Trip to Greece, October 2002
Bunch of pictures available here.
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For once, we left in the morning, thus arriving in England as night fell, having then only to collapse at our friend's house--as opposed to all our other visits when having arrived at the crack of dawn, we then spent a long and exhausting day of trying to stay awake while maintaining some degree of human sentience. This time, we awoke at a respectable hour on Saturday morning after a decent night's sleep, and lunched with friends at a charming London cafe. Lawrence instantly celebrated our first day of vacation by abandoning all dietary restraint and ordering a large platter of bangers and mash. I made do with a prudent pasta. Thus fortified, we made our way back to Heathrow and thence to Athens.
Athens is not quite the seat of culture and civilization that her splendid past might lead one to expect--indeed, third world sink hole seemed a more apt description. Our hotel was ill chosen--the night was punctuated with roaring traffic, dog fights, and drunken altercations from the street below--so that perhaps soured us on the place. And the ghastly discovery that the little bins beside each toilet were for toilet paper, which on no account might be flushed down the toilet, also tempered our enthusiasm for the fount of western civilization. Well, well, at least there were toilets...
In the morning, we bought our ferry tickets in Piraeus, and then went back to Athens to an excellent lunch, which had a condoling effect, so that we were able to tour the Acropolis with complaisance, despite the drizzle that set in as we reached the summit.
Bravely daring public transit despite total ignorance of Greek --and you are to consider that the street names are written in Greek,
we returned to Piraeus to board the ferry and head off for the Cyclades, over the wine dark sea.
Pitch black, in fact. At 4 in the morning we were roused from our snug cabin to make ready to disembark. Hastening on deck, we saw but one distant light in the black night --and the boat still rushing through the dark waters with unimpaired velocity. Still, we went down to the car deck and found the mariners toiling at their ropes, and beginning to lower the drawbridge door device--and lo! Suddenly in the widening chink of the lowering ramp appeared the magical vision of a little harbour town, twinkling lights, cafes, shops. And there was Beatrice awaiting us on the pier. Such joy!
She drove us from the port up the hill, and then parked her ancient van in the church parking lot, leading us the rest of the way on foot through the tiny winding streets of the sleeping town. Our charming room was up up up, around the corner, through an arch, up some steps. In the morning we opened the window onto the balcony--and such a view! Before us lay the island, white-washed houses and terraced hills, dropping down to the water, and Sikinos over the sea with the blue horizon stretching beyond.
It was an idyllic week in Ios--rising around 10, we would walk around the corner to Beatrice's bar, and sit with our coffee on the wide balcony, overhung with flowering bougainvillea and overlooking the bay. We'd spend the day wandering about, religiously observing the local custom of siesta between 2 and 5, and then returning to the bar for evening drinks and the grand ceremony of observing the sunset over the Mediterranean. Then settling the important question of where to have dinner--having it--and then, to bed, weary after a day of delightful indolence.
We spent an enchanted week there, which passed like a dream. One day Beatrice took us on a long walkabout, leaving the road after the village and plunging into the brown hills (which she said were green and fragrant in the spring, full of flowers), clambering over goat paths until suddenly below us we saw the sea--a perfect beach, with the brilliant and perfectly transparent turquoise water lapping pale sand. There was a even buxom naked Aphrodite disporting in the waves--though when she emerged, she was only an overweight German lady--the creator of the Ios website (IosGreece) , said Beatrice--a neighbor of hers. We swam here, and in another beach over a few more steep hills, and then walked over the headland into the little port where we had a very late lunch before climbing the long hard path from the port to the town and our quiet little room. Paradise.
Soon enough it was time to leave, and we made our way back to England, and one more lovely week of vacation. But that's another story, and this is long enough already!