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.
posted by Tom at 1:41 PM | link |