Saturday, May 13th, Santorini, Greece

Greetings!

Santorini's caldera coast has some of the most beautiful views in the world.  The 3-kilometer walk between Imerovigli and Fira looks down on the western side of the island, and out across the vast caldera created by the eruption of Thera in 1627BC.  An arc of houses, shops, restaurants, and tourists gather from April to October, arriving by fast and slow ferries and planes.  We took a fast ferry, which turned out to have engine trouble and became a slow ferry.

From a distance, the clifftop development looks like snow.  With windows reflecting the Adriatic blue sea, the white structures layer the top edge of much of the caldera.  The walk near the top provides access to the front top doors of lower levels, and bottom front doors of upper levels. Everyone gets an almost unobstructed 180 degree view from the cruise ships to the sky.  At many points, turning around allows a view of the beaches on the other side of the island.

In a few days, this Greek tour will end.  It's being made a bit more difficult by a reported ferry and public service strike on May 16th, so Serra is scrambling to make sure we all can make it to our flight and ferry connections to either home or our next tours.

We are going to miss our new friends, and will try to stay in touch.  It's been great to be with ten other Americans who care about traveling and learning.  Those are values we hope we don't lose in the coming years.

To see all the photos taken today, click on Saturday, May 13th, Santorini, Greece.

Friday, May 12th, Delos, Greece

Greetings!

Greek mythology dominates life and place here.  Everywhere there's some family stories about the twelve gods within the family of Zeus.  And most involve his son Apollo, or his daughter Athena.  Yesterday's visit to the Acropolis and the Parthenon was a day with Athena.  She is clearly the favorite child.

In today's adventure, we took a ferry from our port in Mykonos to the island of Delos, a sanctuary dedicated to his other top child, Apollo.  Both sites are spectacular, and contain more stories and view than I could ever present.  While we have to await another time for my thoughts and some other people's photos on Athena's wonders, I did have my camera back for today.

First, I have to thank Dora and Amaryllis, two of the best local tour guides ever.  The knowledge and skills that it takes to move through an enormous site, imparting at the right moment complex content, to a straggling group of differently-mobile and inconsistently-present travelers - is awesome.  

And these two women dazzled us.  Passionate and careful, colorful and accurate, their ability to cooperate with other local guides present onsite, and deliver a timely and consistent body of information to us was impressive.   Once again, the gods gave us great weather.  With plentiful rain last winter, there are more wildflowers than anyone can remember,  An arid island, we were prepared for more desert, less bloom.

We also weren't prepared for the enormous city we found on the island.  Truly full of tributes to Apollo, the island is a who's who of the 7th to 4th century BC.  Claimed by all around it, a neutral haven of commercial superstars, the island was a showcase of houses and shops.  

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Friday, May 12th, Delos, Greece.

Thursday, May 11th, Mykonos, Greece

Greetings!

Hearing we were taking the slow ferry (Blue Star) to Mykonos today conjured up a pokey little ferry that might have gotten the queezy a little sea sick.  When our bus from the hotel got us to the port, we saw an eight-story, quite elegant, powerful sea-liner.  A shopping center with better seats than most planes, restaurants with decent prices, kennels for pets, playrooms for over-active kids, and some of the fastest docking crew and equipment I’ve ever seen.

It still took four hours to sail to Mykonos, first stopping at two nearby smaller islands to deliver locals and mail. 

Met by the Petinos Hotel bus, we were driven to the hotel to put our bags away, we walked to Platya Vialos Beach restaurants to have lunch.

Later that afternoon, we all piled into the local bus with our dirty laundry in bags, and headed to town.  Walking from the main bus area, we wandered the whitened streets and houses (now mostly converted to shops), snapping photos of windmills, flowers, and churches.  

Dropping our laundry off for a two-hour turnaround, Serra escorted us on a short walking tour, including the history and charms of Mykonos, followed by free time in town and dinner at seven at the Sunset Café in Little Venice. 

Pasta and seafood themed to fare, and we all experienced yet another great meal.  Soon after the sun sank into the Mediterranean behind a four-masted schooner to the west of the island, an orange moon rose above the hills above our hotel as we returned home. 

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Thursday, May11th, Mykonos.

Tuesday, May 9th, Athens, Greece

Greetings!

True to form, we've lost a piece of equipment.  The photos for the last few days have been brought to you by Pat's Mini-IPad.  The connection ring on my Nikon camera's normal lens broke last weekend, and I've been using her Mini-IPad ever since.  The photos have been good, and it's been relatively easy to capture wide-angle shots.  But it's just not the same familiar tool.  Knowing we were headed back to Athens soon, it wasn't much of a problem.

But on the day when we found someone to repair it, our Mini-IPad seems to have gone missing between the arrival of our bus at the hotel and the room.  We've checked the bus, the lobby, our baggage and the room.  No luck.  My bad for being careless in watching over it.

The photos for today, as well as the photos for tomorrow (the Nikon is being fixed, and will be back with us tomorrow afternoon), will not be posted.  It's a text only couple of posts.  Maybe I'll become better at writing.  Let's see.

And tomorrow, we walk through the Parthenon.  What timing.  We're coming back to Athens after our voyages to the islands, so you may see the Acropolis yet.

Ciao.

Gregory

Monday, May 8th, Kastraki, Greece

Greetings!

In central Greece, in the Plain of Thessaly, there are conglomerate pillars reaching to the sky topped with monasteries built in the 14th and 15th centuries AD.  Reachable at the time by ropes and ladders, these ancient hideouts for eastern orthodox christian monks provided isolation from the invading Ottoman empire.  Originally, there were 24 of them, and only six remain.

Today, we visited a small one housing twenty nuns - the Monastery of Rousanou/St. Barbara, founded in 1560.  Our guide, Dina, helped us overcome our fear of climbing, and we made it up the steps carved into the rocks in the 17th century.  As with everywhere we go on this trip, our expectations were blown away by the magnitude of the effort and skill we saw demonstrated in building these structures.

While photos weren't allowed in some key parts of the monastery and chapel, the talent it took to transport, construct, adorn, and maintain such gorgeous sanctuaries of Eastern Christian devotion is hard to grasp.

The second, and largest we climbed up into was the Monastery of Great Meteroa.  Only three monks now reside there, but it contains a museum, many meeting rooms, and the largest and most well-preserved Eastern Orthodox Church in Greece.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Monday, May 9th, Monasteries of Meteora, Greece.
  

Sunday, May 7th, Delphi, Greece

Greetings!

While the rest of the world was beginning to watch the elections in France, we chose to drive north over the Rio-Antirio Bridge, and stop at a lovely seaside village (Nafpaktos) for the best coffee outside with a view.

Proceeding northeast for another couple of hours, we arrived at the southwestern slope of Mount Parnassus (Delphi), where we visited the spectacular museum, and walked up the hill to the Temple of Apollo.  Son of Zeus, Apollo is clearly the darling of everyone in Greece, in ancient and current times.  His temple designated a neutral zone wherein all city states and territories could gather, pay tribute to Apollo and other deities (including the earth goddess Gea, Themis, Demeter, and Poseidon), and seek advice from the Oracle.   

We are increasingly amazed at how our perceptions of greek mythology have not prepared us for the size and complexity of the ancient ruin sites associated with them.   Olympia and Delphi, and the museums here and in Athens, provide ample evidence of the strength and credibility of these early beliefs in Greece.  And they convincingly demonstrate the superiority of Greek sculpture.

Who were those providing the answers to questions posed to the Oracle?  And what was the source of their insight?  It turns out that the gases (ethylene, methane, and ethane) seeping out of cracks, discovered recently, have verified ancient claims that the Oracle's communicators were achieving a heightened state by breathing in these vapors.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Sunday, May 7th, Delphi. Greece.

Saturday, May 6th, Olympia, Greece

Greetings!

The morning was spent visiting Sparta, an unimpressive but important historical site containing an amphitheater, acropolis, and no tourists.

Most of us hear the words "in the modern games.." when referring to the Olympics and think there was probably some decades before 1896 when the games weren't really official, or well-organized.  Would you be surprised to learn that they were going on for 1,200 years before the site was buried in 26 feet of flooded soil around 600 AD?

Or that one of the wonders of the ancient world was a 4-meter high statue of Zeus adorned with jewels which seemed to move when reflecting the light from an olive oil pool in front of it?

Without a standing army, how does a country keep their people fit enough to ward off their enemies for melleniums?  The celebration of physical prowess became the national obsession.  Preliminary contests of 13 events took place all around the country for a year before the games. Statues of the winners, and plaques announcing the cheaters lined the long entryway into the stadium.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Saturday, May 6th, Olympia, Greece.