The Greek Islands

Date: August 6, 2008
Location: The Aegean Sea
Lat: 37° 23.15N Long: 023° 38.68E

Well, the Greek Islands are absolutely beautiful. I had to wake up pretty early to make the bus. A friend of mine didn’t have a ticket, but they took his information down and he was welcomed on board, which was nice.

The ship went to three islands, Poros, Hydra, and Aegina. The ferry that took us there was really nice too. They had a bar on board, which I made good use of so I felt excellent throughout the trip. The prices were good too.

However, there was more to this min-booze cruise than booze. The island of Poros was absolutely gorgeous. The island was really rocky and mountainous. There seemed like not much there outside of a marina and some nice little places next to it. The architecture was very pretty. The buildings all seemed white washed so they gleamed in the bright Aegean sun.

After disembarking the ship, a friend and I decided to climb up to the bell tower. This was up on the highest point on the island. We quickly climbed up it and took some excellent photos. Poros was nice, but small. We quickly left after an hour or so on the island.

We were served lunch on the ship. After Italy I have acquired a taste for red wine, so I ordered a mini-bottle of that. It made the food a bit better, which was some beef with a sauce on it. The dessert kind of tasted like a fig newton with strawberry sauce. I didn’t care for it too much and didn’t eat much of it. The odd thing was that there was a type of cream sauce that came with the dish. It wasn’t ice cream since it was warm, yet it wasn’t whipped cream either, it had the consistency of butter. Maybe that was what scared me away.

We then made landfall on the island of Hydra. This was my favorite island by far. We quickly walked to a beach where we proceeded to go swimming. I didn’t have my trunks so I just swam in my boxers. This was a ton of fun. The Mediterranean Basin seems to be very salty; whenever I’ve dried off after swimming I can just brush the salt off me. However, the best part of all this was that there was a cave that went in maybe 20 yards. The roof of the cave was close to where we were standing so we decided to jump off it. This was probably around 20 feet off the surface of the water so it was a nice jump. We did this several times then we high-tailed it back to the ship.

A funny thing about Hydra is that it is entirely car free. The mode of transportation is instead the use of burros. Donkeys transport everything. It’s kind of funny seeing plastic grocery store bags on burros’ saddlebags.

We then moved to Aegina. This was a nice island as well. We headed over to a beach. After some swimming I fell asleep on a lawn chair. I almost missed the boat but my friend woke me up. I thought we left much later than we did. I quickly put on my shoes and we started running. After maybe a ten minute jog, we made it. They were close to pulling in the gangway but we got there in the nick of time. I’m sure glad my friend was on the ball.

After a nice boat ride back we grabbed dinner on the ship. We then headed out to Athens to explore the local night life. We heard that there was a really cool spot that is a huge rock where people go at night and drink wine under the shadow of the Acropolis. We couldn’t find it, but on the bright side, we barely made it back for the last metro. Luckily we didn’t have to spend the money on a taxi cab.

We grabbed gyros at a place near the train station. We then walked back to the MV Explorer and slept. I woke up around noon. I didn’t think going into the city was a good choice as one thing going wrong would make me stuck in Athens and miss the boat. I just grabbed gyros with some friends and watched a bit of the Olympic women’s soccer play, I might not see most of the Olympics, but I saw something.

I headed back to the ship after this and since then I’ve hung out with some friends. Greece was an amazing time; I’d love to come back there. Plans are firming up in Croatia. I’m going to be staying at a beachfront Villa. I might not be getting a lot of culture in Croatia, but I’m going to have an excellent time. It seems like an excellent way to cap off an excellent experience.