Following a couple of sweaty days in frenetic Athens, we caught the fast hydrofoil from the Port of Piraeus to Aegina for a few days of rest and relaxation. After a welcome drink by the harbourside in pretty Aegina Town, we ventured on to our holiday lodgings along a narrow street. Memories of a different time, different place came flooding back.
Like many old Anatolian thoroughfares, Turkey Street was just wide enough for two emaciated camels to pass each other unhindered. This constraint never seemed to trouble the locals but for us, motorcades of Nissan tanks flanked by Vespas on amphetamines made for a testing pedestrian experience. Aided by the now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t pavements, death or permanent disability lurked at every twist and turn of the perilous road.
OK, there were no Nissan tanks but there were high-speed Vespas aplenty as we navigated along the now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t pavements, dragging our cases behind. We had to keep our wits about us.
Back in the day, our Bodrum digs were on the corner of what I called Turkey Street and Sentry Lane.
Sentry LaneAegina
Mind you, Turkey Street didn’t feature a row of garden gnomes standing guard. Who knew gnomes were popular beyond the gardens of Middle England?
The similarity between Bodrum and Aegina was uncanny. So much so that, for me, the road to our hotel shall forever be called ‘Greece Street’.
Like our first trip to Athens last year, our flight was delayed by an hour. But unlike our first trip, our passage through passport control at Athens Airport was a breeze. It was then déjà vu all the way to the Attalos Hotel, a short and sweaty case-wheeling stroll from Monastiraki Square, once the throbbing heart of Ottoman Athens. And it’s still throbbing today with a milling crowd of many nations. After dumping our belongings we headed straight up to the intimate rooftop bar with its jaw-dropping views of the Acropolis.
Last year we embarked on our very own Greek odyssey, taking in the ancient sites at Epidaurus, Mycenae, Olympia and Delphi. This time was more of a museum vibe. Our morning excursion was to the National Archaeological Museum, a neo-classical pile showcasing the best finds from Greece’s glorious past. There’s so much to see that it’s simply overwhelming.
Nevertheless, we were particularly drawn to the many faces from the past.
And the sculptures of butt-naked blokes went down well too judging by the throng of over-excited onlookers. Some statues had their meat and two veg intact, others not. In more modern times, many a male member was hacked off by buttoned-up curators, and sometimes, rather than being discarded, they were hidden away in secret museum collections. Imagine it, a pick-a-willy drawer in size order.
Of all the stunning exhibits, this was my favourite. Standing at just over two metres tall, the magnificent bronze ‘Jockey of Artemision’ is dated to around 150–140 BCE and was recovered from a shipwreck in 1926.
Our afternoon expedition was to the über-modern Acropolis Museum, nestled at the foot of the famous rock and built to house artefacts found on the citadel and the surrounding slopes, from the Greek Bronze Age to the Roman and Byzantine eras. It is, perhaps, the most beautiful museum I have ever visited. We were politely but firmly discouraged from taking pictures but I sneaked in a few of the ladies of old Athens anyway. I know, naughty Jack.
Having had our fill of ancient Athens, we café-crawled back to our hotel through modern Athens, stopping off at various watering holes along the way with a final snifter in the rooftop bar before our short-hop ferry to Aegina the following day for the next leg of our journey.
We’ve finally recovered from our latest Hellenic odyssey to pretty Paxos and the Venetian glory of Corfu Old Town. While old Blighty baked under cloudless skies, we basked in Greek heat around a warm pool topped off by ouzo-fuelled steamy evenings of mirth and hot gossip with our travel companions. Thank you, you know who you are. A memory to savour was watching England beat Norway at the footie. We joined the rowdy crowd of many nations squeezed into cafés along the Liston, Corfu’s iconic Parisian-inspired arcade. Business was brisk as the drinks kept clinking and the tills kept ringing. Let’s not dwell on England’s later defeat by Argentina.
As for the rest, I’ll let the snaps do the talking…
Thanks to ‘Linda’ our official royal photographer for most of the pics.
Given the scorcher at home, I fretted that our little plot might wilt in the relentless heat. I needn’t have worried. Our neighbour did a splendid job with the watering can. Thank you!
The final pitstop of our Victoria Wood jolly was in Lancaster, the county town of Lancashire. Our lodgings for the night were at the historic 17th-century Sun Hotel and Bar with fancy rooms. Like my creaking bones, the creaking floorboards gave its age away.
Founded as a Roman fort in the 1st century CE, the handsome city, stuffed with listed buildings, is wrapped around the medieval castle built on the Roman roots. For us, the castle – until recently a prison – was the main event. Unfortunately, many of the best bits were ‘guided tour only’. Still, an old cell block which currently hosts the Lancashire Police Museum was open to casual callers – a quick frisk by a burly screw* with a bulldog face not required. And instead of ‘porridge’ at His Majesty’s pleasure, it was coffee and cake in the sunny castle courtyard afterwards, then back to our digs for some excellent pub grub washed down with decent vino. Cheers!
*’Screw’ is slang for a prison guard. The term is thought to originate from the 19th century, when prison life was really grim. Back then, inmates were forced to perform gruelling and utterly pointless hard labour by turning a hand-crank for hours on end. Depending on their mood, guards could tighten or loosen the screw on the machine to make the wheel harder or easier to turn. Hence the possible origin of the word still used today.
Picture it: half-term in Bowness-on-Windermere during a heatwave – over-busy and over-hot. Bowness is a charming little town but suffers from being the gateway to England’s largest lake, drawing crowds from everywhere. We dropped off our bags at our lodgings – the pretty inn called Churchills – and headed down to the water for a gander. The foreshore was drowning in day trippers, and RAF fighters thundered low over the lake. For a moment we thought mad Vlad had finally lost the plot. Eventually we happened upon a lakeside watering hole to cool down and watch the dogfights.
Still, we weren’t in Bowness for the surly bar staff and so-so service. It was ‘Fourteen Again’ we came to see, Tom MacRae’s brand-new musical based around the songs of the late, great Victoria Wood. As we took our seats at the intimate, recently renamed Victoria Wood Theatre, expectations were sky high. Were they met? Oh yes, met and then some.
The time-travelling tale of friendship, endurance, regret, redemption and rebirth is a very human tragi-comedy centred around the life and times of old besties, Peggy and Lou, which gift-wraps Victoria Wood’s witty ditties in pathos and warmth. Sally Ann Triplett (as Peggy) and Ria Jones (as Lou) are simply superb. There were tears all round.
It’s taken quite a while but we’ve finally recovered from our frolic-filled sojourn on Ithaca. For our second expedition, we were accompanied by a couple of fellow village people who added an extra helping of spice to the mix. We had a ball. We haven’t laughed so much in years. It was well worth the hour-and-a-half delay at Stansted Airport, the three-and-a-half-hour flight to gorgeous Kefalonia, the hour-long taxi trek across the island to the pretty port of Sami, the two-hour wait for the thirty-minute ferry to Ithaca – enough time for a liquid lunch – and, finally, the half-hour cab ride to Frikes.
Even the ferocious squadron of wasps sharing our breakfast buffet each morning didn’t manage to spoil our picnic. Neither did the nasty mozzie bite on my once pert posterior.
Our ouzo-fuelled romp was liberally sprinkled with hot-off-the-press gossip, laced with the lewd and the rude. Here’s a few choice phrases chucked into the drunken conversations. A bit of camp old nonsense, I think, but if bawdy double entendre ain’t your thing, then best change channels now.
“Need to get some water on my aubergines.”
“Our neighbour’s always going up my back passage.”
“Well, there was that time when my friend shat in a Pringles tube.”
“Apparently, Keira Knightley buys her onions from a veg shop in Bungay.”
“So, the doctor just shone his torch up my backside and said, nice and clean.”
“Oooo, you’ve got a lovely little foible!”
“You gotta keep your own hair on your own seat, right?”
“It’s true! She came home with a pickled foetus in a jam jar.”
“So there I was, just standing there holding my swimming teacher’s long pole.”
“It’s like butter off a water’s back.”
And the evergreen classic…
“So, is your cervico intacto?”
“Oo-er. Didn’t know you spoke Latin.”
Massive hugs to our splendid travelling buddies. Thank you for the good times to be treasured. You know who you are.
A few years back, we spent a truly heavenly time on Crete celebrating our 10th anniversary. It was so peaceful, so life-affirming, that we’re thinking of doing it all over again for our 20th next year. As I wroteat the time…
“Our Cretan idyll delivers unexpected familiarity. If I close my eyes, I’m transported back in time to another land of randy insects, loose goats, old men in tea houses and pine-smothered hills.
Ok, no headscarves or hassle, and the call to prayer has been replaced by the chimes of the local blue-domed monastery, but looking at the following snaps – the first of our Cretan digs, the second of our old stone house in Bodrum – you get my drift.”
That was then…
Aphrodite Guest HouseBodrum House
This is now…
Then, guess what we stumbled upon at the end of our recent modern-day Greek odyssey in a hidden corner of our Aegina hotel? We took it as a sign from the gods.
So we’ve decided to return to the place where the original odyssey of Homeric legend ended. Yes, we’re going back to Ithaca and, unlike Odysseus, it won’t take us ten years to get there.
Our modern-day Greek odyssey came to a sweaty end with a few days on the pretty island of Aegina, just a short ferry hop from the Port of Piraeus in Athens. We arrived at the port on the hottest of days and everything was overheating, not least Liam’s mobile phone, which decided enough was enough and shut down without warning. Unfortunately, our ferry e-tickets were loaded into his Google wallet, so blind panic started to set in. A nice young sailor felt our pain and let us board anyway.
Liam had booked the gorgeous Bamboo Cottage in the lush grounds of the Rastoni Hotel, and it was perfect – just the ticket for winding down and resting our weary bones after all that exertion clambering over tumbledown stones perched on hilltops.
Being so close to Athens, Aegina is popular with city day trippers and weekenders who like to party. Come sundown, the fancy harbourside bars and restaurants fill with trendy young things doing what trendy young things do everywhere – chatting, flirting, larking about and having fun. We preferred the backstreet bars where the ambiance is less frenetic for those of us longer in the tooth.
On our last night, just after the waiter had taken our food order, there was a sudden power cut, plunging us all into darkness. Memories of long lights-out nights in Bodrum came flooding back. After a few moments, a generator fired up. As the courtyard filled with diesel fumes, a small lapdog in a massive pink bow at the next table yapped in competition with the mechanical beat. Mercifully, mains power was eventually restored, the air cleared and we were able to eat our meal without the restaurant smelling like a petrol station or us choking to death.
We left the Rastoni Hotel the next day with fond farewells from our kindly hostess. She asked us to come back again. That would be a big fat yes.
I’ll leave you with an image of the Alps as seen from the window of our return flight. Missing Greece already! I feel another trip coming on.
Our final sleepover on our three-day Greek odyssey was in a slightly faded, old school hotel with gaudy trappings that wouldn’t have looked out of place in one of Saddam Hussein’s flashy palaces. Nevertheless, our room was clean and comfortable, and meals were wholesome and plentiful.
Well-fed and watered, we journeyed to Delphi, the sacred precinct dedicated to Apollo and considered by the ancient Greeks to be the navel of the world. In fact, the name ‘Delphi’ likely comes from the ancient Greek word ‘delphys’, meaning ‘womb’. As such, Delphi held unique religious and political influence, attracting pilgrims from across the Mediterranean. It also attracted their cash and ‘corporate’ bungs from city states competing for holy favours. Ye Gods, those ancients knew a thing or two about raking in the cash and making a mint.
The sanctuary was most famous for the Oracle of Apollo, whose cryptic prophecies would be delivered through the Pythia (a priestess) after she sniffed something she shouldn’t. People could wait months for a chance to consult the pretty-boy deity, but a sneaky backhander might get you to the front of the queue.
The entire enterprise was closed down by the puritanical Theodosius I in 391 – the very same Christian Emperor who called time on the Olympic Games two years later. I bet he was a laugh at a party. Just like Olympia, it’s hard to visualise how magnificent the sanctuary once looked in its heyday. But Delphi’s position, cradled by lush pine-clad mountains, is even more spectacular, and the museum even more impressive.
After more tales of the ancients from our guide, Demitrios, it was time to head back to the big city. But not before a lunchtime pit stop in Arachova, a cute little town of narrow streets and stone houses clinging to the slopes of Mount Parnassos.
Our grand tour may have reached the end of the road, but we’re bringing home the lurv with our very own piece of classical Greece – an image of Aphrodite, a memento to hang on a wall. It’s not the real thing, obviously. No smuggling out priceless antiquities in our hand luggage. No, we picked her up in the museum shop. Now for a well-earned rest from our sweaty labours. Aegina’s up next.
Our three-day whistle-stop tour of some of Greece’s most famous historic sites was both tiring and inspiring in equal measure. We were blessed to be in a small group of just five in our (mercifully) air-conditioned minibus. Our fellow travellers were all Australians. I like Aussies. We share a similar irreverent sense of humour.
Demetrios, our well-versed tour guide – an archaeologist by trade – really knew his onions. He spun a good yarn, bringing the ancients to life by blending fabulous fact with fantastic fiction. Throughout our odyssey, he told tales of war and heroism, murder and mayhem, loyalty and treachery, greed and generosity, morals both highbrow and gutter – a no-holes-barred mythical soap opera on acid. All the vices of gods and humans were laid bare, literally in the case of the many fine chiselled statues of beautiful young men with their willies hacked off by scandalised Christians.
Our first stop was the Corinth Canal – not an ancient site per se; it was completed in the 1880s. But it was a welcome comfort break after the long slog escaping the urban sprawl of Athens. And the canal, cut through the hard rock of the narrow Isthmus of Corinth that separates the Peloponnese from the mainland, is impressive, despite being a bit of a white elephant.
Second stop was the spectacular and well-preserved 4th-century BCE theatre at Epidaurus, with its reputation for almost perfect acoustics – ably demonstrated by Demetrios as we stood in the orchestra pit. The echo was remarkable and a little spooky. Unsurprisingly, the theatre is still in use today.
We pit-stopped in modern Epidaurus for a bite. It’s a handsome port town on the Saronic Gulf. Sadly, it was way too hot to explore, though we thought the old British classic phone box in the café was a welcome touch.
Fourth stop was Mycenae, an acropolis almost as old as time itself, sitting on a hilltop 900 feet above sea level. An entire period of Greek civilisation between around 1,600 BCE to about 1,100 BCE is named after it, so it’s no wonder it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Mycenae is inextricably linked to Homer’s Iliad and the fanciful tales of Troy. Arguably, the most impressive structure still standing is a beehive-shaped building with a pointed dome known in modern popular folklore as The Tomb of Agamemnon, the legendary warrior king who led the Greeks during the Trojan War. It’s highly unlikely to actually be the treacherous old bugger’s final resting place, but never let the truth get in the way of a good myth to lure in the eager punters like me. Liam said I looked like an over-excited boy scout as I gazed in awe at the 3,300-year-old roof.
After a sweaty and exhausting first day, we were only too pleased to be dropped off at our digs for the night, just in time for a well-earned dip, followed by a glass or three of tasty local plonk to watch the sun go down.
Tomorrow, Olympia beckons. Let the ancient games begin.
