Sailing and Biking Day 1

Oct 10

 

We woke to a beautiful sunrise and smooth seas. Life is looking better!

The boat set sail at 7:30 am for a crossing to Sivota, a small town on the mainland, where we would begin our first ride.

Mainland Greece

While sailing, we had breakfast family-style at two long, narrow tables in the galley/bar/lounge. There were dishes of hard-boiled eggs, bread, fruit, yoghurt, cereal, cheese, cold cuts, plus tea, coffee, juice. 

The four of us sat with two couples from Michigan. The other table was mostly a group of ten from Seattle whose connections go way back, and were called together by one of them putting out the suggestion to take this trip. People on these kinds of trips tend to be friendly, cheerful, and caring. It’s part of the pleasure.

The crew unloaded the bikes from the top deck of the boat — after a season of this, they are a finely tuned machine. I’ll capture the action at a later date. Our bikes are labelled for us (they ask our height ahead of time so that bikes will fit), which will come in handy for learning people’s names. One of the Michigan people is also Anne-with-an-e, but she’s about my size, so which bike we took didn’t matter. I leave my phone holder on the bike so I can identify mine for the next rides. We took a quick spin at the harbour to check for seat height, etc. 

Boatload of bikes

Due to weather, our itinerary has changed, and I can’t say what it will be, because it will continue to change, depending on the weather and the sea. No one wants to ride in the rain and no one wants the ship to sink, simple as that. The captain will be making the decisions. 

So, instead of a 28 km ride today, we did 15 km, which probably isn’t a bad thing for people — and there are some — who don’t have their bike legs. Do I have my bike legs? Probably not! The ride was on winding hill roads, rough in places, but with little traffic, not unlike what Carol and I have been driving these last weeks. It all seemed familiar. We cruised up a hill, then down the hill, and arrived in Arillas, a little beach town, where the Panagiota was waiting for us. 

 

Two Canadians and an honorary not-Robyn

 

All of us

Some people took a swim off the boat in crystal turquoise water, so buoyant, they could just lie there. I’m not a water person, and wasn’t tempted, but if we get some warm days, I will have to dip in, just to say I did.

We had a lunch that started with an array of appetizers (leafy salad!), followed by stuffed peppers or tomatoes, our choice. It was light and delicious. Last night’s dinner was similar, with moussaka as the main course. I abandon my usual dietary preferences when I travel, because choice is usually limited. The other Anne is vegetarian, and was given a chickpea meal which she said was “okay.” That seems to be the way on these boat trips: people’s particular dietary needs are met, but their meals aren’t the best.

While we ate, we sailed to Paxos. This was meant to be the last stop on the tour, but because of impending storms and the especially protective harbour at Gaios, the main town on Paxos, this was the captain’s choice. 

Pulling into Gaios

After lunch, the Canadian/Scots team wandered into the little town, stopping in shops full of summer clothing, even after most of the tourists had left. I found a bakery and devoured a baklava, the first and probably the last I will have this trip. It was wonderful; though soaked in honey, it somehow didn’t seem too sweet. Maybe I’m fooling myself?

The Panagiota, in Gaios

Gaios Town

I'm quite sure this is the same woman who was fishing off the pier in Nafpaktos

We stopped at a harbour-side restaurant for drinks. They didn’t have 0% alcohol beer, my choice for afternoons, nor did they have radlers (both were on the menu), so I drank water while the others tucked into the first Aperol Spritz of the season, in remembrance of Croatia, where this was the drink of choice.

Finally dinner time, we settled on a recommended restaurant where we had one of the best meals we’ve had yet in Greece — three of us had sea bass grilled and served in a lemon broth with potatoes, Gill had an amazing looking souvlaki platter, and Matthieu had a pasta dish he said was very good. Right — Matthieu is the one person on the cruise who’s travelling alone. He was passing by as we sat down, and we invited him to join us. Poor guy, listening to us old biddies talking about grandkids and nappies!

Dinner party

Anyhow, Matthieu works for the Boat and Bike company in headquarters in Amsterdam, working on the 2000+ the company keeps going for all its tours. He gets a bonus of one trip a year, and this is the one he chose this time. He is originally from Eritrea. He hasn’t seen his family since 2022. I asked how things are in Eritrea, and he said that young people can’t get out anymore. I asked how he got out, and he very briefly listed the countries he’d passed through to end up in Amsterdam. I’m sure there is lots more to his story, and I hope to hear more as the week goes on.

We strolled home by the lights of many boats on the harbour.

 

 

Meet the Ship

 Oct 9

 

It’s a very stormy afternoon as I write. There is lightning and thunder, the wind is howling, and the rain is coming down in sheets. I’m in the tiny cabin that will be our bedroom on the ship Panagiota for the next week. When we open the door, a spout of water pours in. We’ve been given a towel to sop it up.

I just looked at Nafplio weather, which we just left behind, and it’s sunny there, with temps in the high 20s. Here in Corfu, quite a different scene. It’s an effort to be optimistic for the week ahead. This stormy state apparently will last three days. 

We had a very pleasant morning, breakfasting outside as always, and wandering the port and the old town on a cloudy but warm day. It’s muggy here, the kind of air that gives your skin a sweaty sheen without having to work for it. 

This is just to be sure people understand the glam photo I posted yesterday. Here's us at breakfast, followed by ChatGPT's "improvement." 

Stemmed glasses, gold sandals, Chanel bag, boobs. Social ideals, yeah?

We caught a cab out to the Marina Gouvia to board our ship. In the cab, the storm began. On the walk down the long pier to the good ship Panagiota, we got soaked. I have a raincoat, but it’s not as rainproof as it used to be. Sigh. My umbrella flipped inside out more than once.

Ya gotta laugh at the absurdity of it all

We were the first guests to arrive, just at 2 pm, when we were first allowed to check in. Another soaking wet guest-to-be showed up to check that this was the right boat, then left to round up her 9 or 10 friends that were waiting in a bar on shore. They haven’t arrived yet, I don’t think, some three hours later. Can’t say I blame them. 

Frances, Giota (one of our guides), and self. Note horizontal flying hair.

Frances has named their room “The Cupboard.” It’s identical to ours. Was it Harry Potter who slept in a cupboard under the stairs? I bet his cupboard was dry, and he didn’t have to share it. Lucky guy, really.

We have figured out that two of us can stand at the same time, but not move, in the 1m x 2m floor space. We've figured out how to stash our stuff so that even one of us could move. This is the smallest berth I’ve had on such a boat, now my third time on a boat-and-bike trip. The little river barge was cavernous by comparison. Our beds are bunks, the bottom being a totally unnecessary double, and a narrow single above. There is no ladder; it’s a stretch to get up there, which will be Carol’s challenge, because I’m up in the night and she usually is not. 

Room to move

As Carol puts it, this room would be okay for a couple, who could sleep on the bottom and stash their stuff up top; she says the top is too high for a short person to get to, but headroom up there is too short for a tall person. Headroom is short on the bottom too. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve whacked my head. 

I want to know what kind of lens they used for the photos of this boat.

Our room has one socket for plugging in anything, such as chargers. While Carol only needs to charge her phone (and her watch once a week), I have a a laptop, a phone, an Apple watch, sleep earbuds, and hearing aids; we will also have to charge our bike batteries every day. I have a multi-port charger, so one socket is enough for my devices. But there is no place to set down said devices anywhere near the socket. I’m sure we’ll figure out something.

For a while the toilet didn’t flush. They fixed it. And the sink stopper wouldn’t come unstopped, and they fixed it. The light in the bathroom stopped working, but they fixed it. 

What I would love more than anything right now is to be soaking in a warm bath in my own home. Instead, I hear the drinking has started in the galley. I guess I’ll go and meet some people.

Goodbye Peloponnese, Hello Corfu

Oct 8

 
We were up at 6:45 am to pack up, load the car, and grab breakfast at “our” place on Syntagma Square, which opened at 7:30. We wanted to get an early start to catch our flight from Athens to Corfu at 1:10, only a two hour drive away, but we needed to allow for glitches with traffic and turning in the car.

Our rattle-trap Peugot, parked at Mycenae. Bigger than we'd wanted, but peppy enough

We ordered our regular vegetable omelettes, and even though we pointed to the item on the menu, the server somehow got it wrong, and we got omelettes that we more meat than egg. Disappointing for our last Peloponnese meal.

Not my idea of a great breakfast.

Driving was mostly smooth sailing, beautiful highways with toll booths popping up seemingly randomly. I think we went through five of those in all today. There was a traffic slow-down on the peripheral road around Athens, but nothing we needed to panic about. As for turning in the car, it was a breeze, as promised. The company we used, Swift, does not have a car-return spot at the airport, but rather sends a driver to meet us at the departure area. We pulled up, he arrived within ten minutes, and that was it. Highly recommended!

The Athens airport was a zoo, but manageable. Our flight was just an hour long. We landed in Corfu in threatening weather. Caught a cab that took forever on a parking lot of a route to our hotel. What struck us as we wound our way through town was how run down it seemed. The towns we've been in so far have been very well kept, but Corfu needs a face lift. You'd think there would be enough funding considering the thousands of tourists that hop off their cruise ships every day.

 

The Palace of St Michael and St George, sadly run down

Probably apartments. Most building in old Corfu Town looked like this.

Once checked in to our hotel room-for-four for the night, we wandered a bit in Old Corfu Town, much of which is like an Arabic medina, stall after stall of (in this case) tourist stuff on narrow twisting lanes. Crowds of people, most of whom were probably off the six or so huge cruise ships moored in the harbour. We stopped in at a restaurant off the noisy main streets and had a small meal of calamari and tzatziki.

Old Town is a network of tourist streets like this

One of some six cruise ships that left harbour in the evening, to be replaced by six more. The ferry is heading to Albania.

Back at the hotel, we waited for our Scottish friends, Gill and Frances, to arrive. We met Gill on our Croatia boat-and-bike trip last year. When Carol put the word out that we’d be doing this trip, Gill jumped right on it, and her biking friend Frances was all in. 

It was close to 10 pm when they finally arrived, and we all went out for dinner at a quiet Italian place, outdoors but under cover as a thunderstorm rolled in, bringing torrents of rain. We lingered until close to midnight, when the rain eased, then made our way back to the City Marina Hotel.

Gill had sent us a photo of the two of them in the Edinburgh airport, and they looked so fully glamorous, we thought we'd look like, I dunno, their pet dogs or something beside them. Turns out Gill is very into AI "improvements" in photos, and we were quite relieved when they turned up, looking like normal people. Here's us at dinner (not really!):

If you look closely, I have two right hands, one on the glass and one at my cheek. 

This hotel. This is the first one I really have anything to complain about — it’s a dump. The lobby is spiffy, completely misleading. The room we booked is a ‘family room,” actually two rooms with two narrow beds in each, and are basically acceptable. One room has a balcony overlooking the port, so no complaints there. But well, the bathroom was in need of a complete overhaul, with flaking chrome and mould and a stained tub, a hand-held shower (that fortunately worked well and provided plenty of hot water). There were long dark hairs in the sink from a previous guest and though the toilet had a label wrapped around the lid saying it was sanitized, the seat had some suspicious stains on it. The towels smelled like they’d been used too many times between washings. The flusher on the wall had a half-flush button that didn’t work, but the full-flush one did, thank goodness. The real kicker in this place was that when we came back from dinner and were approaching the elevator, a large rat ran under our feet and headed down some stairs. When we shrieked (I learned I can shriek!) the guy at the desk shushed us. Not sure he understood that a rat had just run by. I suppose the thing was escaping the storm. I was glad our room was three storeys up.

Mycenae

 Oct 7

In preparing for every trip I take, I look up places to eat. It’s generally a waste of time. I’d looked up breakfast places here, but we never made it past a taverna patio on this town’s Syntagma Square (Nafplio was the capital of Greece before that function was moved to Athens; Syntagma means “constitution”.) Greek restaurants are brilliant at breakfast for those of us who want a hearty protein meal to start the day. We tend to eat at the same place every morning in whatever town we’re in. 

View at breakfast

Today, our trip was to Mycenae. supposed home of Agamemnon, who, if he ever existed, led the Greeks in the Trojan War. Whether he existed or not, I was really excited to visit the site of the famous Lion Gate. Unlike for the mask of Agamemnon in the Athens museum, for the gate I shed a few tears. I think it’s all the stories, and the photos; when I see a thing live, it moves me. 

This gate is well known by people who visit Mycenae — it’s probably the reason they’ve come. Nevertheless, there were no crowds gawking at the gate, just a few of us wanting a photo without people in it. We were moderately successful, which makes me think that the tour guides don’t linger, but hustle their groups through. I don’t know, and I try not to be cynical.

I sent a photo of the Lion Gate to John as soon as I saw it, as he is very familiar with these antiquities. We’re ten hours ahead of home, so he was ready for bed. His response: “Ooooooooo man!” and then, “Am I supposed to sleep after seeing that?”  Yeah, it’s kind of a big deal.

Through the gate, we climbed to the top of the acropolis, where rooms were clearly defined on the ground, but not much still exists above ground level. There were more gates like the Lion Gate but smaller and without the lions, and an underground cistern.

Stairs leading to an underground cistern

And the stairs back into the sun

We came across some young Spanish women goofing around taking glam photos of one their friends at a gate. They were apologetic that they kept us waiting, but we were enjoying their fun. They offered to take our photos, and we all shared a laugh as we struck the same poses.

One amazing structure is still standing, a testament to the engineering skill of the Mycenaeans. This Tomb of Clytemnestra is a huge beehive-like structure, now underground, built  in the 13th  Century BCE.

Entrance to the tomb

Wide angle shot; it's hard to portray a sense of how immense the space is

That central point may look like it hangs down, but it's a deep peak in the top of the dome

There was a small museum on site, with a lot of panels about the history of the site, a replica of Agamemnon's mask (the one I saw in Athens) and a few artifacts.

A few pots and the remains of a fresco

 

 We returned to Nafplio for a gelato lunch and to laze about, walk about, all that.

Bougainvillea shedding blossoms, and cat

Our apartment on the left, famous gelateria on the right

Morning view from our apartment balcony

Syntagma Square in the evening, when the kids come out to play

Epidaurus

 Oct 6

We went out to Epidaurus today, an easy half-hour drive. We learned that signage is more reliable than Google maps in these parts; while Google isn't exactly inaccurate, it doesn’t tend to be clear at intersections which way to go until it’s too late and we’re headed into a warren of side roads. If intersections were simple crossroads, it might work, but here there tends to be a bunch of spokes, and instructions about which one to take is not Google’s strong point. Signage in these parts is good, however. That’s a good thing, because in a couple of days we’ll be racing off to the Athens airport for our flight to Corfu, and we don't need to get tangled in knots along the way.

We began our exploration of the site with a stop into the tiny on-site museum containing statuary and pottery and the like from the archeological site.

Why always headless?

Epidaurus is an archeological site much like others we’ve visited, but the famous structure here is the theatre. I knew it would be huge, but whew, it’s really huge. It was built in the 4th Century BCE and was not later adulterated by the Romans, as happened to many other such theatres. It had and would still have a capacity of up to 14,000 spectators. Performances are held here in the summer months.

Theatre from the bottom

  

And from the top

There didn’t seem to be busloads of tourists there, but rather there were busloads of high school students, probably on day trips from Athens, which is only a couple of hours away. They were doing clapping games in circles on the stage, listening, I suppose, to the changes in the acoustics as they moved into and out of the centre. You can stand on the marker at the centre, and from that spot, you can hear your voice bounce back to you. There were, at different times, would-be thespians reciting from that spot. No idea what they were saying, but that didn’t matter — it was lovely.

A thespian reciting ... Homer?

Carol and I climbed on up to the top, naturally. It was pretty easy, as long as we kept our eyes on our feet, because looking around would produce instant vertigo. We’re both terrified of heights. We forgot that we would have to get down again. Kind of like a cat in a tree: we’re up here, fine — now what do we do??

This was before we realized we'd have to get down from there

We're up in the nosebleed section

We sat for a long time, contemplating. And then we made it down, obviously, very very slowly. For anyone wondering, no, there aren’t any railings. 

Relieved

There was a stadium just like the ones in Delphi and Olympia. 

Stadium, with benches!

 

The site at Epidaurus was once a place of healing. Patients would lie in the long portico of a building (called the Avaton) and wait for Asclepios, a son of Apollo with special healing powers, to appear to them in dreams to cure them or prescribe treatments. One stone frieze showed a man with an injured toe being healed by a snake biting his shoulder. I would not have guessed this would be effective.

Some young guys re-enacted the scene for their friend’s camera. I love seeing young people enjoying ancient stuff.

Snake healing sore toe

 

A reconstruction of part of the Avaton, the portico of healing dreams

  

The site, like other ancient sites, was mostly what the untrained eye sees as a bunch of big rocks lying around. There’s a lot to be said for reconstruction, and there is some going on here that will mean a more interesting visit in the future. Still, it is amazing to walk where a civilization thrived more than 2000 years ago.

This will be a beautiful tholos when it's finished. A tholos is a round, domed tomb, and every ancient site seems to have one with three pillars standing.

 

Once “home” in Nafplio, we fell into what has become our normal rhythm: lunch, hang for a while, maybe walk about, dinner. Tonight we chose Italian, a nice change.