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Greek Mainland and Islands
September 2005
Grand Circle Travel cruise-tour

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Kalimera, or Kalispera, depending on whether you read this in the morning or the evening. And welcome to Greece and its many islands.

First, a speedy overview of those 19 days spent both on land and on the water: we visited 12 ancient sites: the Acropolis, the Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae, the rock monasteries and nunnery of Meteora, the Delphi Oracle, the Olympiads (site of ancient Olympic Games), ancient Epidaurus and Mycenae, Corinth, Naphlion, the temple of Poseidon at Sounion, and Ephesus, in Turkey; 4 museums: the Greek National Archaeological Museum in Athens, the Museum of Delphi, the Museum of Olympia, and the Knossos Museum, in Heraklion, on the island of Crete; and 5 islands: Myconos, Patmos, Rhodes, Crete and Santorini. (Please note the map above is a general overview of the trip currently offered by Grand Circle Travel, with slight differences in the ports-of-call listed.)

So much for statistics. Now pour yourself a glass of ouzo, put on a CD of bouzouki music, nibble on tsatziki (a delicious appetizer made of yogurt, cucumber and garlic) with some pita bread, and enjoy the read.

Greece was a new experience for us, in more ways than one. The biggest challenge was not only being unable to understand the language, but also to read any of the signs, since the Greek alphabet looked like hieroglyphics to us. A few years later, we experienced the same disorientation in S.E. Asia, where, again, my being bilingual French/English, with a working knowledge of Spanish and Italian, was of no help at all. The question of if and when Greece would adopt the Roman alphabet (as Turkey did), to facilitate international communication -- especially within the European Union, remains unanswered.

This voyage was made of three segments: first three days in Athens, nine days touring the Greek mainland, followed by four days on a cruise of the Aegean Sea, ending in another overnight in Athens before returning home. Was it a challenging trip? And some! Was it worth it? Absolutely, even if we were zombies when we got home.

Our Program Director was an outstanding middle-aged Greek woman, with a seemingly endless knowledge of Greek history, mythology and archaeology. Her professionalism, humor, and experience made our trip the success it was.

Trivia: One typical problem of traveling by coach is that there is only one best row in the bus, and it’s the front one. To avoid the daily scrambling competition for that prized spot, our Program Director enforced a clockwise rotation system, thus allowing each person to have a turn at the choice row. We wish every tour bus did the same.

Our two full days in Athens were devoted to the Acropolis; downtown Athens, including the Plaka, or center of the old city, at the foot of the Acropolis; and the National Archaeological Museum, where we could have stayed one whole day. The Parthenon -- the most famous, but not the only, structure standing on the Acropolis -- was being restored, thus unfortunately covered with scaffolds of various sizes. The Acropolis was swarming with tour groups. When we were told that these crowds which were choking us were sign of “a slow day,” we looked at each other and sighed deeply. Only photographs can do justice to the Archaeological museum, and we were delighted to see that, unlike at the Louvre, cameras were allowed so long as no flash was used.

Among the hustle and bustle and noise and crowds of this typical European city, it was relaxing to go down into the Syntagma Square metro station, to enjoy an art exhibit in glass cases lined up against the walls of the corridors, displaying various remarkable archaeological artifacts found while excavating for the metro. Such as a terra-cotta pipe used in their ancient sewer systems. Syntagma, or Constitution Square, is the Greek equivalent of the Place de la Concorde in Paris, or Trafalgar Square in London, a vital center of the city. We were also treated to a dinner and Athens by Night tour in our coach, and that was even more awesome.

Greece was the 10th country to enter the European Union, which it joined in 1981, before Spain and Portugal. Its economic status is as precarious now as we all know, but this trip took place in 2005, so it was described to us as “starting” to prosper thanks to the subsidies from the E.U. (Remember, this is posted in January 2016…)

Monastery of Verlaam as seen from the Grand Meteroa

We then left the capital and headed out by coach to Kalambaka, town closest to the Sacred Rocks of Meteora, site of the famous, awe-inspiring cliff monasteries, built in the 14th century by monks escaping from Turkish pirates. On the way, we stopped by the site of the ancient battle of Marathon, between Persians (ancestors of modern-day Iranians) and Athenians, which was won by the latter. The term “marathon” as we know it comes from the fact that, after the Athenian army’s victory, a young boy ran the 43 km back to Athens to let the people know their army had won, at which point he died of exhaustion.

I find it difficult to describe the feeling of wonder at the sight of these ancient stone cliff monasteries, perched on top of seemingly unreachable monoliths scattered through a whole valley. The only way in and out of each one in those days was in a sturdy basket pulled by ropes, hauling people and goods with a pulley up and down the cliff. It boggles the mind to imagine how they were built, evoking the same awe as the Pyramids, or Stonehenge, or Machu Picchu.

Trivia: Someone made the suggestion that we answer the calls of nature along the way by requesting a “Shakespeare” stop, phonetically altering the Bard’s famous quote of “To Be or Not To Be” to fit the occasion.

With 97% of the population being Greek Orthodox, there is no separation between church and state. Greek Orthodox priests are public servants, and there are pictures of Christ in every public building and venue: courts, stadiums, schools, etc. Military service is mandatory for all men. 80% of Greece is mountainous, a fact we quickly experienced first-hand.

Our next destination was Delphi, sitting 2,500’ up on Mt. Parnassus, on top of which stands the famous Temple of Apollo. Next to the town of Arachova, Delphi was believed by the ancient Greeks to be the center of the world because the two eagles, let out by Zeus to discover it, landed on what became the site of the Temple of Apollo. From there, the famous Oracles were pronounced by priestesses in answer to any question they were asked. They were credited with infallibility by everyone in the Greek world, and beyond.

The 19th-century French School of Archaeology was credited with the excavation of the Sanctuary of the Oracle, which includes the Temple of Apollo, the Athenian Treasury, the Council House, and a gymnasium -- which means “training area,” while gymnos means “naked” -- and the stadium, where the athletes competed in the buff, only covered with olive oil.

On the way back to the hotel, we also stopped at another site, located a good way down below from the Temple of Apollo, called the Sanctuary of Athena. We were, once again, very fortunate to have wonderful sunny weather -- though fairly cool -- to visit these remarkable sites.

Like in other European countries, education is free at all levels, including universities, but the latter are difficult to get in, with challenging entrance exams. Two foreign languages are mandatory curriculum items. French used to be the preferred one, before English became primary, and now the options for a second language is either French or German. The historical enmity between Turkey and Greece, stemming from violent and frequent conflicts over centuries, is still going on. Unlike most of the other European countries, Greece is in favor of Turkey joining the E.U. because they hope that, once they have joined, the Turks will have to stop their acts of aggression against Greece.

Trivia: We were treated to many cultural experiences such as a cooking lesson, where Robin volunteered to make spanakopitas for us all, with a very special visit to the house of a friend of our Program Director’s, where we partook of ouzo and tsatziki in the backyard, with a very old Greek neighbor lady, all dressed in black, waved at us from her balcony with a toothless grin.

Olympia was our next destination, on the Peloponnese, a large island connected to the mainland in two places. The first is at the town of Patras -- the third largest city in Greece, after Athens, and Thessaloniki in the north --, via the brand-new Trikopis bridge (named after a political figure) which was inaugurated two weeks before the beginning of the 2004 Olympic Games. It replaced the ferries which had connected the two sides of the Gulf of Corinth prior to its construction. We stopped a while in Patras, a lovely city of 200,000 and a favorite vacation spot for Italians, to take a quick look at St. Andrews Cathedral, built in 1979 (not exactly antiquity, is it?) in the neo-byzantine style.

Next awesome discovery was the Sanctuary of the Olympiads, where the first ancient Olympic Games were held in 776BC. We paid our respects to the spot where the Olympic flame was burning during antiquity, and where the torch of the modern games is still lit every four years before starting its traditional trek. This site was destroyed by the Romans in the 4th c. AD, and again by an earthquake in the 5th c. AD. The crumbled columns are still lying in the same spot and position where they fell 16 centuries ago. This site was discovered and identified by the French, and excavated by the Germans. The famous statue of Hermes, son of Zeus, by Praxiteles in 340 BC, in the Museum of Olympia, was a sight to behold. Front and back! The Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin (who has a stadium named after him in Paris) revived the Olympic Games tradition in 1896, and he built a new stadium to that effect in Athens, which we saw at our final stop in Athens.

We then set out for Naphlion, making our way via Corinth across and over the famous Corinth Canal, which connects the Aegean Sea (right side) to the Ionian Sea (left, Italian side) through the Gulf of Corinth. The canal was started by the French (who built the Suez Canal and started the Panama Canal) and finished by the Greeks. The oldest city in Europe, Corinth is on the Peloponnese, and also boasts of an Acropolis on the top of its highest hill. Corinth was always the rival city of Athens, between whose inhabitants there was no love lost.

Trivia: During our lunch stop, I couldn’t resist walking in the waters of the Bay of Corinth -- as I usually do everywhere we are close enough to water – since our restaurant was on right at the water’s edge.

We spent the evening in Naphlion, a lovely, and rather large town, with all sorts of quaint old cobblestoned streets. Unfortunately, the weather stopped cooperating and we had to walk around in the rain, which spoiled the experience a bit. A good dinner in a restaurant recommended by a local made up for it.

Speaking of food, we had many meals on our own. The best meal we had the whole trip was a lunch in a roadside home-based and home-run restaurant, called “Aunt Katie’s.” Though not very Greek-sounding, it was run by a Greek woman who really knew her stuff, which she served home-style in her kitchen, in huge pans of bubbly and tantalizing goodies: pork, chicken, lamb, and very little fish - which is extremely expensive when fresh. Although I am not fond of Greek food as a rule, spanakopita gets my vote for a delectable meal or snack any day.

The next day, we discovered the site of Mycenae, near Corinth, a citadel built on top of a rock acropolis. Near the citadel was a beehive tomb, called the Treasure of Atreus, c. 1600BC, with a lintel which weighs 120 tons. Atreus was a predecessor of King Agamemnon, c. 1100BC at the time of the Trojan Wars. This tomb appears as a hill from the Citadel of Mycenae nearby. The Citadel itself includes a palace, tombs, water cisterns and city walls.

In the afternoon, we went to Epidaurus, the legendary home of Aesculapius, the god of medicine. This famous open-air theater seating 16,000 was built around 300BC and has superb acoustics across 55 rows up a hillside 74’ up. An annual Greek festival is still held on this site every year. Epidaurus is the oldest and most famous intact Greek amphitheater in the world.

Trivia: A witty traveling companion coined the term “touron” to refer to certain tourists whose behavior was particularly moronic. I have used it consistently every since, when tourists behave offensively or embarrass everyone around them.

When the land portion of our trip ended, we boarded the Perla in Piraeus, the port serving Athens, and third largest in Europe, after Rotterdam and Marseille. This medium-size ship owned by the Louis Cruise Line, the only Greek-owned and operated cruise line at the time, carrying tour groups back and forth between the main islands, was a great disappointment, which we relayed to Grand Circle Travel. GCT no longer uses them after having created their own fleet of ocean and river-going vessels.

Sailing to Myconos, playground of wealthy Europeans, took most of the day, which left us only a few hours to explore this lovely, our first Greek island. Again, the sun was shining bright but low since nearing sunset, and did full justice to the lovely white-washed houses -- prescribed by their building code -- and blue-domed churches. By the way, there are 365 churches on Myconos, for a population of a little over 10,000!

Before proceeding to explore the other jewels of the Aegean Sea, the following dawn saw us sailing over to Kusadasi, Turkey, to access by coach the ancient city of Ephesus. The city was built by the Greeks on the Mediterranean shoreline, c. 400BC. When attacked by Alexander the Great, it was forced to move farther inland to the top of the present hill. Overrun by Romans c. 100BC, the site contains major Roman remains. I was glad to see that the endless opportunities for photography did not include tourists posing on or near the Roman public latrines -- which consisted of stone benches with many holes placed couple of feet apart from each other. Maybe not the best place to hang out by our standards, but obviously the thing to do for Roman people to catch up on things, meditate or gossip. The main treasure and masterpiece of the site surely is the Celsus Library, whose façade is marvelously preserved. It was built in 135AD in honor of Julius Celsus, the Roman governor.

Trivia: A quick way to distinguish between Roman and Greek ruins is what material is used. The Romans used stone and brick, the Greeks used marble. Which continues today in modern Athens and all over the country. We saw more marble during this trip than we thought existed. All the floors and stairs of our hotels were all in marble, even sidewalks sometimes.Back to the ship for lunch and sailing to the island of Patmos. By then, I was so exhausted that I begged off and stayed on board in the afternoon. I was saturated, and felt I was no longer in neutral but switching to reverse. I went to bed when they all left. After a long nap, I went up on deck to read quietly (in between snoozing relapses). Robin very much enjoyed St. John’s Monastery, nestled in the hills surrounding the main town of Skala, where St. John lived for a long time after he fled the Romans.

An overnight sail took us to Rhodes, where we spent all of the next day. In the morning, we walked both the old and the new cities of Rhodes. The former was a delight, oozing with history, and surrounded by stone walls still intact. The city walls were built by the Order of the Knights after they were forced out of Jerusalem by the Ottomans. Different sections of the walls were built by knights from seven different European nations, and each building along the famous Street of the Knights in the old city -- which is the best restored medieval street in Europe --still carries corresponding flags and coats of arms. The French Consulate is particularly well represented with a lovely inner courtyard full of flowers and statues.

The Knights of Jerusalem maintained the walls for over 200 years, during the 14th and 15th centuries. They built a hospital -- which welcomed everyone --, now an archaeological museum. They were eventually forced out of Rhodes by Suleman the Great c. 1520 AD, at which time the Ottomans turned all churches into mosques.

In the afternoon, we and another couple hired a taxi which took us to the city of Lindos. Our driver was a good-natured, happy-go-lucky, bilingual Greek man, and we had a few laughs while driving through gorgeous countryside full of olive trees. He knew his island and was proud to share it. Lindos has a little jewel of a port and two beaches to die for. The kind you see on all the travel posters for Greece. He dropped us off where we wanted and waited for us.

Trivia: A quick reminder of what era we were living in came in the form of a cell phone ring meant for our driver, whose teenage daughter was checking in after school. That ring jerked us back to the reality of our lives at home.

The next day, Heraklion, a busy and noisy city, welcomed us as the capital of the island of Crete. We walked in the morning to the Knossos Archaeological Museum (in town), but didn’t go to the site itself -- which was an optional tour we had declined. It turned out that it was just as well, because the only two of our group who made it to the site were quite disappointed because most of it was 19th century reconstruction of what had been destroyed c. 1300 BC by either earthquake or possibly a tidal wave from Santorini. So we felt fortunate to have had the chance to visit the museum, which was a jewel. It was full of striking Minoan artifacts, pottery and jewelry dating back to 2500 BC.

In the afternoon, we sailed to the island of Santorini, the queen of all Greek islands. We reached its famous bay – which is in fact an old crater – just as the sun was setting. And there it all was: the famous white-washed houses perched on cliffs overlooking the sparkling blue waters and sprinkled with the famous blue-domed churches shown on all the travel posters of Greece.

One of the windiest places in Greece, Santorini gets its name from the Venitians who occupied the island in medieval times. Santorini used to be a whole island before it was destroyed by the largest volcanic eruption in history, c. 1400BC, after which the island remained unpopulated for 400 years. The eruption created a caldera, where ships can only anchor, taking passengers to shore with tenders.

Thira, the capital, has a population of about 1,500, which swells with the influx of 1.5 million visitors each year. The prettiest spot on Santorini, however, is a small town called Oia (pronounced “ee-ya”). We visited Oia first, and then went through Thira where we took the cable car going down the 500’ cliff. By then, it was dark and sliding down on a cable along that steep cliff, with the view of all the lit-up cruise ships lined up down below was a sight to behold (despite my feeling a bit queasy...) I concluded that only photos can do justice to the incredible and almost mystical beauty of the place.

Our cruise finally returned to the port of Piraeus early morning, for another couple of days in Athens. This gave us the opportunity to visit our last archeological site, the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion, dating back to the 6th century BC, south of Athens, on the Aegean sea. A gorgeous ride up through upscale suburbs of Athens, attractive countryside and breathtaking shoreline, took us to this Parthenon-like structure standing right smack at the tip of a rocky promontory, 150’ above the bluest sea you’ve ever seen.

Trivia: Lord Byron visited Greece during the 19th century to support Greece’s war of independence against the Ottoman Turks, and died in Greece. He carved his name on one of the columns of the temple.

On our last full day back in Athens, we were fortunate enough to visit the main stadium of the facility built especially for the 2004 Olympic Games. An official city guide took us into the VIP section -- and while those infernally noisy gas-powered leaf-blowers were cleaning up the opposite side of the stadium, almost drowning our guide’s voice, or rather our Program Director’s translation of her comments. We also had the privilege of the company and first-hand knowledge of the husband of a friend of hers, who was a former Olympic medalist.

Our farewell dinner was something to remember, with Vicky having prepared all sorts of little gifts for all of us -- reminders of Greece --, and she almost had everyone in tears. I don’t know how she kept up with the pace every day, being on duty 24/7, but she barely showed a sign of wear by the end of that evening whereas I felt like I had been run over by a steamroller.

When we checked at the curb at the Boston Airport, the agent announced that one of our suitcases was over the domestic weight limit. He also proved to be unwilling to overlook it since our other bag was under by about the same weight. We wound up having to shift 9lbs worth of stuff from one to the other bag to pass the scale test. Right on the sidewalk, with other passengers chomping at the bit behind us in the line. A sour note which almost managed to spoil our overall happy mood!

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