Family in Athens and Crete

Friday, May 15 On Tuesday morning we flew to Athens. We had gotten lucky and found plane tickets at literally half of what they normally cost. The recession must be really bad to get such cheap tickets during prime tourist season.

We landed in Athens on Wednesday in the late afternoon. Needless to say, it had been a long day of travel. The flights were uneventful. Traveling by plane always makes us appreciate how nice it is to travel by boat. Yes, sometimes travel by boat is miserable, too, but at least on the boat you aren’t cramped into small seats, can get some sleep, can eat or drink whenever you want, can watch a movie of your own choosing, don’t have to listen to screaming babies, don’t have to worry about lost luggage, and don’t have to smell people who have been traveling for 26 hours and need a shower (including ourselves).

Upon arrival in Athens, we went straight to our hotel in downtown, got dinner and crashed. We were up early yesterday morning so we could walk around a bit before meeting Andronikos. We picked a route that took us down streets we have never been on before so we could catch some new sights. We probably walked about 5 miles total and it was lovely. We talked about how much nicer the city has become over the years.

Athens is a fairly homogenous looking city, mostly 8 10 story blocky buildings dotted with Byzantine style churches. You can differentiate the newer churches from the very old ones by their placement. New churches fit the layout of the street. The old churches are in odd places, like hanging halfway out into the street, tucked between two other buildings, or an appendage off of another building. Here is an example of an old church in an odd place

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Also, here and there you pass Continue reading

Travel Summary July 2008 to December 2008

July 2008 to December 2008 — Egypt to Monaco

  • Suez City, Egypt
    29°56N by 32°34E
    Jul 8 – Jul 17, 2008
    Giza Pyramids, Cairo Museum, transiting Suez Canal
  • Aghios Nikolaos, Crete, Greece
    31° 11.2N by 25° 43.0E
    July 26 – Aug 26 & Sep 3 – 9 & Oct 6 – 7, 2008
    Monasteries, Sheep Party, Knossos Minoan ruins, trip to Athens, Delphi, Meteora & Thermopalye on mainland, visit to towns of Rythmeno and Chania on Crete, SCUBA diving, cave, olive oil factory, trip to Santorini, repairing exhaust leak
  • Kos, Dodacanese Islands, Greece
    36°53N by 27°18E
    Sep 10 – 17, 2008
    Ruins, Trip to Rhodes medieval city
  • Bodrum Peninsula, Turkey
    Turtugreis 37°0N by 27°15E
    Yat Lift 37°0N by 27°27E
    Sep 17 – Oct 6, 2008
    Haul out & accompanying work, underwater archeology museum, trip to Izmir & Ephesus
  • Bali, Crete, Greece
    35°25.0N by 24°46.5E
    Oct 8 – Oct 9, 2008
  • Pylos, Peloponnese, Greece
    36°54.0N by 21°40.5E
    Oct 10 – Oct 14, 2008
    Visit to castle/fort & bird sanctuary
  • Siracusa, Sicily, Italy
    37°03.0N by 15°17.2E
    Oct 16 – Oct 23, 2008
    Trips to Catania & Mt. Etna, Il Duormo church, kayaking
  • Vittoriosa, Malta, Malta
    35°53.4N by 14°31.2E
    Oct 27 – Nov 5, 2008
    Patron saint celebration, archeology & maritime museums, spectacular churches & accompanying museums, grandmaster’s palace, medieval citadel, Ggjanta Temples, maintenance work, blue lagoon
  • Yasmine Hammamet, Tunisia
    36°22.3N by 10°32.8E
    Nov 7 – 18, 2008
    SCUBA diving, Medina, Ramadan dinner, Bardo museum, riding the sand dunes in the Sahara, set of Star Wars, traditional indigenous housing
  • Trapani, Sicily, Italy
    38°00.5N by 12°31.1E
    Nov 18 – 21, 2008
    Trip to Palermo
  • Stromboli, Sicily, Italy
    38°47.5N by 15°14.2E
    Nov 21 – 27, 2008
    Volcano hike, emergency rescues
  • Lipari, Sicily, Italy
    38°28.4N by 14°57.5E
    Nov 27 – Dec 2, 2008
  • Rome, Italy
    41°44.3N by 12°14.6E
    Dec 4 – 16, 2008
    Vatican, ancient ruins, Pantheon, Vatican fort
  • Monaco
    43°44.0N by 7°25.3E
    Dec 18 – 31, 2008
    Hiking in the Alps, underwater museum

Passage from Pylos, Greece to Syracusa, Italy

According to the forecast, the sea conditions looked good, so yesterday morning we got ready to go and headed out around 1230. Shortly after pulling out, someone came on the radio calling out a “Securite! Securite! We have a situation at X coordinates. There is a load of bananas in the water”. Then a few minutes later, we heard someone calling the “Banana Port Control” for permission for the “monkey ship to enter”. Oh no. Is the Monkey Boy (the radio abuser aboard some ship) back? Or just people making fun of him? The banana talk died, and we thought no more of it.

Seas were relatively calm and it has been a smooth and uneventful ride. Our speeds were excellent given the RPM. With the exception of currents, our speed really is determined by the wave height. The smaller the waves, the faster we go.

The sunset was spectacular once again, turning into a bright red glow of fire and casting a soft pink glow on the sea.

At 2100, the Monkey Boy came onto the radio. Sigh. It really was him earlier. He started by calling out “Mayday! Mayday from the banana boat!”, then Continue reading

Sightseeing Around the Pylos Area

This morning we rented a scooter to go site seeing. Since renting the scooter in Aghios Nickolaos, Eric has wanted to get another one. Neither of our two tourist guides mentions Pylos at all, but the scooter rental place gave us a map listing the tourist attractions of the area.

We headed south to go to the town of Methoni, where a castle is located. We had seen the fort from Kosmos yesterday on our way to Pylos and it looked beautiful, so we were eager to see it up close.

The landscape between the towns was mostly olive groves and scrubby plants on rolling hills. There were a couple industrial stores and a handful of homes, but for the most part there was no development between the towns. It was a nice drive.

When we arrived at the castle, we saw admission was free, so we were expecting it to be a dud. We were surprised to find that it was actually quite good, with some of it very well preserved. It is much better than the castle at Kos.

The castle was originally built by the Venetians in 1209 and expanded many times over the next 200 years. You walk in on a fancy stone bridge over a now dry moat, through a grand entrance gate. The entrance was an addition in made in 1714. When the entrance was made, there was an easily removable wooden bridge resting on pillars of stone. In the early 1800’s the permanent and decorative stone bridge was added. Once inside, there is a fairly long walkway where you have nothing but huge walls on either side of you.

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At the end of the walkway are the gates into the castle complex. When we stepped through the gate, we were taken aback at how large it is. It covers much more land mass than you realize looking at it from both sea and land. This photo does not Continue reading

Welcome to Pylos, Peloponnese Peninsula, Greece

At about 0700 we tucked in between an island and the mainland. Sheltered by the island, we had about an hour and a half of flat seas. Ahhh. We were joyous about the reprieve. On the other side of the island, the waves were less vicious and easier to handle, for a while, anyway. This is because the island partially blocks the wind, slowing it down to only 10 knots apparent.

We had gone around the bottom of Greece and were now moving north, up the eastern side of the country. Our plan was to only be in Katacolon for a couple days, then move west to Sicily. Eric had been looking at the charts this morning for a port we could check out of the country from that was closer to our current position than Katacolon. We realized there was no real need to move so far north, seeing as the trip to Sicily would take the same amount of time no matter where we left from on the lower eastern side of Greece. He found what he was looking for, a small town named Pylos, located close to where we were.

At 0900 we pulled into the harbor, which was totally flat and calm. You’d never know how hard the wind was blowing in the ocean from looking at the bay. We pulled up to the “marina”, dubious about availability at this time of the year. Someone was waiting for us and directed us to a prime side tie spot marked “captain”. Of course, we assumed the guy worked for the marina. Turns out there is no marina staff. This guy sells diesel fuel and was hoping to get a new client, hence the helpfulness.

Pylos has a different look to it than the other places we have been to in Greece. Yes, the buildings are blocky and situated on a hill. Most of the buildings look like they are detached, at least the ones most visible. Most of the buildings are less than 5 stories and have pitched, red tile roofs. We guess the roofs are what change the look of the town so much, at least from the distance. In the Plain of Thessaly they also have some houses with pitched roofs, too. It also looks like many buildings in Pylos are relatively new.

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Once Kosmos was situated, we Continue reading