The Greek Islands

Thursday 28th – Off to Mykonos

Up at 5.15am, although somebody did ring me from NZ at  2 am, I hadn’t worked out how to keep my alarm on and the phone silent.  Maybe flight mode would have done it.  Our transfer  cab, was there as we went into the lobby but we rushed up to the breakfast bar,  grabbed some food in our hands and back down to be whisked away, each couple in our own shiny yellow Mercedes to the Hydrofoil waiting for us at Piraeus.  It took about 15 minutes so it was a pity we never had more time for breakfast as what we had grabbed was great, our ferry departure time was 7.25am. Not a lot of folk travelling, a few Aussies, Japanese in travel groups etc, we had been allocated seats but were able to move to a better table with a view.  The port was huge and a very large number of ferries, cruise ships and other boats, quite amazing.  A large number of islands and all the houses were the same off white colour and at first glance looked like cliffs.

Doug was reading out about Mykonos and said was famous for loud music, English breakfasts and over priced merchandise.  Oh and is also the gay capital of the world.  Sounds  like we are going to have some fun.

Two stop offs for the ferry on the way, Syros and Tinos.  Both quaint  looking places.  We arrived at Mykonos to quite chilly weather and the promise of rain, no one to pick us up and all the Taxi’s full.  We were dropped down at the old port but managed to find a Bus that took us to the new port much closer where we were able to walk into the town square and catch a cab up the hill to the New Aeolos Hotel, our home for the next two nights.  Anita made us a coffee and very welcome.  It was raining by now so we headed to our rooms for a bit of a rest.

Renee your points go back up.  Our hotel was a lovely friendly place up on the hill. Ten minutes down a track to the Square and slightly longer back up (every one told us we would need a taxi back up but we were hardy Kiwis so it was no problem to us).  I forgot to mention Renee that our ferry tickets were waiting for us at our hotel in Athens and again here in Mykonos for the next leg.

We spent the afternoon walking around the town in the rain although it did clear up a bit later.  All white with little narrow streets and alleys.  Amazing what you found behind the white walls. A real butchers shop, a green grocer but as it was good and even with all the good stuff we saw we spent money only on food.  Maybe that was because everything was so expensive.  Opps I lied then as Margaret brought an umbrella for E12 which we could have brought in Athens the day before for E3.  We had dinner at Madoupas on the waterfront.  I had the Mykonos sausage, Margaret an omelette, Doug salmon and Ngaire pasta.  With bellies full of really nice food we walked back up the hill to our hotel.

29TH April – The day William & Katherine got married

The day dawned cold and windy.  We could have easily been at home and in fact when I checked the temperatures Mykonos was only going to 1 degree warmer than home at 14.  However it did not rain.  Margaret & I had decided to take the boat to Delsos, a nearby uninhabited Island with an ancient Greek City on it that once used to house 30,000 people.  It was a little like Pompei but more run down.  Very surprisingly it was not run like a big tourist attraction and it was great just to be able to mosey around checking stuff out.  There was a museum on site where they had a lot of the treasures from the place and some explanations as to what had gone on there.   We were still going to have to do some research to get more information on its history. Strange but most things here are written in Greek.

Doug and Ngaire spent most of the day out at the only inland town,  Ano Mera where a monastery was the biggest thing in town.  They got there on the local bus.  It was an adventure for them but not worth the visit as they could not even get in.  A lovely new school but no kids. Good coffee sitting in the sun, lots of eating places around a square but no people to use them…..

We ended up back at the hotel where the girls were able to watch re runs of the wedding.  We decided on a late meal down in town and then we would see what night life was around.  We chose Maria’s for dinner, a really nice place where we were able to sit outside.  Meat balls for me which were fantastic and just melted in your mouth, Margaret had beef burger stuffed with yellow cheese, she avoided the feta..Doug had lamb cutlets and Ngaire Mousaka..delicious and coffee to follow< Rusty & Ngaire pigged out with an extra…local icecreams in a waffle cone.  We then went wandering but we were still far too early.  Some of the bars had light music going and all the coloured lights but there was nobody in them.  You could tell we are getting old when we headed off home up that dammed hill AGAIN.

30th April –  Mykonos to Santorini

A perfect day bloomed.  No wind, not a cloud in the sky, but still a coolish feel to it.  Summer was close.  The hotel had provided us with pretty light continental breakfast of Greek yogurt, cornflakes, fruit, boiled eggs, bread,  thin sliced ham & cheese, fruit juice plus tea or coffee and that sort of stuff.  Apparently if you paid more they would make toast.  We had restudied our map and worked out there was a part of town we hadn’t really explored so off we went.  We were catching the ferry at 2.55 so decided we needed to be back at the hotel to pick up our bags by 2pm. And a taxi to the port which we fear ripped us off big time as it was E8 plus…. The day had really warmed up and it was very enjoyable exploring again the narrow streets and alleys.  Margaret ended up buying a shirt.  Looks nice too. Lunch at Opa’s of beef balls and local made tomato sauce plus a beef sausage on kebab bread and then our last time up THAT hill to the hotel.

The ferry this time was full and we were really stuck to our allocated seats.  Quite chaotic really to get on with all the tour groups etc and of course our cases. stopping at Pyros, Eos and then our port Santorini..oh what delight awaits us here for our two night stay we wonder????

Off the boat and we are sitting at the bottom of the gigantic cliff,  very impressive with a zig zag road making its way up the side.  We decide to grab a cab (E17) to the Albatross Hotel at Katerados. 6 out of 10 for the Hotel Renee.  In fact we have re evaluated our rating system based on the Shanghai hotel being a 10,  King Jason would be a 5 and the New Aeolos being a 7.  The Albatross was not flash but does the job, it also had these mini showers where when you drop the soap it’s a mission to retrieve it with a wet curtain sticking to half your body, actually in Ngaire’s case she reckoned the curtain stuck to the crack of her ass..  No WiFi is also a pain in that part of your body.  We had to muck around a bit as Sandy our agent in Santorini had to sort out our ferry tickets to Rhodes.  First of all our ferry was not going to be running and then it was again.  We have some tickets for it but have yet to get aboard.  Sandy was really helpful and we arranged through her a rental car for the next day.  E30 a day including insurance.  While I had been sorting the tickets the others went out to explore the local surroundings and came back with a bottle of wine and some nibbles.  That didn’t last long so we headed off to find somewhere to eat.  Kypa-Nikh’s, another traditional Greek place.  Doug and I had pork fillets which were beautiful but too big to finish.  Ngaire had a lamb dish while Margaret a Moussaka.  We had our left over pork put into doggy bags to be our lunch the next day and headed back for a reasonably early night.

Playing the tourist is very very tiring.

1st May – Santorini in a Hyundai i10

We were told it was only a 10 minute walk to the town centre but after walking for nearly thee quarters of an hour knew we had gone the wrong way. The weather wasn’t that flash so we headed back to the hotel to ring for our rental.  We were going to have the car for 24 hours from when we picked it up and thought we would be smart and explore the main town first and get the car later.  Silly us, we got the car at 11.30 and we were off.  Doug described the Hyundi i10 as 10 inches from front to back, well it was a little bigger than that but not by much and we all fitted in comfortably.  Driving on the right hand side of the road caused us a bit of fun every now and again.  Bike was misheard as right but we managed without any serious mishaps.  Having our own motor was fantastic and we covered the whole island at least twice.  Our navigator was a bit shit or was it the map and the street signs but he ended up chucking the map over the back seat so in the end we just drove.  We had lunch at Perissa,  a nice beach on the south west side of the island.  It was still a bit fresh so there was nothing much to see on the beach and nobody swimming at all.  We had picked up a couple of rolls and our lunch was pork roll from our doggy bag of the night before.  However we did have the best coffee there since leaving home.  We headed off and found an ancient village with narrow roads tracks and alley ways similar to Mykonos.  Back in the car and we headed up a road on the side of the hill to the monastery and radar station at Pyrgos, the highest point on the island.  They had a sign up there taking no responsibility for uncontrollable cancer carcegenics from the radar. A really great view although it was restricted quite a bit by the haze. Back in the car and this time we found the main town Fira but as we could not find a parking space we ended up driving right through so we kept going to Oia at the northern end of the island.  Again we ended up driving right through because we didn’t get a park and at the northern end drove down this steep road to a quaint little port sitting under these high cliffs with rocks, some of them quite huge just sitting there waiting to come loose and drop on the restaurants and people below, scary. The road was less than 10 years old and prior to that the donkey and a steep track was the means of transport.

We headed back to Fira and found a park this time. Fira was perched on the side of the cliff above the old port.  The port had no road to it, just a donkey track and the cable car.  You could see the donkeys walking up the track.  We didn’t test it but there were 589 steps according to the numbers we saw at the top. But this was certainly where a lot of the pictures come from.  Nice white houses attached to the side of the hill and little windy paths between them.  This place is renowned for having the best sunsets in the world.  Of course Doug would never agree with this and the West Coast of NZ has much better.  We were not going to prove it either way as the haze (or cloud) was still about.  We had dinner where we could sit and watch the sunset.  I had Garlic Spaghetti,  Margaret a Shish Kabab, Doug & Ngaire shared a hot spicy mussel dish and salad. Margaret had her Gin and tonic for TA with her feet up.  As mentioned the sunset was disappointing and we headed back home for an early night.

Pottering around is very tiring.  

Monday 2^nd May – More driving around Santorini

We were not catching our ferry until 10pm tonight so had a full day to fill in.  We decided to keep our car for another day so headed off early for the furtherest point on the island.  A lighthouse which we were able to drive right too.  We wandered around there and then set off to see if we could see an archaeological site called Akrotiri that had been closed since 2005 because of an accident.  The was nothing to see except Red Beach.  Not really exciting, very rocky but some red rock formations of interest.  We then headed back to Perissa for the good coffee.  While there saw a postcard for a beach called Kamrai which was over by the archaeological town of Ancient Thirasia past the airport.  It was a lovely beach and you could start to see how nice it would be to book into one of the hotels across the road and live there as a beach bum.  According to every one we were still a week early but there was some eye candy on the beach.  We spent probably 3 or 4 hours here wandering and had a nice lunch before heading to a wine museum.  We bulked at the E7 fee here and my vote didn’t count as I was driving and not allowed to sample the wares.  Apparently they had a 300m tunnel and tape players in English.  When we got out we could sample 4 wines.  Well could have.  We drove through to Oia again which was a reasonable distance only to be told when we couldn’t find an easy park to go back to Fira.  We had been looking for a particular restaurant on that road called Akropolis but couldn’t find it.  As said my navigators were not up to it.  We ended up at some little place where I had a Cod fillet, Margaret and Doug Greek sausage and Noddy, salad with spinach pie.  We didn’t mark it high but my cod was good.

It was then we put some petrol in the car and down to the port.  We ended up using E30 of gas.  The port was very quiet when we got there as we were an hour and a half early but we made good friends with a café worker from Albania and time went quickly drinking coffee and ouzo.  We watched a 9.15pm ferry come and go.  Quite an interesting operation as the boat backs in to the wharf, drops the ramp, cars trucks and people stream out.  The new lot walk on in a rush, cabs pull up within minutes to go and the boat leaves.  The port almost closes down until the next one, ours The Blue Star Line’s Diagoras.  What a fantastic ship/ferry.  It was huge, palatial and very clean with only a handful of people on.  It even had escalators.  It was easy to find a row of seats to coil up on and go to sleep which is exactly what I did. We had breakfast of eggs, bacon etc etc in the dining room all by ourselves…..

PS: I have to tell all that “Garson” our car driver was real good, he only scared Nods once and that was more the road than the driver and the view from the top was well worth it. Our navigator did get poxy a couple of times and he was the only other male in our group.

Being a tourist is harder than working