But on Monday, it was time to leave the dogs of Crete and travel on to Santorini. We didn’t have a particular site to see there -- Deane’s son Greg had said that it was one of the most beautiful place he’d been, and that was enough to put it on the itinerary. Our hotel was quite a distance from the new port, and we weren’t sure how we’d get there, but when we arrived, Kosmos, the hotel owner, was waiting for us with a big sign reading “Villa Romantic.” We drove to the hotel, while he gave us an overview of the island, which is pretty small. Our room had a view of the ocean from the balcony, and a view of the town from the back -- much more beauty than we were expecting. Kosmos took us up the hill to town and dropped us off, and we spent the afternoon ambling around. We walked down to the old port, pushing through a gauntlet of donkeys at the top and bottom (the donkeys would give you a ride for a small price). We took the cable car back up, and wandered some more.
On Tuesday, we rented a car to see the rest of the island -- the prices were reasonable and it saved us riding the bus out from Fira, the main town, and back in again for each place we wanted to see. We had planned to see some hilltop ruins, but looking up at the height of the hill and thinking of the heat of the sun, we decided to pass on those. Instead, we walked for a bit on the black sand beach at Kamali, then drove on to the red sand beach -- the two colors of sand were from different colors of lava from the volcanic eruptions. A huge eruption in the 16th century BCE turned what was one big island into a caldera with the remains of the volcano and a ring of separate islands around it, of which Santorini is one. To get to the red sand beach required us to hike a ways, and it was hot, so we decided to view it from a distance. We drove north to Oia, and on the way found another beach that was deserted, so we walked that one for a while. In Oia, which is gorgeous but definitely aiming for a higher spending level than ours, we were supposed to hike out to where you could see the sun go down, but it was a long hike down, meaning a long hike back up, so we passed. I suppose you could say that we had a lazy day.
Wednesday, we took the ferry to Mykonos. The town is sleepier now than in the summer, and we had a quiet afternoon to buy our boat tickets to Delos, an island nearby, and walk the streets. We have seen roadside shrines all over Greece, ranging from mailbox-sized boxes on dangerous mountain roads to buildings so large we wondered whether they were churches. The small ones have, generally, a picture or two of saints or religious figures, holy oil, and perhaps other objects of symbolic value. In Mykonos, some of the larger shrines were within the town, and were open, allowing us to see inside. The shrines we saw were lined with pictures in the Greek Orthodox style of saints, Mary and baby Jesus, and others I don’t recognize. Some had candles and a donation box; others were just there with a chair or two.
Delos is the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, twins born to Leto from her liaison with Zeus. Hera, Zeus’ wife, was not pleased, so Zeus gave Leto Delos as a place to give birth in peace. The whole island was considered sacred, and perhaps the same is still true in a sense, as the whole island is protected, and access is strictly limited -- our boat left Mykonos at 10am, and we had to leave Delos no later than 1:30pm. On the way out, we shared the boat with 20 Korean microbiologists, vacationing after a conference, and they spent the whole hour taking pictures of each other in the front of the boat where we were sitting. We decided to join the fun.
Delos had extensive ruins, and once hosted a large, prosperous and multicultural population, where each contingent built shrines or temples for their gods and goddesses. So there was a temple for Apollo, one for Isis, one for the Assyrian gods, and so on, and a surprising chapel for Dionysus, the entrance flanked by two giant phalluses, which sadly had met the same fate as the headless statues in the museum. The island was under attack periodically, and finally succumbed to pirates in the early common era. We walked through as much of the site as we could, then returned to Mykonos for a leisurely lunch and a restful evening.
On Friday, it was time for the long ferry ride back to Piraeus, and time for us to resume our hard traveling schedule. The Greek islands were a beautiful and relaxing break midway on our trip, and I appreciated each moment that we had to slow down. Back in Piraeus, we walked to the parking lot to meet Nikolaos and pick up our car. I knew I was perhaps starting to get a little bit homesick when seeing him brought tears to my eyes -- it was the first familiar face I’d seen in six weeks. He had arranged to have our car cleaned for us, which it sorely needed, and added a bag of croissants for us to snack on. What a nice man and how lucky we were to meet him!
Saturday, we went to Delphi. Delphi was the home of the Oracle, and also “the navel of the world,” which Zeus discovered when he released two eagles in opposite directions to find the center of the world -- they met in Delphi. There was a huge temple dedicated to Apollo, which was where the Oracle spoke and answered questions, and treasuries for the power centers in the early centuries BCE. As in other places, wealthy people raised monuments as tributes to the gods. Down the hill from Delphi was a gymnasium and Temple of Athena, from which we had a superb view of all the ruins, once all connected in a bustling pilgrimage center, now connected again by tourist paths.
Our drive to Thessaloniki, with a view of Mount Olympus on the way, was supposed to be an easy one. We ended up on the toll road when we missed a turn, but that was fine. At a toll booth, the woman gave us a handout which seemed to suggest that there was roadwork, and we should follow the yellow signs to Thessaloniki where there was a detour. Fine. Then, a ways down the road, the highway ended abruptly, turning us around and sending us back the way we had came. We pulled into a gas station to ask, and the attendant said, “Follow him,” pointing to the car just ahead of us. So we did, and lucky thing we did, because he wound through back roads in counterintuitive directions, and started heading up into the Olympos Mountains. We just kept following him, even after the road turned to dirt, barely room for two cars, no guardrails, clinging to the mountain side. The steady traffic coming from the other direction let us know that this was, indeed, the detour. Eventually we ended up back on the toll road, but it was the wildest detour I’ve ever been on. Picture below to document Deane’s brave driving.
Thessaloniki isn’t a big tourist city, so we walked to the one attraction listed in our guidebook, the White Tower. We couldn’t remember whether it was the Byzantines or the Romans who built it, or maybe the Venetians, and there was no explanatory signage, so we just let it go and joined the crowds of Greeks out strolling on the waterfront on a Sunday afternoon. Deane bought me a bag of the first popcorn we’ve seen, but it was a little stale, so we sat and fed it to the pigeons (picture the scene in Mary Poppins--”tuppence a bag“ [Deane‘s addition] ). It was a fine afternoon, and tomorrow we head for Turkey, minus the GPS, which did not come loaded with maps for Turkey, much to my dismay. We will have to muddle through -- wish us luck!
more pictures of you guys!
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