My Hovercraft is Full of Eels

We docked at Patras on time, found the sta­tion and with­in no time were tuck­ing into fresh greek bread, feta, olives and toma­toes from the loc­al shop, and a freddo (iced espresso — this sea­son’s trend­i­est drink!)  A well earned decent feast — food on the ferry was a bit sparce due to the pricey food on board and the lack of shops to pur­chase any­thing oth­er than souven­irs in Venice, and shops being shut in Ancona (Sunday) — but we enjoyed our stale bread and jam and felt like real travellers!

When our train to Kiato dis­ap­peared sud­denly from the board we were a little alarmed, and on ask­ing the man in the tick­et office were told “Next train tomor­row, train strike”.  Ah. Bit puzzled as to why he let us sit there wait­ing for the train:)

So — man­aged to catch a bus to Athens and arrived ahead of sched­ule to a won­der­ful wel­come from Athena!

Athens was big and busy and extraordin­ary, with lay­er upon lay­er of antiquit­ies around every corner.  Visited the stun­ning new Akropolis museum and caught up with Jo.  All going well until in the metro from Athens to Pireus both Kerry and I were the vic­tims of very pro­fes­sion­al pick­pock­ets.  Unbelievable.  We did­n’t notice a thing and wer­en’t being at all care­less.  Purses gone, cred­it cards can­celled, police reports made for the insur­ance — at least Chris still has his! Plenty to think about give and take and let­ting go…

So even­tu­ally we made our way through the busy Pireus docks to the Paros ferry, run­ning late because of the wind.  Finally docked at Paros at about 11pm, a mad scramble onto the bus to eth Antiparos ferry (chris ended up on a sep­ar­ate bus cos it was so busy) and even­tu­ally arrived at the beau­ti­ful and laid back Camping Antiparos to sleep under a sky full of stars next to the sea.

It’s beau­ti­ful here — well deserving of the Cool Camping recom­mend­a­tion — full of altern­at­ive Greeks, and plenty of bam­boo to provide shade from the sun and shel­ter from the ever present meltemi (wind). There is a beau­ti­ful wild beach next to the camp­site and an unin­hab­ited island to swim across to.

Everyone deserves some days in the sun, and hav­ing come here over­land it feels like we have really earnt it!  It also feels VERY VERY far away!

You simply can­’t get such good feta (cal­lum is devel­op­ing a pas­sion­ate taste for it, Saul!), toma­toes and olives any­where else!