Greece 2009 - Day 11, Milos to Folegandros

It was an unsociably early start in the morning because the bus and the ferry times didn’t coordinate very well and we had to catch the ten past seven bus to Adamas which left us with nearly three hours to wait for the ten-twenty Speedjet to Folegandros. We would have preferred a regular ferry but unfortunately none were available. It was a sunny morning but to our dismay cloud was beginning to accumulate again and assemble into a thickish smudge over the high peaks and mountains behind us.

We took our time looking for somewhere for breakfast and finally selected a harbour side pavement café with a table in the sun that by now was starting to be obscured by the cloud. There was a friendly waiter who was interested in our holiday and was anxious to learn our opinion of Milos. We told him we liked it very much and he was pleased about that because Greek people are proud and like you to like their island.

By nine o’clock the sun had disappeared behind a cheerless blanket of grey cloud that left us wondering what on earth was going on? This weather was most un-Greek like! By nine-thirty it was very grim indeed and we were suddenly glad that we were leaving today. To amuse ourselves we sat on the quayside and watched the boating holidaymakers. One had a broken gang plank and the temporary replacement looked most unstable and we sensed some amusement if one of the six on board should fall off. After a while there was a visit from the port authority odd-job man who had a good look at it, huffed and puffed a bit but couldn’t repair it so he just went away again.

The pink Speedjet, decorated with dolphins, arrived on time, a few people got off and some replaced them and then it left virtually empty for Folegandros. It was so empty that we gate-crashed the upstairs first class cabin where Kim slept and I watched through curtains of salt spray as we passed by a couple of uninhabited islands that had evidence of disused mines and abandoned industrial activity and then in under an hour we arrived in Folegandros. We were staying at the Hotel Vrahos again, the hotel mini-bus was there to greet us and at the reception Anna, the owner’s daughter was there to welcome us back. It’s a good job that Anna works in the family business because she is the only one who can speak English. Her father is a friendly man but only has two phrases to rely upon: “Anna will explain”, and “Anna will be back soon”.

We were staying at the Vrahos again because we especially liked one of the rooms and we were relieved when Anna confirmed that as we had requested it had been reserved for us again this year. It was just as we remembered it, a simple room with plain furniture and decoration but outside on the balcony a huge personal sun terrace facing east and catching the sun all day long. The weather was much improved now with just a few innocuous clouds passing by and a clear view over Sikinos island with just a little bit of cloud clinging stubbornly to its highest peaks.

The hotel was in the little port of Karavostassis, which is not an especially attractive place surrounded by salt and pepper grey hills, a small stony beach, a harbour and a crescent of white cube houses and holiday lets. Not the most picturesque place in the Aegean it has to be said but I like it just the same. In the harbour the European Union funded work that had been in progress last year had been completed but hadn’t seemed to make that much of an improvement and had the sort of finish that I would call the contractors back to put right if it was my own driveway at home. All over the islands there are big blue sign boards announcing these improvement works and they all seem to be about one million euros in value and this made me wonder just how much European tax payers money is being spent in Greece. It turns out that in 2007 Greece received a net benefit of twenty-five billion euros and that is the second biggest subsidy after Poland at sixty-five billion. Eighteen out of twenty-seven EU countries make a profit out of membership and the United Kingdom of course isn’t one of them because after Germany at eighty-six billion euros the UK makes a whopping contribution of fifty-seven billion. The others that make a loss on membership are France, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Finland and this is a surprise, Cyprus.

We spent the first part of the afternoon on the sun terrace and then later went to the beach and a swim in the sea where I was nervous about the abundance of spiny sea urchins because I didn’t want to get a foot full of sharp barbs. That evening we took the bus up to the Chora for evening meal and after watching the sunset we wandered through the tiny streets and made our way to last years favourite restaurant that still had the same menu and we were glad about that because we really liked it.

Greece 2009 - Day 10, Kimolos

There was very little change in the morning and the strong wind continued to rush in and chase through the balconies of the hotel, rattling the shutters and rearranging the furniture as it went. There was a lot of cloud as well and it was quite cool but not inconveniently so as we set off quite early after breakfast to return the bike to Adamas. On the way we stopped again at Sarakiniko to take some photographs before people started to arrive and we clambered over the smooth chalk white cliffs and down to the waters edge where waves were dancing energetically as the wind whipped them into salty columns that were leaping over the shoreline rocks. While we were exploring there were a few heavy spots of rain and some thick grey cloud passed overhead but it kept going and behind it the sky was left clear and blue.

We couldn’t stay long and we left as others started to arrive and drove to the port, handed back the bike and waited for the bus to take us back to Pollonia where we had a thirty minute wait for the little ferry boat to take us to the nearby island of Kimolos just twenty minutes away. The sea was still choppy and the boat was only small but it seemed reliable enough so we were confident about taking the risk of getting back to Milos later.

It was just after midday when we arrived in Psathi, a sheltered little harbour where the most noticeable thing was that nothing at all seemed to be happening. At the back of the beach there were a couple of bars in a dreamy setting under the shade of leafy trees and just a single road leading out of the port and up towards the Chora. Kimolos it seemed was an unspoilt get away from it all sort of place and although I like the idea of peace and tranquillity I couldn’t help thinking that this might actually be getting away from too much. As we walked to the town it occurred to me that this is how the other islands would have been fifty years ago or so and although the concept of a Robinson Crusoe holiday might sound idyllic perhaps on reflection it might not be.

The Chora was just as lethargic as the port, a few inquisitive visitors wandering aimlessly around the picturesque narrow cobbled streets and in between the whitewashed houses but with less than a thousand residents across the entire island there wasn’t a great deal of local activity to observe. At the top the tall cathedral seemed somehow too big and out of scale with the tiny streets and boxy houses. The streets were ramshackle and without order or purpose as they wound their way to the centre and the sixteenth century Kastro, much of which was dilapidated and in ruins with heaps of rubble from collapsed and abandoned houses.

This was the Messa Kastro, or inner castle, the original town where people lived before they moved outside to the Exo Kastro, the outer castle, as the town expanded outside of the restrictive confines of the walls. Inside, some people were clinging on to occupation of houses with only very basic facilities that would certainly be declared unfit in the United Kingdom. The Kastro is an important historical monument and there are plans to restore the buildings and some early work has begun but it is likely to take a very long time because current funding from the Greek Government and the European Union is totally inadequate which currently leaves the project financially beyond restorative reach.

It was a pleasant walk around the exterior of the Kastro, past one or two tavernas and traditional shops and through streets of houses with yards and balconies bright with flowers in gaily coloured pots and baskets and then we had seen all there was to see so we returned to the sleepy port and had a simple lunch at a taverna next to the gritty beach and waited for the ferry crossing back to Milos. Kimolos was well worth the visit, it was one of the most unspoilt and authentic islands that I have ever visited but I am not certain that I would need more than an afternoon there.

On the return journey there was one last defiant spit of rain and then the last of the grey clouds moved reluctantly aside leaving behind a silky blue sky and endless sunshine – the poor weather it seemed, had passed and the early evening was a complete contrast to the two previous and the sea was calm enough now to go for a swim. This was important because I was conducting a hair self-cleansing experiment that meant only seawater and lemon juice instead of harmful chemicals and a wash was overdue. At the halfway stage in the holiday the experiment seemed to be going rather well and I was predicting no more expensive shampoos for me any more!

This was our last night on Milos and we had enjoyed visiting again, repeating some of the things we did last time and exploring some new places as well. We didn’t do anything exciting, just walked into the village, had a final meal and looked forward to moving on in the morning to Folegandros.

Greece 2009 - Day 9, Milos, Plaka

To lose a work of art is unfortunate but to lose three is careless and Milos is famous for three lost works of art. The statue of the Greek God Asclepius has been take away to the British Museum (not lord Elgin this time), Poseidon is in Athens but the most famous of all is the statue of Aphrodite, or the Venus de Milo, which has been taken away to the Louvre in Paris. All over the island archaeologists still search for the missing arms but there remains a lot of debate about just how good the statue of a podgy overweight ancient Greek lady of dubious artistic origin really is and it is unlikely that they will ever be found.

We woke early because we had plans for a very full day and we thought we might hire a bike and join the search for the missing appendages. After breakfast on the terrace with a persistent black cat that seemed to think I was a temporary Merlin and the wind still rushing in and agitating the sea we walked back to to Pollonia to catch the ten o’clock bus to Adamas.

The bus journey took about twenty minutes and was curious because here on Milos you pay for your ticket when you get off the bus. Very strange, what would you do if the inspector got on to check? Our first job was to book ferry tickets to Folegandros and we were disappointed that there were no regular ferries, only the new sea monsters without character or soul and then we found a bike shop and hired a death machine from a man who had forgotten to take his early morning happy pill. He wasn’t very talkative and saved what conversation he had to instructions on not to drive to the forbidden zone on the west of the island. He made it sound almost supernatural but the truth is that this is a national park called Natura 2000 where there are a lot of wildlife experiments that could easily be spoilt by the careless use of a quad bike.

We wanted to do the bike thing again because someone told us that these things are so dangerous that within two years they will be banned from hire in Greece so we thought that it was important to try them out before they are no longer available. Apparently as a rule English and French people are generally proficient, Italians, who think they know all about scooters and bikes, are not so good and are certain to fall off and injure themselves sometime during the day but the Americans, who know nothing about them at all, are absolutely hopeless and are very liable to crash and cause a multiple pile-up within seconds of taking to the road.

The first thing that we had to do was to negotiate our way out of the harbour and this involved a steep climb to the town high above the seafront, the thing was very difficult to control, it was hard work and essential to concentrate at all times because the slightest road undulation resulted in wobbles and panics all the way to our first stop.

We arrived at the main town of Plaka, which overlooks the port of Adamas below and we parked the bike and walked into the little streets of the busy town. First we walked to the top and to the Venetian castle and then returned to the shady alleys of the town with its pretty squares and tavernas where it actually started to rain so we were forced to shelter in a bar and have a beer. But it stopped as quickly as it started and we continued our walk. Like all island towns it was predominantly white with blue doors, external staircases, kittens and discreet little shops, most of which were closed on account of this being siesta time. There must have been some sort of priest’s convention in town today because there were dozens of black robed ministers everywhere, in the bakery having morning coffee and later in the taverna having lunch and what we thought was really strange was that they were almost constantly on their mobile phones.

We walked around the town and couldn’t help noticing that there were three distinctive smells. Proctor and Gamble Tide detergent (no longer popular in the UK), which clung to the fresh linen hanging on the washing lines outside the houses, incense, leaking out under the doors of the churches and the divine aroma of fresh moussaka and other Greek specialities being prepared for lunchtime in the tavernas. As it happened, it was lunchtime now so we stopped and had a leisurely lunch of salad and moussaka (what else), wine and beer and then we reluctantly moved on.

Greece 2009 - Day 2 Serifos, Livadi

It was a windy day and the high winds whipped up the sea into little white meringue peaks on top of the pitching waves. Although we had an allocated seat on board we preferred to stay outside for the entire journey and watch the islands slipping by as we made our progress towards Serifos. Serifos occupies an important part of Greek mythology, since its name is connected to two of the greatest heroes of the mythology, Odysseus and Perseus, while it is also said that the Cyclopes lived in its caves. More recently the island was famous for the mining of iron ore and as we approached the south west of the island we could clearly see the remains of the old workings that only finally closed down in 1963.

The ferry arrived at eleven o’clock and we were surprised to find the port of Livadi unusually quiet and without the normal reception committee of dozens of apartment owners trying to find a customer. It was all very lethargic as we left the windy ferry port and set about locating our hotel. This didn’t take long and we found the Hotel Naias one street back from the main port road and it turned out to be a traditional little place, basic and clean but without any frills. I was expecting something different but at least we had a nice balcony with a good view over the port and its crescent shaped beach fringed with cafés and tavernas. Outside it seemed to be getting windier and shutters were rattling, furniture was being rearranged and the taverna umbrellas were flapping madly as though going through some pre take-off routine. We left our bags, closed the room and went immediately to the harbour to get acquainted with the place.

At almost midday it was time for a mythos but as we walked along the road we were surprised to find many of the tavernas were closed with little sign of life. Finally we choose a place with blue umbrellas and tables on the thin strip of sandy beach and we selected one in the sunshine. We will never know if this place was open or closed because Kim’s patience tanks were on empty and after only two minutes or so she decided that service was too slow and insisted that we move on to an alternative place a little further on where the yellow umbrellas and trendy furniture had caught her eye.

The Yacht club was a nice place with a mix of holidaymakers taking snacks and local men drinking coffee in that languid sort of way that elderly Greek men do. The down side was that this turned out to be the most expensive place in the village and I suffered a case of severe shock when a small beer cost a whopping €5 and the food was equally expensive. I worried that this might be normal on Serifos and I began to mentally recalculate the holiday budget but after we left and walked through the village we checked the menus in the other places and were relieved to find that on average prices were a lot closer to what we were expecting and we didn’t go to the Yacht club again because I don’t appreciate paying Covent Garden prices on a little Greek island.
Whilst these string of Cycladic islands are all the same they are all completely different at the same time and Livadi had a unique quality that set it aside from other places we have visited. Serifos is not a popular holiday destination for overseas visitors and a bit like Amorgos (in my opinion) a place that the Greek people have sensibly kept back for themselves because close to Athens it is convenient to reach and it doesn’t suffer from the excesses of, say, Santorini or Mykonos.

There was no sign of the wind easing off and big white clouds were being blown in from the northeast and were tumbling dramatically over the mountain and the Hora at the back of the port. It wasn’t unpleasant and after we had poked about the village for a while we collected our swimwear and made for the beach and the first swim in the sea for almost a year. The sea was warm and inviting and the sand was lush and comfortable, so much so that I spent most of our two hours on the beach catching up on lost sleep from the day before.

Two hours on a beach is quite long enough I find so before we could get bored we left and went back to the taverna with the blue umbrellas for an afternoon drink and where this time at least three different waiters attended to our table and tried to persuade us to eat and we had to explain to each of them in turn that it was too early but we might return later. Leaving the taverna we looked for a mini market for alcohol and nibbles and were surprised by the high cost of the wine, especially noticeable for me having just returned from France where I had stocked up on wine at an average price of €2 a bottle. We selected the cheap plonk in the cardboard container and it turned out to be surpringly good.

We did return to the taverna with blue umbrellas but evening meal was a disappointing experience. We didn’t order a lot and the owner didn’t seem to like that, the food was delivered in a hurry and there was no friendliness and a distinct lack of hospitality about the place. Perhaps he was just having an end of season off day but we never went back again to find out. He was certainly more attentive to a large table of young Australians from a sailboat party who were spending lots of cash, drinking heavily and making the average English football supporter look as though they have impeccable manners.

The end of day one and over a final drink in a seafront bar some mixed views about Serifos, a beautiful island but a bit expensive and not as friendly as all of the others that I have visited and I didn’t feel as welcome. It was becoming chilly and there was no let up in the wind so after we had finished we went back to the hotel and went to bed in anticipation of a good sunrise in the morning and a planned bus ride to the Hora.

Greece, Island hopping 2008, Piraeus

In 2006 I went island hopping in the Greek Cyclades islands for fourteen days but even though a year later in 2007 I pushed this to sixteen I still didn’t think this was nearly enough so for 2008 decided that three whole weeks would be just about perfect.

On the day of departure we set off in good time for Luton Airport with a plan to arrive early and get the holiday off to a good start with a relaxing drink or two in the airport departure lounge. It was a good job that we did because as we left Spalding we had no idea that we were desperately going to need that extra hour if we were to make the flight to Athens. After about forty-five minutes and just south of Peterborough the car started to handle badly and just as I was thinking about pulling over to check it out there was a dramatic back tyre blow out and in a cloud of smoke and burning rubber I had to pull over to the side of the motorway.

I was in a total panic and even though the AA assured us that they were on the way and would be with us very quickly I decided to try and change the tyre myself. I had the jack in place and the job in hand when I suddenly started to feel strange with a mouth so dry I thought I had been eating sand, my hands were shaking and I had a heart rate at double what is considered normal. I was convinced that I was going to suffer the indignity of passing away at the side of the A1 and so took a walk along the hard shoulder to try and calm down and then the AA vehicle arrived and the patrolman took over and made a much better job of changing the tyre than I could possibly have done. The bad news of course was that we now only had a temporary tyre on the back, which meant a speed restriction of fifty miles an hour that I just knew was going to piss people off! We had lost about forty minutes of the spare hour that we had allowed and at a reduced speed I knew now that it was going to be tight.

Back on the road I suddenly had a huge burning pain in my right shoulder that was so bad that if it had been the left one I would have abandoned the holiday plan and driven straight to the nearest hospital and I was still desperately thirsty. The priority was getting to the airport so I carried on and after an hour or so the pain wore off. I had no idea at the time but I had been stung nine times by what I assume was a wasp caught inside my shirtsleeve and I had probably been suffering from some form of anaphylactic shock. The pain had gone so I didn’t know this until much later when I finally took my shirt off in Greece and discovered nine vivid vermilion red spots on my shoulder blade that made it look like a nine of hearts playing card!

About an hour late we arrived at Luton Airport and drove to the long stay car park but two eastern European boys at the entrance explained that it was full so as we had pre-booked we were would be upgraded to the mid stay and we had to drive all the way back towards the airport and the alternative car park. We were a bit late but we checked in and then crawled through security checks and listened to other people’s conversations. Behind us was a couple of girls and one announced to the other that ‘I only go on holiday for three things, to get drunk, get stoned and get laid’, I had to see who this person was and when I turned round she turned out to be so unattractive that I was tempted to say ‘Don’t build your hopes up, I should concentrate on the first two!’

When we finally got away the flight lasted just over three hours and landed in Athens at the 2004 International airport of the Year, Eleftherious Veizelos and we quickly retrieved our backpacks from the luggage carousel and walked briskly to the metro station for the thirty-five-kilometre journey to the city centre. A previous time in Athens I had been ripped off by a taxi driver who charged €30 for the journey so I thought €5 each this time represented much better value for money. The metro line was constructed in 2004 for the Olympic Games and it was a real delight, thirteen stops to Syntagma in Athens and then after a change another seven to the port of Piraeus. If they were building the London underground today this is how they would do it.

After stopping over in Athens for the last two years we decided this year to give it a miss and go directly to Piraeus ready for a pre-booked early morning ferry the next day to the island of Paros. I really want to see the new Acropolis Museum that should have been opened in 2004 but Greece being Greece this is now postponed until 2009 so skipping the city really didn’t seem to matter. We arrived at about eleven o’clock at night and it was hot and dirty and noisy but despite that it felt strangely safe. We skipped the taxi ranks and decided instead to walk to the Hotel Ideal which according to the map was only about five hundred metres away to the east of the port. This was fine except for the fact that a stray dog decided to join us and accompanied us most of the way. I’ve mentioned before that I am not a big fan of dogs so this made me feel really uneasy. Athens has a real problem with packs of stray dogs and it is estimated that there are over ten thousand wild and stray dogs and although they are generally well behaved this has created a real image problem. For the Olympic Games the authorities rounded them all up and impounded them for the duration of the event, took the precaution of sterilizing them and afterwards simply let them go again. An opportunity missed there I can’t help thinking! The theory is that this sterilization solution will eventually mean that the dog problem in Athens will solve itself.

The hotel was more difficult to find than it should have been and even though it was in a less than salubrious area it was actually quite nice with a comfortable room and an affable man on reception who made us feel welcome and made some restaurant suggestions. This didn’t take him very long because although nineteen million passengers pass through the port of Piraeus every year the dining options turned out to be very seriously limited indeed. We left the hotel and returned to the port and with very little to choose from agreed on a gyros place with plastic tables and chairs on the dirty pavement and had a meal of chicken leftovers that I would normally give to the cat but we were hungry and we ate what we could and watched the traffic chaos as a ferry arrived in port and disgorged its passengers onto the busy road right in front of where we were eating. Piraeus is an interesting place but not somewhere that I will be spending any more time than I have to ever again. It is loud and busy and totally functional and is somewhere that is never ever going to be beautiful or is going to tempt any sane person to stay more than one night. This is a place that you wouldn’t even send your mother-in-law to!

It was about one o’clock when we returned to the hotel and after setting the alarm for six there wasn’t a lot of time to be finding out any more about the hotel Ideal. If I was rating it I would say that it was one grade up from being a doss-house and in a bad area of the city but it was only €45 for a night and I slept with my wallet and passport just in case. I needn’t have worried of course because like all of Greece I am sure on reflection that it was perfectly safe and when the alarm went off we established very quickly that everything was just as it should have been.

We left the hotel and walked along the busy and turbulent streets to the Blue Star Ferry Agency where we exchanged our voucher for tickets and made our way to the ferry. This was not as easy as it sounds because Piraeus simply has to be one of the most traffic crazy cities in the world. This place makes an Italian city look like a village in Herefordshire on a late Sunday afternoon and there was a crazy confusion of traffic that absolutely defies description. Cars, busses and Lorries were all growling aggressively through the streets with absolutely no regard for traffic lights, lanes, rights of way or pedestrians, especially pedestrians. The madness was being ineffectively choreographed every now and again by traffic police blowing madly on whistles and waving arms in a totally manic way that quite frankly was completely unintelligible to absolutely everyone whether in a car or on the pavement and didn’t seem to help a great deal.

This should not have been surprising because Piraeus is one of the largest ports in Europe and the third largest worldwide in terms of passenger transportation. There were certainly a lot of people about this morning and there was a long queue to get on board the Blue Star Paros and in the usual way foot passengers were competing for space with cars and commercial vehicles. We made our way to the top deck and found a seat on the port side of the boat to catch the sun and we made ourselves comfortable in preparation for the four-hour passage to the island of Paros.