Greece, Part 2: Athens and On Toward Italy

Athens.  Finally.  Remember we got cancelled out of Athens many moons ago?

So what do you do in Athens?  Why, go to the Acropolis!  Of course, this is THE acropolis and it's dedicated to the Greek gods, in general.

Interesting, listening to Greek opinion of the financial crisis that they recently faced.  A little grifiti about the subject:

It seems as though they didn't see any crisis until the banks were closed.  Then they raised hell about the banks.  Once the banks were opened again, they didn't see any crisis anymore.  We kind of got that in general, they don't have any concern about the condition or politics of the country or its neighbors.  We began to understand why they call these countries "Club Med".  Don't worry, drink wine.  One thing they are concerned about and can't let go.  The carvings from the top of the Acropolis are still in the British Museum, having been "stolen" a long time ago.  Greece wants their carvings back, yesterday, period.  Good luck with that.

After Athens, we visited two other islands:  the G place and the Z place.  Most of us couldn't remember either of the names.

At the G place (Gythion), we visited the Diros caves, with a quick pit stop at a little village on the way.

The Diros caves are alive and wet.  In fact, the floor has anywhere from a foot to maybe six feet of water over it.  They were explored between 1900 and 1960 and fossilized bones of panthers, hyenas, lions, deer and hippopotamus bones were found, along with pottery near the entrance, indicating the presence of man.  Opened to the public in 1967, the tour was conducted in a little boat and the driver pushed or paddled us through the cave.  Beautiful!

At the end of the tour, we strolled around Gythion's waterfront and found a bakery.  The biggest and best Baklava ever, brought back to the ship and enjoyed with a cup of coffee from the bar.

Onward to the Z place (Zakynthos).  It's another waterfront village and we decided to make a sea day of it, so we did not go into town.  This would give us two sea days, one of which took us through the very narrow Messina Straight at the toe of the Italian boot.  We viewed Mt. Etna, which constantly steams, the straight itself, and another volcano called Stromboli that also steams constantly.  We even thought that we could occasionally see a bit of red glow.  Believe it or not, people have built houses on the volcano.  What???

Buongiorno, Italy!  Next stop is Civitavecchia, and unlike some of our fellow passengers, let's not slaughter the name, it's pronounced "chee-vee-ta-vek-ya".  The word means "old city".

Greece, Part 1: April's Winding Down

At Rhodes, we hopped on the bus to drive to the Acropolis of Lindos (see?  everyone has an acropolis!).  This temple is dedicated to Athena.  It's a long climb up lots of steps to the top, and there's two ways to do it.  Either ride a donkey or hoof it.  We went on foot.

Descending back down to the parking lot, we found a field with an open gate and barged right in. Turns out that the field was the donkey's break room and several of them were wandering around. The view of the Acropolis was great, though.

Approaching Santorini Island, it looks as though the hilltops are covered with snow, but the snow turns out to be the island's villages.  Everyone has seen the pictures of the whitewashed villages with the blue or white roofs.  There is only one place where most of the ships come in these days, and we didn't even drop anchor.  Santorini sends out their own very nice tenders to bring people to shore.  We headed off the the village of Oia (pronounced eee-ah).  Not much to do in Oia except take pictures or shop.  Shopping, by the way, seemed to be some people's life's work and it almost got to be a competition.  We took pictures.  Oia:

While we were in Oia, the ship moved to the main city of Santorini, Fira, and dropped anchor.  We hopped back onto the bus (bus, bus, bus) and drove over to Fira for a walk around.  It's picturesque.

Fira's at the top of the hill, and there's only one way down the hill to the dock, a cable car.  We HATE cable cars, and apparently the four Koreans sharing the car with us felt the same because their eyes were the size of saucers.

Cyprus: April 24

Docked at Limassol, we charged back onto the buses for a trip to Kourion.  There, we visited the Theater and the Eustolius house ruins.  The theater was probably built towards the end of the 2nd century BC and originally had a circular orchestra.  Due to earthquakes, it was damaged repeatedly and has been restored a number of times.  The current theater is, for the most part, a modern reconstruction, but we got the idea.

The House of Eustolius was initially built during the early Roman period and remodeled around 450 AD.  The remains of important mosaic floors are well preserved in this house.  Don't know exactly what's important about them, but that's what the brochure said!

We also visied the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates, at the Acropolis of Kourion.  Now, nearly every city had (actually, has) an acropolis.  It basically means the highest point in the area.  On the acropolis, one builds his temple to the chosen god or gods.   Apollo won the toss at Kourion.  The history of this place goes back as far as 2000 BC, but most of what survives is of Roman construction.

And then we were in for an interesting stop at a mountain village called Omodos.  Like all villages, this one has main street covered with gift shops and cafes.  There is a monastery that sponsors some very peculiar activities, especially around Easter.  On the Tuesday after Easter, the priest grabs a large cross and walks through the town, stopping at each and every open door to deliver a blessing (for a donation, of course).

After the blessing is received, the owner of the open door grabs a rifle, runs outside, and fires into the air.  Turns out that what they do is use some type of noisemaker cartridges that they fire off in between beers, while watching the tourists jump out of their skin.  We even heard some automatic weapons.  Not really comforting to the visitor.  One mistake and someone loses an eye...

Apparently the locals used to also build a huge bonfire and burn Judas in effigy.  The authorities have mostly got that stopped, but they're having trouble trying to stop the celebratory gunfire.

Onward to Greece!