Monday, May 15th, Athens, Greece

Greetings!

A traveling day, we finally made it from Santorino to Athens by ferry. Tonight, at midnight, begins a 48-hour ferry strike.  We left early this morning on a 6-hour cruise aboard the Fast Ferry.  We arrived at 9:30pm, and went to dinner at God's Restaurant (one of our favorite places) near our Divani Palace Hotel.  Four of our friends stayed behind to take the 5:30pm ferry to Crete.  Two others are leaving tomorrow morning early on the Metro to the airport to fly home.  The rest of us are splitting up for the day tomorrow, and will meet back for one last dinner.

What a great group of travelers we have been.  All Americans, and all easy-going who wanted to make every minute count.  Good walkers, talkers, and listeners.  Led by the best guide, we felt safe and cared for.

I'm concluding this post with the shot I took looking back at the cliffs of Iao from the castle that Serra urged us to climb up upon.  The view, like this part of the trip, was amazing.

To see al of the photos taken today, click on Monday, May 15th, thens, Greece.

Sunday, May 14th, Santorini, Greece

Greetings!

We walked down the hill from our hotel this morning to the point where our bus could pick us up to take us to Akrotiri.  You all remember Pompei, right?  Well, 1,700 years earlier (in 1,613 BC), the volcano in the center of the caldera defined in part by the island our hotel sits on (Santorini) blew up, sending two thirds of the land mass into the sky.  Thirty-six hundred years ago, a small city on the southern rim of Santorini was covered by the ash which fell from the 22-mile high plume.

In the early 1960s, an archeologist trying to prove his theory that the great Minoan civilization came to an end around 1,450 BC as a result of the same eruption, discovered in his digging in this area that an entire city had been covered up.  He labored alone until his death in 1974, never able to find enough evidence to sustain his theory.  His research did reveal a civilization which it seems far eclipsed those which followed it for a thousand years.

Evidence of pottery, architecture, city planning, art, housing, bronze tools, and one of the most prolific merchant sea-going forces in the world were found at Akrotiri.  Racked by earthquakes and eruptions that flattened everything frequently, the residents of this city were warned of the 1,613 BC eruption, and fled the area.  Nevertheless, what was left behind and found in the ash layers convincingly argues for the highest level of advanced civilizations present here.

At the end of the day, we took another Caldera walk through the northern town of Ioa.  Rivaling yesterday's walk, we are still awestruck by the beauty of this island.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Sunday, May 14th, Akrotiri, Greece.

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.