Catching up

I got really tired of using that tiny phone keyboard to blog. Not to mention emailing myself photos from my camera (possible with Wi-Fi but tedious) when conditions were just right. So here we go with another try on how we spent our time overseas.

My good friend Dick asked a most pertinent question as I tried to describe our trip. "Didn't you feel rushed spending only a few days in so many places? Didn't you feel like you missed a lot?" Yes and no. Liz put a lot of planning into this with the help of star of PBS and travel guides, Rick Steves. He definitely helped squeeze the juice from a country in as short a time as possible while still enjoying the flavor. We didn't often feel rushed or deprived or even jaded. One never knows if one will be back to those places; not likely, there are a lot more places out there so you might as well skim the high spots of which there are a plenty. Also, a large part of the adventure was just finding our way around. Remember, this was not a fully scripted tour. We saw a lot of several countries from trains, buses and the occasional car and there is no interaction like getting directions from someone who doesn't even speak your language.

If there was any one theme for this trip it was old stones. There is a hell of a lot of history in Europe and even picking any one era doesn't cut down on the sheer volume, but I've always been fascinated by pre-Christian and especially stone and bronze ages. In her wisdom, Liz slated plenty of these attractions.

First thing- Athens
You have to start somewhere and Athens was logical. Nearly the farthest east of our destinations and a very international destination. We got lucky right away with our AirBnB hostess, Fotini. Her directions to her apartment were spot-on (not a given) and she was right there to greet us. (An aside: While waiting for the bus to her place a very old lady poked me in the back, snatched the phone case off my belt and stuffed it into my front pocket, shaking her finger at me. She then did the same with the wallet in my back pocket. First lesson-the streets are full of pickpockets.) Fotini's place is beautifully situated to show off the city,  but I just realized I actually did a good job on Athens two blogs down. If you haven't seen it, its two posts back.

Of course, there is night life in Athens. Before we left, Fotini made sure we saw some of it.

Streets full of graffiti, some of it quite artful.

Couple on their way to dinner.

We saw many dark streets, populated with random couples and groups.
Bars in this district are mostly cobbled out of old apartment houses and assorted other old buildings.

Mike and Liz out in Athens Nightlife.

What I was talking about earlier. This bar is actually on the site of the dwellings
of many leaders of the resistance during WW2.

Liz and Fotini, our friend the communist. This does not have quite
the connotation it does here. Call it Left Liberal.

Colorful streets and alleys add to any pub crawl.

When we showed Fotini our itinerary, she suggested something different. She wanted to leave town for a few days and show us the sights around her home town of Kalithia after we'd seen Hydra and Spetsos. I see I did a small blog on them directly below, so just a few pics and captions.

Nearest thing to an art shot I'll ever take. The Greek Islands are full of model-pretty women and this one was
in a seat in front of us on the sail  to Hydra.

We passed by this hostel a few times before realizing it was Hotel Theano, our lodging on Hydra.

This is actually a relatively wide street on Hydra. Evidence of the donkeys used
for transportation is pretty much everywhere.

Yachts filled the harbor



Sculpture on a hillside.

Spetsos harbor

Just a little beach on Spetsos.

Beautiful mosaics in the walkways.



 

Fisherman's wife forever waiting.

Another night at Fotini's and we all got into her car for a tour of the area north of Athens. Delphi is not far from Athens so it was first, with a quick stop for one of the many roadside monuments to various revolutions and partisans.

One of many monuments to partisans along the road.

Roadside scenery

Delphi covers at least a square kilometer and has been a sacred site since the first Greek civilization.

Typical

Pretty good view also

Nose cone of the gods? So help me, I can't remember this thing's significance right now.

 

Just some good views.

Every Greek ruin is apparently required to have at least one theater.

In the museum.

A reproduction of Hiero's hydraulic organ.
Hiero was a master engineer of his day and is on a level with DaVinci and Edison.

The site of the battle of Thermopylae. Now it's just a wide spot in
the road and the coast is over a mile away,

And this is how we know it was here. This is the hot springs (Thermo Pylea) that
names it. Nice and warm, stinks of sulphur,

The next couple of days were used up just touring up the Greek coast, stopping in Volos and The Pelion and ending up in a little village way up the coast and in the mountains. Here the rain caught us and made it impossible to see the other villages further up in the mountains. Then on to Katerini, Fotini's home town, then Thessalonikki.

Just, you know, scenery on mountain roads.

Stopped in for a cup of coffee in The Pelion, a cluster of ancient villages on the only day in 19 with rain.
 Have I mentioned coffee in Greece?
They follow the Arabic and Italian model which is that coffee is like
whiskey, strong and not necessarily palatable. The American model is
that coffee is more like beer, to be tasted and savored.

More scenery. Be glad I didn't add all I could. I've got 3 or 4 thousand shots.

Lunch, I think

Just a big old tree, prized by the locals in The Pelion.

The White Tower, Thessalonikki's  main landmark.

Now to Meteora. This is a heck of a tourist site! Scientists have found traces of occupation as far back as 23,000 BC but it was very sparsely populated until the 9th century AD when a group of monks came here looking for some privacy. Just like gas stations, other monasteries were built near the first for the next 700 years. No problem, they all got their privacy, courtesy of the huge rocks they built on top of. One can only make the journey up to them (the roads are definitely a 20th century addition. Before that it was ropes and winches.) and wonder why.

Mount Olympus

There are 3 monasteries in this view.

Even more here

See the one just over my shoulder?

The stairs are a new addition.

So are most of the roads.

Fotini pointing out her mother's patron saint. Cameras are strictly forbidden here.

Just some looks inside the monasteries.

In this little notch in the rock are several dozen people and thousands of scarves. In one
of those lucky things we happened to be there on a strange sort of feast day. I can no longer
remember the exact story but it involved an injured woodcutter, his fiancée, a scarf and
the Virgin Mary. Now on this day people climb rope ladders up to this notch in the rock and
take down last years scarves and add more.

There's a better look.

This board is used like a bell to summon monks or nuns to prayer.

We stayed overnight and took another look at a couple of monasteries we'd missed the day before. That ended up in a mad dash down the coast so we could catch a bus in Athens for Nafplio. In classical times this was a quiet backwater but Venice took it from the Ottomans in the late 1600s. They built a hell of a big fort then manned it with about 80 soldiers. The Turks easily retook it in 1715. Then built it up some more. During the 1820's Greek war of independence the Turks held out to the very end here, surrendering only due to starvation. Did I mention the fort is at the top of a very high hill? I considered getting stubborn about seeing it but was saved by a very cheap tourist bus. But first, we had to see Epidavros, just a quick bus ride away, This is yet another classical Greek ruin, famous in its day as a healing center. Its theater is as large and well preserved as any in Greece.

Big theater with really good acoustics.
You could hear the students reciting a classic play.

More ruins. More coming.

Little fortress in the bay of Nafplio

Further up than it looks here.

See?

Statue of a lion carved into a hillside.

Close by Nafplio was Mykene. This was a big deal during the old Greek (1,000 BC) civilization. You did realize there were two great periods in Greece? The first was in the 1,000 BC area and lasted a few hundred years then the later period 400 or so BC and lasting into the Roman occupation. It's very easy to get mixed up on what was when, especially since Romans were gaga for anything Greek and copied them slavishly, even when Greece was a province of Rome. Anyway, Mykene is most recognizable by its Cyclopean walls.

BIG blocks!

Ruins as far as you want to walk.

A fine museum. Just stuff picked up in the area.

There's a story here. The bus had quite a while before leaving and we found a taxi driver who took us  and a young man from China from Mykene to our hotel in Nafplio with a stop at this treasury. He was very proud of being Rick Steves' driver when he's in town. Gave us time to catch our bus back to Athens.

Our one picture of the Corinthian Canal, taken from a speeding bus.
 You're looking at a 3,000 year old Civil Engineering project.

 

We spent that night on Fotini's floor, she having scheduled guests in her guest room. Comfy enough. Up early to catch a bus to catch a train to catch a plane to Santorini. From the Santorini airport a bus to Fira to catch a bus to Oia, on the northwestern arm of the island, Once again fortune smiled on us. Our AirBnB  accommodations were in the best spot to catch the sunsets that are judged to be among the ten best in the world. Tourists from all over the island flocked to Oia to see it. Go figure. To me, Santorini is endlessly fascinating because the island we see is less than a third of what it had been 3600 or so years ago. To top that, the island in the middle of the bay where most of Santorini used to be wasn't there 500 years ago. Not to mention a recent (late 1960's) excavation of a town buried under 40 meters of ash. All that and the disaster that ended the Minoan civilization on Crete.

Many Greek villages look like spilled boxes of sugar cubes.

More stone mosaics

There it is, one of the ten best sunsets in the world.

Off to the central volcano

The harbor facing the caldera has 100 yard plus high walls.
 Some people build houses in the strangest places.

The only live caldera. just wisps of steam just now but remember this island wasn't there 500 years ago.

Liz swimming in the warm flow from an underwater vent.

Fresh caught squid

 

Akrotiri was discovered in the 1960's by a very determined Archeologist.
There was no actual record of its existence but he determined this was the best harbor facing Crete.
It was buried under some 20 meters of ash and is less than ten percent excavated.

Something you'll never see anywhere else. These are grapevines coiled into a basket shape.
Vintners coil the vines to protect the grapes from the wind and get benefit of dew dripping into the center.
 

Steep cliffs all along the caldera

Santorini to Mykonos is just a three hour ferry ride. Like the rest of our Greek experience, this was all about ruins and museums. The one on Mykonos is the oldest, founded in 1905. Also one of the smallest. Delos, on the other hand is a barren Island covered with ruins. It's also one of the oldest sites, with temples dating back to 1400 BC.

Somehow this clay jar has managed 20 or so centuries unbroken.

I hadn't mentioned this before; these poppies grew profusely all over Greece.

We first spotted this odd opening not long after we got off the boat.

It was a long way up a hill. Turns out it's one of the oldest temples on the island.

 

The end of our Greek adventure.
 

On to Rome. We flew from Mykonos to Athens. Cooled our heels in the airport for 8 hours since it was May 1st with transportation strike in Athens. No problem, the airport has wifi and some pretty nice restaurants, along with a lot of fellow travelers to pass the time with.