Greece 2011, Antiparos to Athens

When I woke in the morning it was a peculiar sensation but my head was still swaying as though I was still on Captain Ben’s boat and the bed was gently bobbing from side to side and I was happy with this because it was probably good preparation because we were shortly to take another small boat ride.

We had a ten-thirty appointment with the Blue Star ferry back to Piraeus but first we had to get back to Paroikia which meant a twenty minute taxi-ferry crossing to Paros so we skipped breakfast at the hotel, settled up and arrived in port in time for the short crossing to the larger island neighbour and the main port. We sat on the top deck and listened to the rumble of the engine and the growl of the exhaust as the boat negotiated the slight swell and delivered us to the quay side with enough time to spare for breakfast at a harbour side café and a quick trip to the supermarket for a couple of cans of Mythos for the journey.

The Blue Star Paros arrived on time and we made our way to the top deck and despite the fact that it was full to capacity we found seats at our preferred location on the starboard side of the boat so that we would be in the sun for the journey and where we waited for twenty minutes as the temperature rose as the sun got hotter and hotter before everyone was on board and the ferry finally cast off and slipped out of port.

Today the Aegean was clearer than I have ever seen it before and it was easy to pick out the islands of Mykonos, Delos, Tinos and Syros to the north and Naxos which steadily disappeared into the horizon behind us.

The ferry passed through the narrow channel between Kea and Kythnos and we were so close that we could clearly make out the small villages and the whitewashed towns clinging to what are really just mountain peaks poking out of the surface of the water and then shortly after that we could see the mainland and we began the final leg of the journey towards Piraeus. We had been sailing for nearly four hours now and the time had begun to drag but then we could see Athens, a gleaming mantle of white concrete spilling down to the sea and soon we were docked and in contrast to the slow pace of the islands pitched back into the madness of Piraeus.

Despite the robbery experience our plan was to take the metro into the city and we were edgy and nervous as we queued for tickets because in a Greek line it is essential to stay as close to the person in front (even if they are a pickpocket) because if you leave as little as a centimetre of space from the person in front then someone will interpret this as an opportunity to push in. The Greeks see queuing as a waste of time and an inconvenience and dislike it almost as much as the French and several people cut in front of me as I waited in line. I concluded that one thing’s for sure is that if there was an event at the Olympic Games for queuing then Greece and France would be an almost certainty for the final!

We negotiated the metro without any disasters and after emerging from the subterranean world we quickly found our accommodation, the curiously named Hotel Fresh, and settled in. It was a good hotel that I had paid for with Airmiles so seemed almost free and it was in a great area full of character that some of the hotel reviewers didn’t seem to appreciate but we liked it anyway. While Kim unpacked I walked along the main road lined with local shops full of character and found a place selling local wine in plastic bottles and a kiosk selling beer and made some purchases and returned to the room.

Let me remind you however that Athens was in the grip of a domestic and economic crisis so there was an edginess about the city and an unusually large number of police on duty at the main tourist spots as we walked to Monastaraki, The Plaka, Syntagma and Ermous and it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps they were preparing for a demonstration or worse still a riot so we retraced our steps to the hotel and stopped at a gyros place where we planned to have a roadside meal but there was only time for a beer as they took the tables and chairs inside and secured the shutters and closed. We noticed that every shop along the street was doing the same and the demonstration/riot concern returned.

Everything seemed settled enough however so later on we walked again to Monastaraki where we had a final holiday meal and then strolled back along a street of aluminium shutters all daubed in graffiti in various grades of obscenity and back to the hotel where we stood on the voyeuristic balcony and stared into people’s homes in the adjacent buildings as we finished off the plastic bottle of red wine before going to bed for the last time in Greece this year.



Greece 2011, Captain Ben’s Boat

On the previous evening the owners of the Kastro hotel had persuaded us to book a trip for a full day boating adventure and a trip around the island with Captain Ben. They had promised that it would be great fun and that the weather would be perfect and after a couple of glasses of red wine we were easily talked into handing over our money.

So, the next day, after breakfast, we packed our bags and walked along to the harbour in time for the ten o’clock departure. By the time we arrived the boat was beginning to fill up and on the top deck passengers were staking their claims to the sun beds and claiming their preferred spot on the seats and we sat and waited while the last few passengers made their way along the quay side to board the boat. We were outnumbered by Scandanavians but there were some French and Germans as well but I am fairly certain that we were the only English on board.

At ten o’clock the boat set off and it just about now that we began to ask ourselves the question that why, for two people who get bored on a beach after fifteen minutes or so we had agreed to take part in this seven hour trip around the island. First the boat went to Paros to collect some more Scandanavians and then it headed out to sea and Captain Ben apologised for the wind and gentle swell that to be quite honest was barely noticable.

We headed north until we reached some islands, just rocks really, but one of them large enoughto have a small white church on it and the captain manoeuvred the boat into a small bay, dropped anchor and invited us to go over the side for a first swim. Once back on board I realised that we had only been going for about an hour and it looked like a very long day ahead.

Having gone around the north of the island we now started to head south and there were some famous people’s holiday houses to look out for. Apparently Antiparos is becoming a favourite with Hollywood ‘A’ listers and Captain Ben pointed out the favourite homes of Tom Hanks, Madonna and Angelina Jolie and this reminded me of my boat trip around the island of Capri in 1976 where there were more famous people’s houses than I could ever remember (except for Roger Moore and Sophia Loren).

We stopped at a beach for another swim and we took the opportunity to do a spot of beachcombing and came across some more driftwood additions for our model boat project and after that we sailed for about an hour before reaching an empty beach on the uninhabited island of Despotiko where we were set ashore to wait for lunch. After a while Captain Ben and the crew came back with some appetizers of grilled squid and spicy Syros sausage and some local ouzo to wash it down. The food was excellent and far surpassed our modest expectations but back on board it got even better with a barbequed meat kebabs and salad, plenty of red wine and beer and finally delicious grilled sardines.



After the crew had tidied up after lunch the journey continued along the coastline and past some white gnarled cliffs that reminded me of Milos and then there was another invitation to go swimming and snorkelling into and through the caves that punctuated the coastline. The alcohol was flowing freely now and people were beginning to lose their inhibitions. There was some wild partying at the front of the boat and a group of Swedish women came to life when the captain played an ABBA tape and they started the top deck dancing. If there had been a slight swell before the boat was really rocking now and Kim was quick to join in.

There was one final swimming stop in between the islands of Paros and Antiparos and then Captain Ben made for home, stopping first in Paros and then returning to Antiparos to finally moor up. It had been a fabulous trip and a great cruise and despite my earlier misgivings the seven hours had simply flown by and it had been a wonderful day.

Back on dry land we dropped off at a bar on the way back to the hotel but after all those hours on the water we couldn’t get our land legs back straight away and both of us were continuing to sway in motion with the boat that we had spent the day getting used to. Later we spent some time around the pool bar and then walked back into the village. We would have found somewhere to eat but we were still quite full after all the food on board the boat so we skipped evening meal but had a quiet drink down by the harbour and reflected on our holiday. This was our final night on the islands and tomorrow we would be heading back to Athens for a night in the city before flying home in two day’s time.



Greece 2011, Paros to Amorgos

We had to set the alarm today because there was an early ferry at half past nine so we woke, packed and went downstairs to be the first on the breakfast terrace. After several cups of tea and an above average continental breakfast we paid up, said goodbye and rejecting the offer of transport walked to the port. Turning down the lift was something we quickly regretted because the pavement was uneven, our bags were heavy and even though it was early it was already quite hot.

Soon after we arrived at what is euphemistically described as the departure gate our boat, the Anek Lines, Artemis, arrived on time and we made our way with the handful of fellow passengers to the top deck in the sunshine and as soon as everyone was on board it set off and slipped out of port. The Artemis, named after the Greek Goddess of the wilderness, the hunt, wild animals and fertility (so quite a spread of responsibility), is a slow boat with a reassuring rhythmic throb of a reliable old engine and we sat in the middle of the boat and took comfort from that.

At first the Artemis closely followed the rugged coastline of Paros punctuated every now and again with white Cycladic churches and little fishing villages and then past the picturesque port of Naoussa on the north-west of the island and soon after that the island of Naxos started to reveal itself. Just a hazy outline at first but getting sharper with more detail as we got closer in the way that a water colour painter might start with the first blurred colour wash and then progressively fill in the detail.

The Artemis called in at Naxos and exchanged some old passengers for new ones and then set off sedately south down the narrow channel that separates Naxos from Paros and ahead of us we could make out the island of Ios. Around the south of Naxos the coastline became more inhospitable with jutting peaks and deep rocky gorges and this made me realise that these are actually the bits of the land that the sea doesn’t want and a short while later we entered the islands to the west of Naxos called the Little Cyclades.

Artemis called first at Iraklia where in the small port the sunlight was dancing like dainty fairies on the corrugated surface of the gently rippling water and then after we left a few minutes later we were in Schinoussa which looked like an island that time had forgotten! Out of Schinoussa a Cycladic wind came from nowhere, the seas started to froth and build into frothy meringue peaks and the salt spray reached all the way up to the upper deck forcing people inside. Not us though. We kept our steadfast resolve and remained up top.

Sometimes Greek ferry journeys feel very functional, a case of just leaving somewhere to get somewhere else but this was not one of those journeys, this was much more like a pleasant five and a half hour Aegean cruise, sitting in the sun, watching the islands slip by one by one with a book in one hand and a can of Mythos in the other.

After Koufonissia the rough seas died down as quickly as they had sprung up and soon we were approaching the southern Amorgos port of Katapola where we would be returning in a few days time. The ferry continued its journey along the west coast of Amorgos, an island shaped like a seahorse and rising like a wall of stone from the sea almost in a no-man’s land between the Cyclades and the Dodecanese, dry, brown, arid and hot and after forty minutes we arrived in the northern port of Egiali where we were met by the owners of the Hotel Filoxenia who unnecessarily transported us by mini bus the one hundred metres or so to our room, which was lovely and facing west was sure of a good sunset later.

We were hungry so had a late lunch and after that took a walk around a half asleep town then bought some wine and spent the rest of the afternoon on the generous balcony of our room. As we prepared to go out for the evening a small herd of goats passed through the grounds and although I tried to remember I don’t think I have ever stayed in a place before where wild goats roam freely.

After capturing the pictures of a glorious sunset in the harbour we walked into the town for evening meal. There was a lot of choice but one in particular seemed popular so we decided that that was where we would dine. There were no spare places and people were standing around in a predatory sort of way waiting for a table opportunity and elbowing their way to empty chairs as they became vacant and somewhere in all this we ghosted in like Martin Peters and jumped the queue. After a short misunderstanding about the evening special menu we sorted out our choices and had a first class meal at the end of an excellent day.



Greece 2011, Swimming With Sharks and Greek Australians

After the shortest of refreshment breaks our next stop was the beach which was just a stone’s throw from the hotel so we collected our swimming essentials and found a spot we liked on the sand, stripped down to our bathing costumes and paddled out into the inviting silky water. This year I had packed my black swimming trunks because I always consider black speedos to be quite slimming!

There is currently a beauty salon fad in the United Kingdom and elsewhere which involves parting with substantial amounts of cash, taking shoes and socks off and dangling them into a tank of fish which will nibble away at the dead skin and provide a natural pedicure. The toothless fish are called garra rufa and are also commonly known as ‘doctor fish’, they come from the Eastern Mediterranean, mostly Turkey, and there were some in the sea today and when we stood still long enough they congregated at our ankles and shortly got to work. While we enjoyed our free foot treatment it became obvious that the discerning little creatures preferred my feet to Kim’s and I could easily steal her fishy medical companions by standing close to her. Kim became irritated by this so I explained to her as best I could that the only explanation I could think of was that I really couldn’t help being a ‘fish magnet’!

This alternative beauty treatment sounds weird but it might be considered positively normal compared with some others. For example, bull semen, a moisturising hair treatment that uses the sperm of Angus bulls. Ox bone-marrow shampoo from Brazil, Nightingale droppings used in Japan as a facial cleanser, snail slime used in South America as a hand cream and snake venom which is claimed by some to have the same face-freezing effects as Botox.

It was a pleasant beach with warm sea, golden sand and a gentle breeze which kept the temperature comfortable. In the shops earlier we had seen some souvenir boats made of drift wood and this gave me an idea. It would be impossible to take one home given the restrictions on hand luggage so I decided that I would collect the bits of wood and sticks off the beach, take them home and, in an Airfix sort of way, make my own so I set immediately about beachcombing and starting my collection.

After her early start Kim was tired now so while she went back to the room to sleep I stayed at the beach, enjoyed some more foot treatment, had another swim in the Aegean and continued my search for suitable boat building materials. After I had tired of all that I returned to the room and rejoined Kim and where we waited until nearly sunset time before going out again for the evening.

We had seen Paroikia in the daylight so our plan was to return in the evening for a different perspective. We walked through the same streets but now twinkling lights illuminated the shops and tavernas and the trendy bars that were closed during the day were beginning to open for business. We walked from one side to the other and left the old town just in time for Kim to capture the sunset pictures that she wanted.

We had considered returning to the same taverna as the previous night but there was a lot of choice at this end of the town and even though it was rather touristy we allowed ourselves to be talked into one by a persistent waiter who found us a nice table by the water’s edge. It was busy and one thing we couldn’t help noticing was that there were a lot of young Australians at adjacent tables and walking along the street.

We shouldn’t have been surprised of course because after World War Two and the unstable post war years in Greece many people from the mainland and the islands packed their bags and set off down under. In fact Greeks were one of the main groups targeted by Australian Government migration schemes in the 1950s and 1960s and by 1971 there were one hundred and sixty thousand Greek-born people in Australia. Today, just under half of these live in the State of Victoria and the city of Melbourne has the largest Greek community outside of Greece and after Athens, Thesaloniki, Piraeus and Patras (all in Greece) is the fifth largest Greek city community in the World so this must surely explain why so many Australians visit Greece every year in search of their family heritage.

A trio of young (Australian) girls were persuaded to take the table next to ours and after a while the waiter came to take their order. ‘Can I get you something to drink’ he purred and then looked perplexed when they asked for three glasses of tap water! He came back after a few minutes with the order and directed them to the food menu. One of them took a while to decide and then made her selection– ‘I’d like a lettuce and tomato salad please’, the waiter must have thought this was the starter and waited for a further choice to complete the meal but after a pause she added without batting an eyelid – ‘without the tomato!’ He was totally baffled now and just repeated ‘a lettuce and tomato salad without the tomato?’ ‘Yes please’ she confirmed, ‘I’ll have extra lettuce instead’. I wonder what they made of that in the kitchen?

Anyway, we had a rather nice meal while we listened to the sea and eaves dropped other people’s conversations and when we had finished, although it wasn’t late, we were tired so we wandered off back in the direction of the hotel. We had a rather early start in the morning so we needed a good night’s sleep.

Greece 2011, Paros and Paroikia Old Town

Kim woke early this morning and did her best to invite me to join her in a state of consciousness by banging doors, turning the lights on, opening the blue shutters to let the screaming sunlight inside the room and by using the hair dryer! Although I was vaguely aware of some of this anti-social activity I resisted the move from slumber to wakefulness and in the end she conceded defeat and went for a walk by herself along to the beach. I woke an hour or so later and found her wandering along the seashore enjoying the early morning sunshine.

After breakfast in the hotel we walked the short distance to Paroikia past a row of gaily coloured fishing boats where leather skinned men with gnarled and calloused hands and smelling unashamedly of sea creatures were rearranging nets, carrying out repairs and sorting through the remains of the previous night’s catch, the best of it long gone to the restaurant owners who had been here much earlier and only tiddlers and odd looking scraps left now which were being picked over and were destined either for the fishermen’s grilled lunch or rejection and disposal back into the sea.

It’s a sad fact that we have always previously neglected Paros, being a busy ferry hub this has always been a place to rush through on the way to somewhere else so today it was time to put that right and give the place the courtesy of a proper visit and behind the untidy ribbon of harbour front fast food bars, travel agents and car hire offices we slipped into the tiny streets of the timeless old town. Here there was an eclectic mix of modern chic boutiques, old fashioned mini markets and the inevitable tourist shops (actually, a few more shops than I am generally comfortable with, I have to say) rubbing shoulders with blue domed churches, Venetian villas in various stages of neglect and restoration, bars and a Kastro.

The narrow cobbled streets invited exploration and as we walked around some led to surprises and others led to nowhere in particular but all around were white washed walls, blue doors and fences and fading menu boards and the place was filled with the familiar smells of the Greek Islands, heavy incense from behind the church doors, fresh moussaka from the tavernas and Tide washing powder spilling out through the doors and windows of the houses where people went about their daily chores.

Eventually we left the old town and emerged in a large square with one of the most important churches in all of Greece, the fourth century Panagia Ekatontapyliani, which means Our Lady of a Hundred Doors, and is the oldest remaining Byzantine church in Greece. According to legend, ninety-nine doors have been found in the church so far and the hundredth will be discovered only after Constantinople is Greek again. This church was unusually welcoming to inappropriately dressed tourists insisting only that they behave with respect and keep their voices down.

We duly noted this and went through the heavy doors into an alternative world of black robed beardy priests, local worshippers and travelling pilgrims all lining up to kiss the lavish icons of their favourite Saints. Outside and around the church there were old fashioned stores selling various cards each with a picture of a part of the body. If you have a bad leg then you buy a leg picture, a poorly arm an elbow picture and so on and then you take this to the Church and ask for a cure and leave it there so that God doesn’t just forget about it after you have gone and these were fastened in bunches to railings and picture frames. All of this icon kissing means quite a lot of unwanted spit and saliva of course so to deal with this, cleaning ladies with spray cleaners and dusters circulated constantly to deal with the slobber and the germs on a continuous and never ending polishing circuit of the church.

Back outside we bought ferry tickets for the next leg of our journey to Amorgos and then we set about the important business of comparing Greek salad and Mythos prices in the bars and tavernas because this is the benchmark we use when we make decisions about dining arrangements. €5 and €3 respectively seemed to about the average price so there was no inflation shock there to deal with so we selected one and spent a pleasant half an hour watching the town go about its business.

During this time it became clear that we needed to reassess our opinion of Paros. We had only really seen it as an impatient heaving mass of traffic and people that accompanies the arrival and departure of a ferry but in the intervening periods it settles down into the same soporific slumber as all of the other islands.

We liked it!

Greece 2011, Blue Star Ferry to Paros

My apologies to residents of Piraeus but it is not the most attractive city in Greece – constructed almost entirely from limestone and clay as a reminder of the Athenians fifty year love affair with concrete and cement. In the words of Mike Gatting, this is not a place that you would even send your mother-in-law and we were pleased when the ferry slipped its moorings and headed out to sea precisely on time and our personal chill tanks started to fill with credit!

We were travelling economy class of course but this is the best place to be - sharing the open top deck with grey haired hippies with pony tails revisiting the 1960s, back-packers wearing creased clothes who haven’t washed for a fortnight, sun-seekers, thrill-seekers and nostalgia-seekers, bench-hogging sleep-snatchers, aging grey-beards in open toed sandals and sun kissed cougars strutting their stuff. This is good company thankfully missing the football shirts, lycra and stag and hen parties who have all flown directly to Mykonos and Zakynthos!

As the Blue Star left the port the engines throbbed reassuringly and black diesel smoke leaked from the exhausts; on the bridge and down below I imagined a frenzy of activity by the crew but on top it was lazy, languid and laid back. The ferry joined a line of boats leaving the port, rather like the start of a marathon race with dozens of competing ships looking for the best channels and tides.

It was hot and humid but after a few minutes large clouds began to build, the skies darkened and the sun disappeared as the ferry followed the coastline of the Greek mainland before slipping between the islands of Kea and Kithnos and into the Cycladic ring. We couldn’t see the islands to the north and south because it was hazy and dull but after a couple of hours the clouds began to break and the sun spilled through casting orange pools on the shiny blue surface of the water as the Rayleigh scattering effect began the daily process of turning the sky from blue to red.

It was just at this time that Kim lamented that in all of our ferry boat journeys in Greece we had never seen dolphins and then by a stunning coincidence, within only a few seconds, and I swear that this is true, we suddenly saw dolphins! About a hundred metres from the boat dorsal fins began to slice through the surf and then several of them were leaping into the air and some swam obligingly close to the boat below us. As word began to spread more people came to our side of the ferry and I worried about weight distribution and whether the boat might topple over but after a few minutes the show was over and everyone began to drift back to their seats. We stayed on dolphin look out duty for a few more minutes but no more appeared.

As the sun disappeared the journey began to drag and the dampness that accompanied the darkness forced us inside for the last hour and we were glad when we arrived in Paroikia at ten o’clock and joined the pushing, jostling crowd and left the Blue Star. As usual the quayside was full of apartment owners trying to sell their rooms in a sort of chaotic scramble that makes a French bus queue look well organised but we were met as promised by our transportation to the nearby Hotel Dilion on the edge of the town and we carved our way through the turmoil.

It turned out to be acceptable but not breathtaking and we simply left our bags and strolled to the sea front to find somewhere for a late meal. We were away from the town centre and found a good looking place busy with local people, which is always a good sign, so we joined them and enjoyed a fine meal and some impromptu entertainment as diners on the next table frequently interrupted their meal to break out into traditional dance. It was late and gradually the tavern started to empty as people paid their bills and left and it was some time after midnight when we made our way back to the hotel looking forward to a good sleep after a very long day.