tomleslie.ca

Sunday, May 5, 2002 14:31

Weather: The clouds burned off, so it’s sunny again!

Location: Vathi harbourfront restaurant

Happy Easter! Happy holiday… when everything in Greece is shut. No travelling for me today…

Last night after a good dinner (which ended with a complementary creme caramel — I was the restaurant’s only guest, pre-festivities) I kipped out for a little while, then headed down to the local church square for the midnight celebrations. As the service went on in the church, a crowd of revellers of all ages filled the square. At quarter to twelve the church’s outside lights were extinguished in preparation for the emergence of the new flame.

Finally the church opened outwards, the congregation and clergy pouring from the doors, bringing out lit candles, whose flame was quickly passed to the candles and lamps of those waiting outside. The clergy, resplendent in red and gold robes, climbed a small stage and announced the resurrection in chant, then the bells started ringing, and then the fireworks started going off.

It was actually rather like being in the middle of a war movie: part of the square emptied as firecrackers were lit by hand and thrown in that area. For about 10 minutes the noise of the firecrackers and bells was deafening, and the flashes lit up the square like strobe lights. I called Kelly, Robyn & Dave, and Patrick to share the moment, but only got answering machines… not to worry. It was overwhelming… and quickly over, as the congregation moved back into the church to complete the service and the square emptied, with families going home and younger people heading to parties and bars.

I headed down to the harbour and sat quietly on a bench, looking for, but not seeing, a fireworks display. Instead, the firecrackers continued from all parts of the town, interspersed with heavier “crumps” as if artillery and small arms fire had started up all around. I wondered briefly about the annual casualty rate of a festival where drunk young men threw bombs with careless abandon.. and then decided I was getting old, and went to bed.

This morning I got up around 9:30, showered, and set off to see the island. This plan quickly fell apart. The scooter rental agencies insisted that I have an International Driver’s Licence. I eventually found a couple of car rental places, but they were far from cheap. I bit the bullet and signed up for a little car, only to find (to my embarrassment) that I no longer have any idea how to drive a stick shift. When the rental people saw my awkward attempt to pull away, they took away the keys.

Depressed at the thought of wasting a day here with basically nothing to do, I was walking towards the bus station to see, for the second time, if there was any activity, when I saw that there was a crowd gathering in a large harbourfront square. They were watching the preparation for a televised Easter festival, complete with local dancers. I took a seat.

Some time later, the whole thing got underway. As a small band played and sang, a group of about 20 men & women dressed traditionally started a circular dance as the cameras rolled. Between numbers there were lengthy breaks as a glamourous M.C. chatted up the band, the dancers, the V.I.P.’s seated at a food-laden table, and (once) one of the tourists in the audience. Other breaks were clearly being filled with taped segments, which we could hear but not see.

I watched for a while but probably spent as much time looking at the rest of the crowd as watching the show, which got old pretty fast. I ended up chatting with an Australian couple who sat down next to me. We gave up on the show, and they headed off to find a hostel (having just arrived from Turkey), but we made plans to meet later for a drink and dinner. They also told me about a small beach they’d found, within walking distance of the town, so I’m going to head over there this afternoon.

Thursday, May 2, 2002 11:50

Weather: Hot & sunny.

Location: Internet cafe, Parikia.

I had a fun evening with Megan and Kirsten, my Australian neighbours in the hostel. We started with dinner in small restaurant opposite the water: fried zucchini balls, giant beans, and stuffed vine leaves for appetizers, shrimp saganaki as an entree, a rather bad sweet white wine and a jug of water to wash it all down. While waiting for the rather slow service, we traded stories: Megan’s a nurse working in London, Kirsten a health inspector on her way home to Melbourne from her London stint. After dinner we walked into the old town and found the Pirate Blues Bar, whose welcoming bartender served up a seriously excellent CD collection, a progressively unwise series of cocktails and shooters, and a friendly but unobtrusive banter. He gave us a free round, and we invited him to join us for a round. At the end, I suggested tequila, but he refused outright and served us vodka shooters with sugar-coated lime slices instead. As Megan said afterwards, it’s always a real pleasure to run into someone who is so good at what they do!

I didn’t feel too bad this morning, which is probably due to the vast amount of water I consumed yesterday on the hike and at dinner. I got up, packed, and had breakfast on my balcony, leftovers from yesterday’s lunch but still very nice. I packed up and said goodbye to Mike’s… I have a ferry to Naxos at 12:40, where I’ll stay for 1 1/2 nights: Friday night I catch an overnight ferry at 2:30am to go to Samos. I doubt I’ll have any trouble sleeping on that one!

Update on the sunburn: it seems to have subsided considerably overnight, but I’m more sensitive to the sun than usual this morning. I’m wearing my hat and keeping to the shadows. I don’t think I’ve ever had this many freckles before!

17:40

Location: Kolimvythres beach, near Noussa, northern Paros.

I got off the bus in Lefkes, a pretty village near the centre of the island, and headed upwards following a sign to Parikia. It led under some trees, which were a brief welcome break from the sun, but soon came out at the main road again, not particularly helpful for a hiker! I followed the road over the next hill, looking for a place to turn off into the countryside. In the next valley, just over a little bridge, I found a dirt lane heading off left, passing a driveway and continuing up. I followed it as it twisted up the hill, until it reached a tiny chapel.

There, I turned and continued up to the right, trying to avoid getting caught on the razor-sharp thistles. Soon I joined what seemed to be an old stone read heading almost straight up the hill at quite a steep angle. As I neared the top of the hill, the road stopped so suddenly that I had to turn and go back to make sure I hadn’t missed a turn. But a path continued up, eventually coming to a farmhouse.

Two dogs barked at me as I passed them, but soon I was on top of the rise, with a good view. The farmer’s lane went off down the slope to the left, and I felt obliged to take it as there were no trespassing signs on his fields. Checking the map, I realized I needed to be heading right, so when I came to a T junction I turned off. I’d had a brief relief from the flies in the wind on top of the hill, but they were persistant and had started bothering me again almost as soon as I headed downhill.

I passed an old monastery, and stopped for a bit of a rest. As I did, the caretaker came out to feed the local cat. He invited me in, but was clearly on his way out on an errand, so I declined and continued on.

[Pause while I walked back to the road so I could catch my bus. I hitched part of the way, which gave me the time to finish my journal entry:]

The road continued on, and before long I came out on the main road near Marathi, the ancient quarry for marble that was the source of the stone of the Venus de Milo. I had half an hour to wait for the 3:30 but, so I took a brief walk into the quarry grounds. By 20 after I was back at the bus stop — even an ancient quarry isn’t particularly exciting!

The bus got back to Parikia at 3:50. Next stop: a swim. I checked the timetable and found the bus for Noussa was leaving at 4, in 10 minutes! So I sprinted back to Rooms Mike, changed into my swimsuit, grabbed a towel and was back at the bus stop with a couple of minutes to spare.

Noussa is a beautiful old fishing village, with narrow streets and whitewashed houses stacked up the hills. It’s also got a few new hotels, a couple of big expensive yachts in the dock, and a lot of tourists. I stayed only long enough to figure out where the beaches were, and that I was a bit too late for the ferry boats to be useful, and I walked back along the road to the first beach, Kolimvythres. It turned out to be farther than I’d expected: about 45 minutes at a pretty brisk pace, but it had lovely sand and was almost completely empty. I had a short swim and feel much better to have lost the sweat from the hike!

Tuesday, April 30, 2002 16:24

Weather: Hot & sunny.

Location: Highspeed 4 ferry from Piraeus to Paros.

By common agreement after a conversation with other travellers, Pascale and I both decided to skip Athens and head straight to the Greek islands from Nafplion. I’ve got 6 days scheduled: 2 each for Paros, Naxos and Samos, from where it’s a short hop to Turkey for my final week. Pascale has almost three weeks left in Greece, so she’s going further, on an overnight ferry to Santorini.

Once we’d got back to Nafplion from Epidaurus yesterday, we had a late lunch, did some Internet, and ran a few small errands. At the end of the afternoon we crossed the hill to the pebble beach for our third consecutive day of swimming. We ran into Constantinos again, and after regaling us with some more stories (he used to be a bartender and has been married several times) he invited us to meet him for dinner at La Fanaria (“the lamps”), a taverna in the old town where we’d eaten on Sunday.

At La Fanaria we feasted on olives, greek salad and fish, with excellent white wine to wash it all down. Our table was in the entrance to an alleyway, next to the street, and towards the end of the evening we saw Michael and Natilie, another pair staying in the same hotel we were, and we invited them to join us. Michael is a tall, laid back black man from Detroit, and Natilie is short, cute and from Paris. At about 11:45 we finally said goodnight and went to bed.

This morning the alarm went off at 4:45 and we got up and went down to catch a 0610 direct train to Athens and Piraeus. (“What does the ‘0’ stand for? ‘0 my God it’s early'”.) I slept most of the way and therefore missed the bridge crossing of the canal at Corinth, that has now made the Pelopponese, strictly speaking, an island, not a peninsula. But I woke up in time to see some of the dramatic coastline between Corinth and Athens, which is the site for the construction of a new highway which Constantinos said has outlasted several governments but should, eventually, speed the trip to Nafplion to a mere hour and a half.

Piraeus turned out to be like Algeciras, but more so: a busy, overcrowded, overpolluted port. We checked our luggage at the train station and found our way to a ticket office that sold us our respective ferry tickets. Then we headed for a much-needed coffee in a small shop tucked in a side alley, and wandered over to the Piraeus Archeological Museum, which was small but had impressive statues, funeral friezes, and pottery, mostly discovered in the Pireaus area. (The finest of the statues were found in 1959, in a warehouse where they’d been hidden in AD 86 to avoid being found by Roman General Sulla, who was sacking Athens at the time!)

After the museum, we found a good restaurant for lunch by the Zea Marina, home of Athens’ largest private yachts, and I called ahead to Paros and booked a place to stay for tonight and tomorrow. Then we wandered ’round to the Maritime Museum, but it looked so uninviting from the outside that we didn’t bother to go in. Instead, we slowly made our way back to the train station, to collect my pack, and then back to the port.

We wished each other bon voyage for the rest of our respective trips, and said goodbye. It’s been great travelling with Pascale and I’ll miss her on the islands. Another new friend to keep in touch with!

The ferry is motoring on. I’m not sure exactly how fast we’re going, but based on the distance on the map would estimate our speed at around 75 kph, pretty speedy for a big ferry! I should get to Paros around 6:30, where the hostel owner will meet me at the pier.

Sunday, April 28, 2002 12:32

Weather: Sunny, some light scattered cloud and haze.

Location: Internet cafe in Nafplion.

We got to Nafplion yesterday at about 3:35. Pascale and I walked together into town. She’s travelling with the Greece Lonely Planet, which has rather more detail than my own LP, which covers all of the Mediterranean: her book has a map of downtown Nafplion and recommends more than one hotel, for example. We followed her map and found an excellent dhomatia up on a hill overlooking the old town, right below a ruined fortification wall, with a rooftop balcony that has a great view. They didn’t have any single rooms left, so we agreed to split a double.

It was quite warm, so after unpacking we changed for swimming and walked over to the other side of the hill, where there is a pebble stone beach. The water was no warmer than at Finikoundas (i.e. pretty cold) but it was sunny so we had a good 20 minutes before getting out… and then were (predictably) somewhat cold. As we sat on a wall soaking up some rays, a Greek man came along and introduced himself as Constantinos, welcoming us to Nafplion. He’s been working in the hotelling & tourism industry all his life, and has travelled and worked around the world. He was fluent in English and French, and gave us a quick test of our Greek, asking us if we remembered the words for life, book, love, horse, river, etc. I’m embarrassed to admit that we couldn’t come up with them, though they seemed obvious once he gave us the answers: bios, biblios, eros, hippos, potamos. He regaled us with stories for a while, and then we all packed up.

Pascale and I went back to the dhomatia, and sat on the balcony. A French mother and her son, Ginette and Hugo, were eating a picnic salad, and we introduced ourselves and invited them to join us for dinner. They are ending up a weeklong trip to Greece, a 20th birthday present for Hugo. We all trouped down at 8 to a restaurant recommended by Constantinos on the main restaurant street of the old town. The whole old town is clearly geared to tourists — signs are in English as often as Greek, and the waiters were fluent in English and French — but we nonetheless enjoyed a good meal at a reasonable price.

This morning we said goodbye to the French, who were off for Epidaurus, where there’s a famous amphitheater, and on to Athens, to catch an early morning flight back to Paris tomorrow. Pascale and I munched the last of the small loaf of bread I’d bought for my hike in Kardamyli and set off to climb up the staircase to the Palamidi fortress, which overlooks the town. It’s reported as 999 stairs, which the Lonely Planet calls “seemingly endless”, though it didn’t actually take us all that long to get up. The fortress is perched on a precarious, sloped plateau, and has spectacular views in all directions (except out the back, where there’s a small car park). We wandered around slowly, soaking in the atmosphere, and taking the occasional photo.

After a while, we decided it was time to get a coffee, and walked back down into the old town. At around noon, we split up, me to find (this) Internet cafe and update the diary, and Pascale to check out the bus schedule to Epidaurus and buy some food. We plan on having a lazy afternoon, doing some more swimming, and (rather than spending a day in Athens) going to Epidaurus for the day tomorrow. I’m not clear on how much longer we’ll travel together, but it’s very nice to have a companion, so the longer the better!