Well it's been a while since my last great adventure, so welcome back!
My latest trip took me to the great land of Pericles, Theseus, the Minotaur, gyros, Doric columns, Zorba the Greek, and of course, the musical Mamma Mia! I headed to Greece for two weeks with my two friends, Leah and Darden. You might remember Leah from my last postings on our trip to Canada last year. Darden is another old friend, dating from our middle school days. Together the three of us packed backpacks approximately 2 times our body weights with industrial size strength sunscreens and took our 15 hour trip there.
The plane rides were surprisingly non miserable. We all sat apart from one another on the longest plane ride. Darden did some nice detective work and ended up with three seats on the way there which she then stretched out on and went to sleep. Leah, gaining sympathy from fellow travellers for being a seemingly alone minor, spent her time drinking the only can of Fresca or Coke Zero that was available in the drink cart. And I shared the empty middle seat next to me with a nice Greek gentleman where we stored all of our stuff.
Arriving in Athens and finding the airport bus was very easy. What was not as easy or pleasant was the 1.5 hour bus trip to the port city of Pireaus, where we were to take a ferry to Paros. The bus had no air conditioning, and all of the other people on the bus didn't seem to mind at all, to the extent that they didn't even open the windows. When the lone open window imparted a breeze, it was so smog ridden that I wished that it was closed. By the end of the trip I felt motion sick and miserable.
Luckily, we finally ended up in Pireaus. This is a fairly unremarkable and unfun city, asides for the fact that it was one of the only places in Greece where we found lamb gyros, to Darden's infinite excitement, and ongoing frustration, as she enquired for lamb gyros at every other place we visited, always to be disappointed. Apparently, this is an American thing. There are pork and chicken gyros almost everywhere, at the cost of only two euros (about $2.70) or so, though after eating approximately 100 on this trip, I think I'm done with gyros for a while.
We were to take a ferry late that afternoon to Paros, where we were to spend the night. The ferry trip was long-about 5 hours or so. We waited to board the ship in a ferry passenger terminal. We were all tired, and Leah and I ended up falling asleep waiting. We were awaken by a Greek man yelling, "Come on, go, go, go, here, I'll take your bag, one euro, go, go, go!" at us; a very rude awakening. We rushed on the ferry (two hours early, but the earliest we could board), and ended up with sweet bench seats (most of the economy seats on these ferry are simply chairs around tables on the deck). We ended up sleeping for most of this trip.
When we woke, we had reached our first island. Darden exclaimed, "Oh, great! We're here early!" We grabbed our bags and headed off the ferry and in search of our pension. After wandering for 15 minutes or so, we still hadn't found it and asked a local woman for directions. She kept looking at our map and finally said, "This map is for Paros. This is not Paros," whereupon, we all looked at each other and back at her. After repeating something similar multiple times (and looking at us as if we were well fed American morons) we finally realized that no, we were not in Paros where we had hoped to sleep, but instead, we had absconded the ferry too early, and had ended up in Syros, an island with, undoubtedly, many pleasant characteristics, but not the one that we were hoping for which was being Paros. We wandered back to the main street, and approached a man who was hawking rooms. He led us to his wife who, after a hike up a veritable mountain, finally brought us to their pension room where we all fell into a deep sleep (well, where I did at least, I believe Darden and Leah ended up with bug bites the next morning and had reason to curse this pension. I was ok).
The next morning we headed to the ferry office where we bought a ferry ticket to Mykonos. We had never planned to go to Mykonos, but the next boat to Paros from Syros was two days later and, as Syros is not really a touristy island and had not much to recommend itself for another day there, we headed to Mykonos. To our credit, the ferry office employee told us that there were a number of tourists who had accidently disembarked in Syros the night before so at least we weren't the only ones. For this reason alone, I'm sure the pension owners earn a tidy sum in Syros.
Mykonos turned out to be lovely, and one of our favorite islands. We had originally decided not to go because it was a party island that was very expensive, but as June is the low season, it was not overrun with tourists and the prices were lower. We accepted an offer (and a ride) from a hotel propietor at the port, and the hotel ended up being one of our favorites. The beautiful pictures above and below are of our hotel.
The island itself is quite lovely. The guidebooks refer to the houses here as being "sugarcubes" and they do resemble them. Cubic, white houses, with blue or red doors and windows.
There are also a number of windmills on the island, seemingly not in service anymore (though on Crete, later in the trip, I saw new, metal windmills running and generating wind energy). 
There are also flat, solar panels on the top of most of the roofs here. I saw these in Moorea; they are used to heat water. I've never seen these in use in America, though I'm sure they are somewhere, maybe someone can enlighten me?
I'll finish my post on Mykonos with a little info about Petros, one of Mykonos's most famous residents. Petros arrived in the 1950's, blown in during a storm. He quickly took up residence and was taken care of by the residents. Now, the original Petros is probably dead, but there are 2-3 Petros' still in residence. Petros is a three foot tall pink pelican. He turned up on the waterfront during dinnertime and a swarm of tourists (including me) surrounded him and took pictures while he waddled along.
More posts to come in the upcoming weeks. I am heading to New Orleans tomorrow to visit family, but I will update with the rest of my trip soon. Upcoming: Paros and Antiparos!
2 comments:
oh Greece! Ive had the non-airconditioned bus experience too, although ours broke down and we were carted off the bus and into 40 degree heat for an hour until the next one arrived!
Don't you love how you find the best places by accident when traveling??
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