walked along the same path, went for a swim, went to the taverna and sat at the same table and today had the calamari that she had promised yesterday. The naturist Swedes were there again but the amusement today was provided by a half-pissed man (who seems to be there every year) who drank a final bottle of wine and then went to the beach stripped off completely and crashed out on a sun bed, much to the amusement of the young Greek boys playing there, and proceeded to fry his delicate bits in the hot afternoon sun.

The walk to Valmas is interesting because of the derelict terraces and dry stonewalls that separate the hillside into individual plots of land. Ios is just one large inhospitable rock that has been baked in the sun but as recently as only fifty years ago people here were scraping away at the thin soil and the stones to try and make a living or to feed the family by growing fruit and vegetables. There is very little useful land on Ios so this must have been almost unimaginatively difficult and Antonia told us of her memories of life before tourism. Then in the 1960s visitors started to arrive and the enterprising islanders realised that there was more money to be made renting out the back room and this was also a lot easier than a twelve-hour day toiling under a hot sun. The terraces are all abandoned now to thistles and what other few plants can survive in a hostile environment and they are unlikely ever to be cultivated again. There is no one to look after them or protect the heritage and soon they will be gone altogether and that will be a sad day.

We spent the afternoon at the pool but by five o’clock it was beginning to get cloudy again so we abandoned sun bathing and sat with our friends for a couple of mythos. Today we met Tony from Ireland who was here for an incredible twelve weeks just for the clubbing. He had arrived in mid August and six weeks later he was still as white as a sheet on account of the fact that his daily routine consisted of sleeping until about five o’clock in the afternoon and then preparing to go to the clubs when they opened a few hours later.

As part of the Ios routine at the end of every day we would go to the Chora in time to see the sunset over Sikinos to the west just in case it was any different from the night before. This involved a strenuous climb to the very top of the town and past a succession of small white churches that got smaller and smaller the closer to the top we climbed. We did it tonight even though there wasn’t a sunset and later, being creatures of habit, we visited the same taverna over and over because once we have found somewhere that we like I have to confess that we are reluctant to go anywhere else. On this, the third night we had a meal of red snapper and when it arrived on the plate I was certain that I recognised it from the catch of fresh fish in the harbour that morning and I am sure that it winked at me as I prepared to eat it.

Greece 2009 - Day 14, Ios, Beaches & Baptisms

In the morning there was real improvement in the weather and at breakfast Vangellis promised us a day or two of clear skies which came as a bit of a relief. After breakfast we returned to the room and were entertained by a massive row between a young Italian couple. She was so completely hysterical that we were certain that she was being murdered but later Martin and Lisa told us that this was quite normal and just a regular part of their day.

Our normal routine on Ios is to spend the day around the port and on the beach and then visit the Chora for the sunset and for evening meal. This year to be different we decided to visit the main town in the morning to see what it was like during the day. Actually it wasn’t so nice and whilst the evening darkness disguises all the evidence of clubbers and boozers it was all exposed early in the morning. Discarded bottles and cans in the corners and clubs and bars that look inviting in the gloom looking cheap and nasty in the cold light of day.

We walked to the top and admired the views of the port and on the way down stopped to talk to some fellow travellers. As we exchanged stories I saw what I thought was a lizard but quickly realised that it was a snake. Olive brown and about a metre long it slithered by and disappeared into a tiny crack in the steps. Later I asked Antonia who was surprised to hear of a siting in the town and told me that a local naturist had reintroduced these serpents to the island and that they were poisonous. I am all for preserving the natural environment but that is just plain daft! There is a medical centre on Ios but for anything serious the only treatment is on the mainland and a snake bite would mean airlifting by ambulance back to Athens.

We didn’t stay long at the Chora and walked back down to Homer’s, collected our beach gear and made our way to our favourite beach at Valmas where we had promised ourselves a lunch of calamari.

Valmas doesn’t look very much it has to be said, just a small quiet bay with a shingle beach and a sea bed littered with rocks that makes access to the sea quite difficult. I am not much of a beach person I have to say but this is very nice indeed, not a tourist beach at all and most of the other people there were local people and those who clearly just happened to know about it. I know about it now as well so that is why we go back every year.

Lying on the rocks about a hundred metres away were three naked women all enjoying the sun on their bodies and manoeuvring themselves into precarious positions to maximise the tanning effects of the solar rays. Having what I consider to be a healthy interest in naked ladies this naturally intrigued me a great deal and on a sort of Jacques Cousteau pretence of snorkelling and looking for fish and other marine life I swam closer and closer until I could achieve a better view. Now, let this be a lesson to all men with deteriorating vision, because believe me on closer examination this was not a pretty sight at all and in the quest for a voyeuristic opportunity I have to confess a hugely bitter disappointment. On closer inspection these three women were most unattractive and I’m not sure that one of them was a woman at all. Later we discovered that they were Swedish and believe me they were very big Scandinavian girls!

Actually it was all a bit disappointing today, the sea was in a bit of a mess, all churned up and murky following the previous day’s storm, unattractive naked sunbathers and worst of all no calamari at the taverna. We had a nice fresh fish instead and the old lady promised that there would be some tomorrow. So we had an extra drink to compensate and then left and walked back.

We walked along the side of the cliff and then past the little white church at the end of the track. On top there was a Greek flag that was flapping uncontrollably in the wind and trying desperately to separate itself from the pole that was hanging onto it. The blue and white flag of Greece is called ‘Galanolefci’, which means ‘blue and white’. Originally it was blue with a white diagonal cross but the cross has now been moved to the upper left corner, and is symbolic of the Christian faith. Being a seafaring nation, the blue of the flag represents the colour of the sea. White is the colour of freedom, which is something that is very important to the Greeks after years of enslavement under foreign domination. The nine stripes of the flag each symbolise a syllable in the Greek motto of freedom: E-LEY-THE-RI-A-I-THA-NA-TOS, which translates literally into ‘Freedom or Death’.

At the church there were some preparations being made for a baptism and the building and all around it were being decorated in pink and white in readiness. We enquired about the event and the lady in charge invited us to return at eight o’clock that night to see the ceremony and we agreed that we would.

It was very hot now and we spent the rest of the afternoon at the pool at Homer’s talking to our fellow guests and friends although to be honest after fourteen straight days on the Amstel, Robin was living in a completely parallel dimension!

Later we returned to the church to see the baptism ceremony of the little girl into the Christian Orthodox Church, which is a major event in the life of any Greek family because of the numerous rites, which accompany it, many of which go back to the earliest centuries of Christianity. It was a lovely experience and now this holiday we had seen a funeral on Serifos, a wedding on Sifnos and a baptism on Ios. A Greek baptism is a sacred and religious rite that is performed on a baby to cleanse the soul and renounce Satan. The baptism is a complex initiation that starts with an exorcism and officially ends forty days later when the baby is presented to the congregation to receive Holy Communion. We weren’t able to stop for the full forty days and we began to feel a bit like intruders on a private family event so before it was all over we left the church and returned to the Chora and the Mills where we enjoyed another satisfying meal and a jug of red wine before returning to Homer’s for a final drink on the balcony.

Creece 2009 - Day 13, Folegandros to Ios

In the morning there was a huge improvement, there was sunshine and a slight breeze and the place was remarkably dry considering how much rain had fallen. Everywhere people were busy cleaning up after the previous night’s unexpected deluge and storm and it was still cloudy over Sikinos and that was a bit of a worry because we were heading in that direction later.

After breakfast on a sunny terrace we sat and waited for the morning to slip away and as we did so some more angry black cloud rolled in from the north and joined the lump of cloud stuck to the top of Sikinos as though it were made of Velcro. This was one of those difficult, in transit, sort of days between islands when it is difficult to settle. The bags were packed and I suppose we just wanted to get going but it was a late afternoon ferry so we just had to wait and worry about the weather. We sat on the terrace of room fourteen all day and the weather progressively improved with each passing hour and by the time we went to the harbour to board the Aeolis Kenteris ferry for the twenty past four sailing the sky was blue and the rain was completely forgotten.

Sadly the Aeolis Kenteris was another modern ferry with airline seats and air conditioning and no access to the top deck to sit in the sun and we had to sit near some pretentious Oxbridge Rahs who were travelling on parent’s expenses and making total twats of themselves. Even though the weather was poor we were glad to arrive in Ios and leave them to carry on to Santorini.

As we arrived Ios looked dry, brown and arid and with a landscape parched and baked by the relentless summer sun it looked a bit uninspiring but we knew why we were coming back here and from the boat we caught site of our favourite beach and ramshackle taverna, the little church and cliff-top walk and then, once we had docked Vangellis from Homer’s Inn who greeted us with genuine friendship. It is an interesting fact that Vangellis (an ex-sailor) is a very reliable weather expert and on the short drive to the hotel he gave us a forecast for the next few days. I understand why we in the United Kingdom are fixated with meteorological conversations but I don’t really expect it in Greece, but he explained in great detail about wind directions and what difference that was likely to make to daily conditions. “Tomorrow will be sunny with a little breeze”, he explained, “and the next two days also, but after that I am not sure”.

Homer’s is a charming hotel and named not after Homer Simpson but after the author of the famous epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey and whose burial tomb is allegedly to be found in the north of the island. This is something else that I like about Greece. Very democratically, as you might expect, each of the islands seems to have an association with a god or a famous person, Aphrodite in Crete, Zeus in Naxos, Hippocrates in Kos and so on. I like the way that in a sort of cartel sort of cooperation they have carefully shared them all out between themselves so that each one gets at least one deity or person of significant importance. We didn’t visit Homer’s tomb while we were there by the way because quite frankly I was a bit sceptical about its authenticity.

After we had settled in we walked back to the port to get some cash from the ATM and to check the fery times back to Piraeus. So far everything had gone to plan but now, right at the end, the ferry timetables didn’t match out itinerary and it looked as though we would have to make some rearrangements. This year the Blue Star doesn’t visit Ios so the only thing we can do is cut our visit short by one night and plan for a night in Naxos on the way back.

We had chosen to return to Ios for a four day stretch at the end of our holiday for a relatively long period of rest and once back at the hotel we wasted no time in getting into the familiar routine that we had established twelve months before. A visit to the pool a swim, a reunion with Martin and Lisa and with Robin, a glass of wine or two and then later a walk to the top of the Chora through the busy streets and to our favourite restaurant at the very top, the Mills, where there was grilled meat and squid for main course and complimentary ouzo to finish the evening, and I do like tavernas with complimentary ouzo and last year’s prices! We felt curiously at home and as we walked bak to the hotel the stars were shining brightly and I felt confident about predicting a good day tomorrow.