Boat ride!

Every day we watched the ferry boats leave our beach for the others along the south shore. While I still didn't really need to sit alone on another beach somewhere, I really wanted to see some more of the island. And I wanted a boat ride!

So I concocted my plan for the next day. I bought a ticket for the last boat to leave Ornos, and for the first to return. I was going to ride all the way to the last stop, so I could get as much of a ride out of it as possible!

The ad hoc ticket booth was run by the two men who drove the boats. Both were probably in their 60s or so. One told me it was a "cat-a-STROPH" that I didn't have a boyfriend. He then proceeded to tell me how he spends half the year in Greece and the other half in Thailand, and demonstrated his command of the Thai language, while telling me I should go to Thailand with him. Ew. Creepy.

The other boat owner was a much more grandfatherly man in a blue Gilligan-type hat. He looked like he had been doing this for years: his skin had the leathery tan of decades of harsh sun, his eyes squinted from too many years of bright sun and no sunglasses. He just shook his head at the first guy.

I went back to our spot on the beach and pulled out my watercolors.


I had a few hours before my boat was going to leave. The boats just looked so cool, and we had our usual front row seats to watch!


This one was definitely my favorite.


The creepy guy loaded up his boat to go first. One thing I do have to say to his credit: he was very meticulous about making sure everyone took their shoes off before climbing aboard his boat! Bryant would approve. :)


Then the old sailor in the blue hat made his way to his boat. He looked over at my sketchpad, and got the biggest grin on his face: I was painting his boat! He looked so proud!






We all boarded, and I got to see what the rest of the boat looked like...so cute!


TONS of people crowded on the boat- I was amazed at how many fit! I had a conversation with a couple from, can you believe it, Brooklyn! We stopped at a number of beaches: Paragka, Paradise, Super Paradise (yes, you can see how touristy these places are, just by the names!), Agrari, and finally, Elia. The bays that they were in weren't filled with anchored boats like Ornos, but really, the view wasn't all that different. Thatched roofed bars were more prominent, and Paradise and Super Paradise already had dance music thumping early in the afternoon. Some ridiculously expensive-looking houses were under construction. (hm. Prior to our week at Spannocchia I might have called them villas!)


When we arrived at Elia, I walked the full length of the beach, just to see it.


A few jetskis circled around, and a parasailing boat zoomed back and forth.


Already in the early afternoon I was feeling like I'd had too much sun. The accumulative effect of the entire week was making me quite lobster-like. So rather than finish up my watercolor, I set everything down and stayed in the water. When I swam along the rocky coast that projected out to the west, it felt nicer, less beach-developed.

I didn't have a watch, so just paid attention at a certain point to any indication of a shuttle boat that may be heading back. They all were anchored just a bit off shore, where the drivers must have just relaxed in the shade of their little cubbies.

At one point one of the drivers started up his engine and coasted into shore. I swam back, and climbed aboard, and asked if the boat was going back to Ornos. The driver said no, so I thanked him, and went back on to the beach. A few minutes later the driver called out to me (it took me a minute to realize he was talking to me!) and started motioning. I thought he needed me to get out of the way, that I was too close to the boat or something. So I started to move away, and then realized he was motioning for me to get on the boat!

OK, now I was a bit confused. So I asked again, Ornos? Then he backed up, and pulled up next to another boat, the one I was painting earlier! The old man in the blue hat helped me onto his boat, which wasn't leaving for another half hour or so!

His English wasn't much better than my Greek, so conversation was a bit stilted. He offered me some water from his thermos cooler, and I thanked him, but motioned to my own water bottle. So he nodded, then pulled out a little box with little white powder-sugar-coated cubes, about the size of the boxed chocolates that grandparents keep around the house. He offered me one, and I said no, thank you, but he offered again. I realized that I didn't know what customs were in Greece and didn't want to offend him, so I took one. It had a soft, gelatinous but crumbly texture, and little pieces of...strawberry?...in it, and was ridiculously sweet! I didn't realize so much sugar could be condensed into such a little space!

I think I must have looked like I felt- that I'd taken in far too much sun, and was probably dehydrated as well. But I felt much better after a little water, sugar and shade! (thank you!)

Soon it was time to start picking everyone up at all the beaches to return back to Ornos. I claimed a prime seat up in the front so I could see everything.


The water here really is incredible.


And so close to shore it still had that aquamarine color to it- not the deep blue of the deeper water.


Sigh. These were some of my last glimpses of the shoreline of Mykonos.


Our flight left first thing the next morning, so this is it for daylight hours in the Greek islands for us!

That evening we went to the little internet cafe/bar again, and sat out on the roofdeck to play one last round of Wordthief.


*sigh*




The two weeks had really been incredible, and I was so glad to have been able to spend so much time together with my two best friends again. What a way to for us to celebrate so many years of friendship, and create wonderful memories that we'll be able to reminisce about in the future!



Thanks, AM and T! And HAPPY 30th BIRTHDAY!!!

Delos!

Today was a day I was looking forward to- we were taking the ferry to Delos!


Delos is the island that gave the Cyclades their name. It was the birthplace of Artemis and Apollo, so it was understandably very prominent in antiquity. All the other islands in this group cycled around it, geographically and culturally. Over the centuries it was a religious site, then a trading port, until it was sacked twice by 69 BC, and abandoned soon afterwards.



Mykonos was a kind of backwater, until the mid-20th century, when it became a scholarly residence for those researching on Delos. It was only then that it morphed into the vacationer's destination that it is today.


Since I'm getting into a bit of history here...
The Cyclades were first inhabited by about 3200 BC. Since then, they've been controlled by:
the Minoans (2000 BC)
the Myceneans (1300 BC)
the Ionians (750 BC)
the Persians (490 BC)
the Athenians (477 BC)
the Macedonians (318 BC)
the Ptolemies of Egypt (285 BC)
Rhodes...the Rhodians??? Rhodesians??? (197 BC)
the Romans (146 BC)
the Byzantine Empire (330 AD)
the Latins (1204 AD)
the Venetians (1207 AD)
the Greeks (1261 AD)
the Catalans (1304 AD)
the Turks (1344 AD)
the Catalans- again (1389 AD)
the Ottomans (1537 AD)
the Russians (1770 AD)
and finally,
the Greeks! (1821 AD)

Phew!


Can I point out, again, how incredibly gorgeous the water is?


As we left port and headed out into the sea the added depths of the water transformed it from pale turquoise to a rich, silky, endlessly deep blue.


I truly understand now where the names aquamarine and ultramarine come from!






As we rounded the far side of the islands the ruins of the ancient city came into view. Mount Kynthos is in the background. It is the highest point in all the Cyclades, and, I learned, on a clear day all the islands of the Cyclades can be seen from its summit.


We were told very explicitly when we left the boat all the times of the return departures. The island is understandably very closely monitored, and it is forbidden to stay overnight.


Delos reminds me quite a bit of Pompeii, minus the ghastly end. It's kind of a strange thing to walk around the remains of an ancient city like this.




Some of the walls had beautiful detailing- note how the stones were cut to fit into each other just so.


Some needed stabilization.


Actually, check out the difference between how the inside and the outside of the walls were built up. The outside looks like it was intended to be left as exposed stone. The inside was built up with smaller stones, but was plastered over; some of the plaster (or stucco?) still remains on some of the other walls!


Although we did see some stairs within the footprints of some houses, generally only the walls of a single floor height remained, sometimes with columns remaining.


These two columns look as though only the top halves were original; The bottom halves likely are a deliberately different marble to make it clear that they exist only to support the original portions, without misleading the observer.


These columns surrounded an inner courtyard.


This looks like a column base, detailed in such a way that any rain water would drain into the courtyard.


The mosaic courtyard floor was really nice. I tagged on to the end of a tour group for a few moments, and learned about the repetitive wave pattern around the edge. It is called meandros, after the Meandros river in Asia Minor, which wound back and forth quite a bit before reaching the sea. (This is also where we get our word meander.) The ancient Greeks used this pattern quite a bit, and as it became more stylized it turned into the rectilinear version we know of as Greek key.


I kind of wish I took notes when I tagged along with the tour group! It seems to me there was some story behind the animals projecting out from the outer columns. I want to say they acted as modillions to support lower roofs on the sides, but I think I may be making that up.


This house had a nice mosaic floor, too!


Lots of extant plaster, too. With color still remaining- is it fresco? It looks like it was intended to look like finish stone blocks, similar to some of the frescoed facades we saw in Siena!


This one is cute!


We came upon the remains of a large cistern.


There wasn't any water in it, but the air was cooler in there, and we could feel a bit of its coolness just standing along its edge.


It kind of reminded me, although not really, of Piscina Mirabilis that we saw years ago along the Amalfi Coast. That was an immense, Roman-era underground cistern. As it no longer held water, we were allowed to enter, and walk through it. I remember it feeling like an amazing, underground cathedral.

Is this one on Delos from Roman times? I don't remember hearing about the Greeks using arches. The Romans certainly did, but for infrastructure at first, like this!

After the cistern we came upon the theater. Some of seats were still intact! It was fun to stand in the center and imagine it full of an audience.


From the top it was fun to pretend we were watching a performance! And true to form, this theater had a spectacular backdrop.


The large boat docked along the jetty is our ferry. The cluster of columns to the right surround the courtyard we looked at earlier.




The three of us poked our heads into one more house. We managed to go to an arid island with very little shade on a day that hit a high of 42C (108F)! With no breeze. Yeah. Go us. <:\






Yeah, that water was looking really temptingly refreshing about now!


T was ready to find some shade, which was most easily found at the welcome pavilion at the jetty.


AM and I decided to explore a bit more, but they both were set to take the first ferry back to Mykonos.



What we'd seen so far was in the Theater Quarter, south of the ferry jetty. As we made our way north towards the Sanctuary of Apollo and the Sacred Lake, there were lots of interesting things to see. It seemed to be an area of more civic buildings rather than homes.




Lots of fragmented edifices, reconstructed to the extent possible with the remaining pieces...


lots of great details...


Lots of nifty little lizards scurrying around the ruins!


These lions once guarded the Sacred Lake.






I wonder what the honeycomb pieces were?


I wonder what this says?


These little stucco buildings were built for the archaeologists, sometime since the Ecole Francaise D'Athenes started excavating here in 1873. They are clearly not part of the ancient city, but they're kind of cool in their own right as stark geometric objects in the arid landscape.


AM went back to meet T at the welcome pavilion, and took the ferry back.



Afterwards I went to the Archeology Museum and walked around inside where it was cooler. There were some really cool statues on display here. Some reminded me of the things I saw in Naples and Pompei years ago.

When I cooled off a bit I decided to do one of the things I was really looking forward to: climbing Mount Kynthos!

At 367 feet tall, it's not really that much of a climb. Normally. In the oppressive heat, though, I took my time climbing!


I stopped for a moment for a glimpse back, a sip of water, and a wish that I'd brought more with me!


It was a little hazy, so I don't know that I could see all the Cycladic islands, but I had a spectacular view nonetheless!


There was a slight breeze up here, which felt so good as I looked out over the rocky island and the sea beyond!


That's Mykonos across the channel.




If it weren't so hot out I would have loved to have stayed on the summit for a while longer. But it was definitely time for me to head back to the ferry home.