easycruise one
easycruise one
Basics -
Day 1 - Day 2 - Day 3 - Day 4 - Day 5 - Day 6 - Day 7
easycruise is the no-frills cruise company owned by Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, who also founded the budget airline easyjet. easycruiseone was the company’s first ship. It has previously sailed in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean but is currently based out of Marina Zea in Piraeus, near to Athens. By the time I finish writing this (and it might take me a while...) easycruiseone could be no more - the boat is currently up for sale and in April 2008 easycruise will be introducing a new, larger ship called "easycruise life".
Day 1 - Piraeus
We flew into Athens from Heathrow on British Airways. We had a hell of a tail-wind behind us all the flight as it only took 2 ½ hours, a lot less than I was expecting.
Athens airport (also known as Eleftherios Venizelos, named after a Greek politician; I hate it when they name airports after people and am considering reversing the trend by changing my name by deed-poll to "Heathrow Airport" so that people will think I'm some kind of celebrity when I travel) was purpose-built for the 2004 Olympics and is modern and efficient, making it the complete opposite of that shambles Heathrow. The airport is well-connected to the city and to Piraeus, and we had the choice of going on the express bus, Metro, or the suburban railway. We ended up on the suburban railway mainly because when Dave went to buy a Metro ticket the guy behind the counter told him to get a train ticket instead. The journey wasn't direct and we had to change trains at Nernatziotissa station (where the train to Piraeus was already waiting on the next platform), but according to tinternet there should be direct trains from the airport to Piraeus (maybe we had to change because we were travelling on a Sunday? Or maybe tinternet is just telling me bollocks?). It cost us 6 euros each and took us just over an hour from the airport to Piraeus station and if a pair of clowns like us can manage it then anyone can, although we were later told that the express bus to Piraeus is a lot quicker and so would probably try that next time.
From Piraeus station it's still quite a distance to the Marina Zea where the easycruiseone is docked; you can take a bus (the 904) but all the buses were crowded and I didn't fancy trying to force myself on with a huge bag, and in any case I'm basically an idle bastard so we caught a taxi. Mistake. He seemed a nice enough chap but when we got to the ship he charged us 13 euros for a 10 minute journey, and as if that act of blatant theft wasn't enough I'm sure that I paid him with a 20 euro note which he switched for a 5 euro note and demanded extra money. To put it into perspective when we took a taxi back from Marina Zea to the station (because, despite this experience, I'm still basically an idle bastard) it cost us less than 3 euros. I guess I should have made more of a fuss, but that's not the way us repressed Brits do things so I contented myself to tutting (to myself, of course) and thinking dark thoughts about him (which for us repressed Brits is the equivalent of pissing on his mother's grave...). By the way, this taxi driver was the one who told us that the bus from the airport was quicker, so maybe he was lying about that too. If you do get the bus from Piraeus station get off by the Naval Museum from where it's still quite a long walk around the marina to the ship (easycruiseone docks at the end of the breakwater which is on the right as you face the sea, the furthest point out to sea in the marina; the good news is that it'll be by far the biggest boat in the port so you can't miss it). There are more details and a map on the easycruise website.
When you get on the ship your baggage will be searched; they're looking for food (the excuse I heard was that food left on board can attract rats) drink (because they want to sell you their own! If you're carrying alcohol it will be stored in reception until you leave the ship, but you are allowed to bring bottled water on board), and things like hairdryers and travel irons (which are fire hazards). Although your bags can be searched every time you get on the ship this never happened to us; it's only likely to happen if you're carrying bags that obviously look they contain food or drink (supermarket carrier bags spring to mind). A couple of girls told us that they'd had no problems smuggling booze on board, but we didn't speculate as to how they managed this and it might have been rude to ask.
The next step was registration; this took a bit longer than I was expecting, partly because there were so many people waiting to register and partly because when they did register they all seemed to be asking exactly the same questions of the staff at the reception desk (which were covered anyway later that evening at a welcome meeting). Another delay was that we had to register a credit card at reception; this is something that is not mentioned on the easycruise website but when you're checking into the ship you now have to give your credit card details; 50 euros per day of your cruise is then "set aside" on the card, meaning you can't access those funds on your credit card (although no money is actually taken from your card until the end of the cruise). If you don't have that kind of money on your credit card, or don't want to register a card you can make a cash deposit instead; if your on-board account exceeds your cash deposit you'll have to top it up (any unspent cash is returned to you when you check out of the ship). When you've registered you're given your ID card; this is very important as it acts as your room key, and you need to have it swiped every time you want to leave or get back on the ship. In addition, every time you buy something on board rather than paying in cash you have to hand your card over and whatever you've just bought is added to your on-board account. (You can check up how much you owe on your account any time at reception, half way through the cruise you're given an itemised interim statement showing exactly what you've spent and when, and you get another one when you settle your account at the end of the cruise). You're also given a little booklet containing a map of the ship, details of where all the passenger facilities are, and a greeting from Stelios himself, bless him.
After checking in it was time to have a look round the ship (this was Dave's third time on the easycruiseone so he knew pretty much what was what). Starting off in my room (or cabin, to use the nautical term), based on my previous trip in easycruise2 it was about what I was expecting; we had compact twin rooms (one each, thank God!); the beds are 2 mattresses on a raised platform at one end of the cabin, with a shelf above one of the beds. The beds seemed a bit bigger than on easycruise2 (my feet didn't hang off the end of the bed this time!), and unlike easycruise2 there was a drawer for storage under each bed. All cabins have a porthole (or round window, to use the non-nautical term); I was on deck 2 which was close to the waterline and the porthole didn't open; I don't know if those on higher decks were able to open theirs. There wasn't any air conditioning in the cabin, although there was a dial in the ceiling that could be twisted round to open or close it. What it actually opened or closed I have absolutely no idea. Anyway, my room never seemed to get too hot, although I didn't really spend all that much time in it. Each cabin has an en-suite bathroom with a toilet (nautical term = "head"), basin and mirror, and a shower. I could fit myself into it easily (the shower, not the toilet) so so can you. I'll basically stick to what I said about the cabins on easycruise2; for one person they're fine; for two you'd either have to midgets or sharing with someone you really, really like.
easycruiseone has six decks (I was going to say "floors to use a non-nautical term" but I think I've already beaten that "joke" to death...). The bottom deck is for the crew, and is off-limits to passengers. Deck 2 is passenger cabins, Deck 3 has more cabins, the ship's reception area (which is open 24 hours a day), the main exits, and a couple of "chill-out zones" - areas of comfy looking chairs and sofas which seemed popular with people who wanted to read or who wanted to play the board or card games that are available from reception. Deck 4 has cabins at the front and the main bar and restaurant, the imaginatively-titled "Restaurant on 4" at the back. More on that in a minute. At the back of Deck 5 is another bar, now known as the "Flocafe on Pool" (previously the "Sun and Moon Bar") which is an outdoor bar complete with some tables, benches, and an out-door hot-tub. More on that in a minute too. I think I probably spent more time on this deck than I did in my cabin. Also on Deck 5 (but indoors) are the sauna, and a spa where you can get massages and all sorts of cosmetic treatments that have names I couldn't even begin to hazard a guess as to what they meant. At the front of Deck 6 is the "Wellness Zone" where you'll find a couple of exercise bikes and a treadmill. I stumbled across it by accident once and never returned... There might also be some sun beds up there but I couldn't swear to that. There's one small lift at the centre of the ship as well as a central staircase and stairs at the front and back of each deck. easycruiseone isn't huge; less than 90 metres long, with 108 cabins.
O.K., on to the food and drink on board, getting our priorities right we'll start with the drink. The only place to get draft beer is in the Restaurant on 4 and the only type of draft beer is Heineken. If you want bottled beer (from either bar) you can have Heineken again, Amstel, Carib, or canned Murphy's stout. For God's sake avoid the vile "Amstel Pulse" which Dave accidentally ordered when we'd drank all the Heineken on board; apparently it's low calorie and low carbohydrate which for a beer makes about as much sense as non-vegetarian tofu. It was vile, and we both struggled manfully to finish our bottles. And the prices? Expensive. For a pint of draft Heineken you'll have to fork out 5.50 euros. A 330 ml bottle of beer will set you back 4 euros. As I said, expensive but look at like this; you can book a cabin on easycruiseone for £20 a night. They have to make their money someway and if they do it by marking up the beer then that's fair enough. In fact, as beer swilling goons like me are basically subsidising the costs of everyone else's cheap cabins, if you ever see me on easycruise I think it's only fair that you buy me a drink to say thanks... OK a quick rant- whenever we drank on shore we tended to drink Greek Mythos beer, which is lovely stuff. So why don't they sell it on the ship? I think I'll send Stelios an email to suggest it... For those that aren't beer-monsters there's a decent range of wines (7 white, 4 reds, 2 rose), all of it Greek (don't turn your nose up, Greek wine can be lovely stuff, but I'll come back to that later) with prices ranging from 14 to 28 euros per bottle. You can also get spirits or cocktails, but these work out even more expensive than the beer. Apparently there are also soft drinks available, as well as tea and a variety of coffees. They went untasted by me. Now some good news - Happy Hour is between 7 and 8 pm, and all alcoholic drinks are half-price during this time (apart from bottles of wine, although if you drink it by the glass you'll get it half price). Do as we did and try and get as much down you as possible during Happy Hour (they have no objections to you buying 2 or 3 drinks just as the hour is coming to an end either, so you can keep some in reserve for later).
We ate on board a couple of times, both in the Restaurant on 4. The restaurant and bar on deck 5 are now operated by Flocafe, which I think is a Greek company (they also have restaurant by Marina Zea). There's a decent range of salads, snacks, pasta and other main courses, most of which have a distinctly Greek influence (fried squid, pasticcio, moussaka). Prices for a main course range from 8 to 15 euros (for the beef tenderloin). For some reason I had the burger both times I ate, and it was fine, a proper thick meaty burger rather than some thin, limp McDonald's equivalent, and which came on really nice fresh bread and came with potato wedges, salad, and a choice of barbeque or cheese sauces. Dave had the chicken olivada once, which he said was fine if a little small and for various reasons I can't really remember what he had the other time. Apparently you can have breakfast on board, but due to factors beyond my control I never made it there in time.... As I said, I thought the food was fine and also reasonably priced (especially compared with the mark-up on the drink). There's enough range (7 salads, 14 main courses) so that if you really wanted to you could eat something different every day, and there's also plenty of choice for vegetarians. Still, even though there were more things to choose from I didn't think that the menu was as adventurous as that on easycruise2 (or as cheap; which is probably why easycruise2 went bust!). And Dave said he'd preferred the food that was available on his previous 2 trips on easycruiseone. At the end of the day though you could go through the entire trip without once eating on board so just look at the restaurant on the ship as a back-up in case you're too lazy to go ashore, or if you can't find anywhere else to eat (which only happened to us in Kiato).
After a drink or three on deck 5 (we had to decide whether we preferred the Heineken or the Amstel) it was time to head down to the Restaurant on 4 for a welcome meeting.
This was our first chance to meet our fellow passengers and...., well they weren't what I was expecting. Over half were Americans, the rest seemed to be Brits; we didn't see anyone from Greece or any other European countries. And it was a more mature bunch than I was expecting, a lot of retirees and over-50s. There were plenty of younger people too, including a small group of American college students, some back-packer types, as well as a few couples, but I'd say me and Dave were among the youngest third on the boat (well, I probably was, maybe not 40 year-old Dave...). A lot of the Americans we talked to had been on "proper" (full service) cruises before, so easycruise must have come as a bit of a shock to them (and remember that the easy-brand and concept is pretty much unknown in the USA). But, in fairness to them the majority seemed to quickly get into the spirit of things and had fun (needless to say there was still a small minority of whingeing bastards moaning about the cost of everything, or how basic some things on the boat were, but you'll probably get some of them in any group. We just ignored them, or took the piss out of them behind their backs - like this!). And despite the presence of a few weirdos on the boat (I might have to include Dave and I in that number...) everyone seemed to get on pretty well. Although people tended to hang around in groups, it didn't feel cliquey, and it wasn't as if the Americans and Brits just kept to themselves. It was fun meeting people from different countries, backgrounds, and age groups. We got talking to lots of interesting people, had some wide-ranging conversations (but we could only find one American who admitted to liking George W. Bush!) and came away having made some new friends, always a nice bonus from a holiday.
The welcome meeting was also our introduction to the cruise director, Alex; half Greek-half Swedish, and most certainly good with colours... He got progressively more camp and his tannoy announcements more outlandish the longer the cruise went one. I have never heard anyone make the word "kiwi" (as in fruit) sound quite so suggestive, and the sight of him in his obscenely tight yoga pants is one that will be seared into my memory for a while yet. Still, he did tell us about the Swedish Bjorn Borg variation of salt, tequila and lemon, so for that I forgive him. An absolutely brilliant bloke, who did his job (keeping us entertained!) superbly. More on him later... We were also introduced to some of the other crew members, including Kelly, the Classical Greece coordinator; she came with us on all of the tours, was very knowledgeable, and gave us some fascinating talks. She also bought me a free drink (for being the only person on our coach able to name the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World; keep reading this site and you might just learn something!).
This was also a chance for passengers to ask any questions; this went on for rather longer than it should have as the result of a bunch of imbeciles asking exactly the same questions (to sum up - you can't do both of the optional tours on Ithaca as they both start at the same time, and they won't open the kitchen up early for you because you fancy having breakfast before everyone else. Sounds straightforward, but the number of times they had to repeat it....).
It was a happy coincidence that the welcome meeting ended just as happy hour began so we headed back upstairs to deck 5 to take advantage of that; it was actually a bit chilly up there (as it was on the other night we spent in Piraeus, the final Saturday night; there seemed to be quite a stiff breeze coming in off the sea) but beer helps keep a man warm so we coped. After happy hour we decided to hit dry land for a bit and went for a bit of a stroll round the Marina Zea, where there were some seriously expensive looking yachts, from all corners of the globe, with easycruiseone looking rather conspicuous at the end of the harbour, especially when it was all lit up.
There also seemed to be some pretty good bars and restaurants on the Marina but Dave was feeling lazy, and one of our great regrets about easycruise two is that we never really ate on board, so we headed back to the ship to get something to eat. As I said earlier, if you can remember that far back, I had a burger which fine, if not outstanding, and I can't quite remember what Dave had (actually, now I think of it, it may have been moussaka). A couple more beers on deck 5 and we headed off (separately!) for an early night.
An early night? you ask. I know, but we had a very full day ahead of us, as you'll find out when you read the next section!
By the way, despite my room apparently being right above the engines I slept pretty soundly, if not at great length, on the ship. Granted, that was partly to do with the Heineken and Mythos, but I think a combination of the fresh sea air and the gentle rocking of the boat meant .......zzzzzzzzzzz......
Day 2 - Kiato
The sun rose early on Monday morning, and surprisingly I was there to see it. The easycruise newsletter said that we'd be sailing through the Corinth Canal at 7am and so not wanting to miss this I set my alarm, dragged myself out of bed, knocked on the wall between our cabins to interrupt whatever foul activity Dave was engaged in, and then headed out on deck to see the canal. I had to wait for a bit.... In the end we didn't actually enter the canal until just after 8, but it was nice to stay on deck get some fresh air. The boat was sailing through the Saronic Gulf, and the views were amazing; high mountains on all sides, some of the tallest still capped with snow, a few rocky islands, and of course there was also the sunrise. I'm not really a man who is generally around to witness sunrises. I've seen a few in Prague, but that was when I'd been up all night drinking so I wasn't really in any condition to appreciate them. Anyway, this one seemed particularly fine, I might have to make an effort to see a few more of them in the future. There was quite a stiff breeze coming in off the shore but it felt like a pretty warm breeze to me which made Dave, huddled up under his wooly hat like a gay Compo, look rather unmanly.
For a while it looked as though we were sailing directly towards a wall of solid rock, like an even more slow motion Speed 2, but eventually a tug boat appeared and the easycruiseone was roped to it, and the entrance to the canal appeared.
The Corinth Canal is less than 4 miles long so compared to the likes of the Suez and the Panama it's a bit of a tiddler. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Corinth, a narrow strip of land that connects the Peloponnesian peninsula with the rest of the Greek mainland. The alternative to sailing through the canal is to sail 250 miles around the peninsula. Although there are records of plans to cut a canal through the Isthmus dating back to the 7th century BC, and both Julius Caesar and Nero also thought it would be a good idea, construction on the current canal didn't start until 1881, and it took 12 years to finish. The story goes that the ancient Corinthians asked the Oracle at Delphi if it would be a good idea to build a canal and the Oracle replied in the negative (if only the organisers of the Millennium Dome had thought to consult the Oracle of Delphi!), so instead they built a road across the Isthmus, and dragged boats out of the water and across the Isthmus by road.
Large boats have to be pulled through by a tug, but given the narrowness of the canal (just over 21 metres wide) many modern cruise liners are too wide for it. The easycruiseone is not a large boat, and it times it felt like we could reach out and touch the walls on either side. I suppose this is what most impresses about the Corinth Canal, having the walls so close by and looming up above you. Needless to say the canal is only open in one direction at time, as overtaking or turning round would be impossible. The journey through the canal takes half an hour or so and honestly, it's something that you really shouldn't miss.
After the trip through the canal it was time for the evacuation drill. Basically this involved everyone going back to their cabins, putting on their life jackets, and then following the crew's direction to one of the decks where a roll-call of all the passenger's was taken to make sure that there were no lazy bastards still asleep. The evacuation drill is a requirement under Greek law, and at least we were given plenty of notice of it. Had the alarm gone off while I was in the shower, or enjoying a well-deserved lie-in I might have been a bit perturbed.
It was a short sail from the canal to the port of Kiato, where the easycruiseone docked for the day. Kiato is a small modern port. While there are useful things like shops, a post office, and banks there's nothing really to see there and we found it the least interesting of all the ports that the easycruiseone visited. From Kiato we loaded up on the coach (actually, there were 3 coaches. And when we boarded and they were checking our names off against the passenger list I was horrified to be informed that I hadn't even been given my own name, I was down as Dave's "plus one". It wasn't the last time that that little misunderstanding popped up on the cruise...) which took us to the site of our first guided tour - Corinth, about a 40 minute ride away.
There has been a city on the site of ancient Corinth since the 1000 BC, although there has been some form of human settlement here since around 5000 BC. For a while the city was even a rival to Athens, taking advantage of its domination of the land and sea trade routes across the Isthmus, and was also renowned for its Temple of Aphrodite and the hundreds of prostitutes who worked there. They're all gone now. In 146 BC Corinth was destroyed by the Romans, although they were good enough to rebuild it nearly a century later, making it the capital of their province of Achaea. Around 50 AD Corinth had an extended visit from its most famous temporary inhabitant, St. Paul. Maybe nobody told him that the prostitutes had gone either. Over the following centuries the city survived various invasions, occupations, and earthquakes but it had lost most of the prestige it held in ancient times, and by the 19th century the site of the city had moved nearer to the coast where it is now imaginatively known as New Corinth. A small village was left over the site of Ancient Corinth which, with the exception of the Temple of Apollo, was almost completely buried. The first archaeological excavation took place in 1892, and since 1896 there has been an almost continuous program of excavation carried out by the American School of Classical Studies (the early Greek state, deciding it had better things to do with its limited resources than dig up old cities, invited foreigners in to do the job for them; as well as the Americans the Brits, French, and Germans have all been involved at different sites).
A quick word about how the tours worked. Each bus had its own local guide who stayed with us for the whole day. To save having 120 people traipsing round each site at the same time each coach group started at a different part of the site and then worked their way around it so that no one part of the site got totally swamped. Of course if you want you're perfectly free to ignore the guides and wander round at your leisure, but I'd definitely recommend sticking around for at least a little while to listen to what the guide has to say. Sometimes it was hard to visualise exactly what appeared to be not much more than a pile of rubble really was; having a guide along to explain what the building was, what it's purpose was, and how it fitted in with the rest of the city was extremely helpful.
The important thing to remember is that with a few notable exceptions most of the remains that can be seen at Corinth today are those of the rebuilt Roman city, rather than the Ancient Greek one. Roman Corinth was a wealthy and important town so you can see the remains of the agora (Town Square) complete with rows of shops, temples, and a basilica (although probably not the one where St Paul had to publicly defend himself and Christianity; that's now reckoned to be the Julia Basilica, on the east side of the city. As if anyone reading this site is likely to be interested...). You can also see the Roman public toilets (a row of holes with a channel running underneath them. Everything was done in public, negating the need for a glory hole). Although some of the buildings seem no more than piles of bricks and fragments of pillars, a few are well preserved and survive to quite a height, and some of the streets are actually still paved with big marble slabs.
The most obvious remains from the Ancient Greek city are the Glauke Fountain and the Temple of Apollo. The Glauke Fountain is one the first things you see as you enter the site, a cubic building that has been cut directly out of the bedrock. I thought it was a modern toilet block at first, but it is actually one of the old city's reservoirs. Our guide told us that the top of the Glauke Fountain was the ground level for the whole site before the excavations started, which gives you a good idea of how much earth has been shifted over the years (and more impressively how much rock the ancient Greeks and Romans must have quarried). .The fountain gets its name from the second wife of Jason (he of the Argonauts fame); Jason's first wife, Medeia, was understandably a bit put out about being traded in for a younger model and so sent Glauke a wedding present of a poisoned coat. The dozy bint put it on and then had to jump in the fountain to relieve the pain of the poison, thus poisoning the water supply for the entire city. Selfish bitch.
The Temple of Apollo was built sometime around 550 BC. Seven huge pillars and three lintels still stand today, which considering the number of earthquakes and other general devastation that has been visited upon Corinth over the last 2500 years makes their survival pretty amazing. The temple totally dominates the city, as it was intended to do in ancient times. As well as the standing pillars the floor plan of the rest of the temple has also been well preserved, and there are the remains of a few toppled pillars too (see photo above). Our guide was quite impressed by the fact that the pillars are made out of one big lump of rock, rather than being built in sections. Maybe that's why they've survived so long.
There's a small museum on the site too, which houses some of the artifacts that have been found during the excavations. There are lots of statues (most without their heads), tombstones, bits of pottery, and some very fine Roman frescoes. Just outside the main site are the remains of a couple of theatres one built by the Romans and one originally built by the Greeks. The steep hill that rises behind the city is the Acrocorinth. The ancient Corinthians had a fort up there but what you can see today is the remains of a medieval castle, originally built by the Byzantines and then added to by the Venetians and the Ottomans. We didn't climb up there.
To be honest, I could have done with a bit more time at Corinth. It's a big site and there was lots of it that I didn't manage to see. Still, it was time to go back to the coaches (you're asked to stay in the same coach all day so they can count the number of passengers and make sure nobody has been left behind) and head to the next site; Mycenae.
Mycenae was about a 40 minute drive from Corinth, an interesting drive too through wine country, we saw lots of vineyards and plenty of little road-side stalls selling wine from plastic bottles. Sadly, the coach didn't stop at any of them (but as Dave was to later astutely point out drinking alcohol from plastic bottles rarely ends well. As you'll find out in Itea).
According to legend Mycenae was founded by the hero Perseus, its walls were built by the Cyclops, and one of its kings was Agamemnon. The actual history is no less fascinating. There has been human settlement on the site of the city for over 5000 years. The city started to develop in around 2000 BC and reached its zenith in around 1450 BC as the centre of a great trading empire that spanned the Mediterranean, and beyond (with trading links as far a field as Britain, in fact). Mycenae's decline started with a big fire in around 1200 BC, and the city was almost destroyed in 468 BC as a result of the political fall out of the Persian Wars. Mycenae began its slide into obscurity, remembered only in the legends, although the huge city walls and the Lions Gate always remained standing. The city wasn't really put back on the map until Heinrich Schliemann's excavations of the site in 1876. Schliemann is a controversial figure, regarded by many as the father of modern archaeology his basic aim was to try and prove that the Greek myths (and especially the Trojan War) were historical events, as a result many of his conclusions were distorted as he attempted to make the archaeological evidence match up to the myths. After Schliemann more academic and comprehensive excavations were carried out by British and Greek archaeologists.
Before going to Mycenae itself we stopped off at what the tourist guidebooks call The Tomb of Agamemnon (and the historical books call The Treasury of Atreus), which is about 2 minutes' walk down the road from the main site. Whatever you want to call it, it's spectacular, a 3,400 year-old stone tomb that has been built into the side of a hill. Even though there's nothing left of the original exterior or internal decoration, and the tomb was looted in antiquity so we don't know what was originally in it, but it's still an amazing structure (and nice and cool inside too), with successive levels of stone tapering to a domed ceiling at the top. The huge stone over the top of the doorway is reckoned to weigh 120 tonnes, which according to our guide makes it the heaviest single stone ever used by the ancient Greeks.
From the Tomb/Treasury we all got back in the coach for the 30 second ride to Mycenae itself. The site is perched on a low hill, standing between 2 much higher and steeper hills. This is the site of Mycenae's citadel or acropolis, and consists of a fortress and the royal palace. Most of the actual city of Mycenae, the places where ordinary people lived and worked has yet to be uncovered by the archaeologists. Get on with it you lazy bastards.
The first thing you notice as you approach the city are the walls, they're enormous made up of huge blocks of rock that have been fitted so tightly together that the builders didn't need to use mortar. They run for most of the way round the edge of the fortress, apart from where one section has collapsed into a ravine. They've survived for over 3500 years and god knows how many earthquakes and they still look impregnable, you can see why the ancient Greeks might have thought they couldn't have been built by man, especially as they are believed to have once been much taller than they are now. You enter the city through the Lion's Gate, named for the carving of 2 headless lions above it. The gate was designed to be entered by people in chariots, although sadly we had to do it on foot. The round stone-lined pits on your right is a grave circle, excavated by Schliemann and found to contain numerous royal burials, and some spectacular artifacts, many of them gold (no less than 15 kilos of gold, it is reckoned; I think they've taken it all out by now), including the face masks now found in the Archaeological Museum in Athens (when he dug up the masks Schliemann claimed to have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon; utter bollocks of course, especially considering Agamemnon was murdered by his wife when he returned from the Trojan War, it seems unlikely she'd have given him a posh funeral and a golden mask afterwards). A modern concrete path zig zags up the hill and around the site and you're pretty much free to wander round where you want. We climbed up to the top of the hill, which is where the Royal Palace once stood, although the remains up here are not as well preserved as they are further down the site, and then walked round the lines of the walls for a bit. The views from the city are beautiful, with rolling olive tree covered hills leading up to the high mountains behind the city, and The Argolic plain stretching down to the sea in front.
Around the back end of the city you'll find the water supply, a small cistern and a doorway built into the walls that's the entrance to a tunnel cut through the solid rock that eventually leads down to a well fed by a spring located outside the city walls. You can go down into the tunnel if you want. As there are no lights a torch would be a good idea, we tried using the lights from our cameras or mobile phone screens to light the way but that didn't really work. The roof of the tunnel is low, so watch you head, the steps going down are quite steep and slippy too. I only managed about 20 steps, down to the first landing, before I'd had enough and turned back (not the easiest manoeuver in the world, I have the turning circle of an oil tanker). Apparently after the first landing there are two more sets of steps and a couple of right angle turns before you finally reach the well, but bloody hell it's dark down there and that was one of the few times in my life that I've ever felt claustrophobic. Nobody I spoke to made it all the way down to the well, and to be honest even if you told me that there was a free bar with topless barmaids I don't think I'd go back down there again. Not without one of those helmets with a torch stuck on it anyway. After emerging joyously into the bright, fresh air again we followed the walls across the northern end of the city; there's another gateway in the middle of this wall, smaller and much less grand than the Lion's Gate, I think this must have been the pedestrian entrance. Following the wall round brought us back to the Lion Gate so we headed back towards our coach, stopping off at the snack bar in the coach park for a well earned can of ice cold beer (I make no apologies for this, it was a hot day, it was nearly 3pm and we hadn't touched a drop all day, and we'd just had that nasty underground shock), and to chat with a few people about what we'd seen (hello, Tracey!). Anyway, that beer went down particularly well...
We all piled back in the coaches for the drive down to the modern city of Mycenae (which appeared to be one main street full of shops selling nothing other than tourist tat, reproduction Greek vases and plaster owls, that kind of thing; sadly we didn't get chance to check it out). It was dinner time, a good job too seeing as though I'd skipped breakfast. We were taken to a place called Kolizaras Restaurant, a huge white building on the edge of the town, complete with fountains and pillars like a fake Greek temple, and probably the only the only place in Mycenae big enough to accommodate a party of 120, including one particularly fat and hungry Lancastrian. There was no choice of food everyone got lamb and potatoes (apart from the veggies who could have some kind of fish thing, I think) but it was delicious, the potatoes were cooked in olive oil and herbs, the lamb was fatty but unbelievably tender, it just dripped off the bone and melted in your mouth. The desert, Greek yogurt drizzled with honey was very good too. This was definitely the best of the restaurants that we were taken to as part of the tours. As for drinks water was free, but if you wanted anything else you had to pay. The freshly squeezed orange juice was highly rated, and one couple on our table tried some of the Greek wine which they said was very good. Having already had had one beer apiece Dave and I decided not to risk mixing our drinks and opted for the Mythos. By the way, several of the whingeing bastards on our table (American, elderly, Republican) refused to order any drinks on the grounds that they thought they'd get ripped off. Of course they could have simply asked the waiter who'd have told them how much everything cost, in the end I think our beers came to around 2.50 euros each so hardly what you'd call a rip off, considerably cheaper than drinking on the boat in fact. This wasn't to be the last time that we heard certain passengers on the boat (American, elderly, Republican) constantly complaining that everyone in Greece was out to overcharge them. God knows what they'd have said had they encountered our taxi-driving bastard in Piraeus, probably headed straight back to the airport and to the safety of the States.
From here it was about an hour's ride back to Kiato. When we arrived back Dave headed in the direction of his cabin for..... well, I've no desire to know what for. I decided to snoop around town a bit. There wasn't really much to see. The Post Office was closed (it closed at 12.30 according to sign on the door), as were most of the shops. A few bars were open, but no tavernas and restaurants, as far as I could see. Anyway, it was still fairly early and I was hopeful that things would be a bit livelier later in the evening, but for the time being I headed back to the boat, more specifically to the bar on deck 5 to make sure that I was there in good time for the start of Happy Hour.
Surprisingly we didn't stick around for the whole of Happy Hour as there was an event in the Restaurant on 4 that had captured our interest, a wine tasting session! This was presented by Boutari wineries, who produce all the wine served on the easycruiseone. We were given the chance to sample 5 different wines (so not all the wines available on board); 2 whites, 1 rosé, and 2 reds. It started off fairly civilised and organised, with the waitresses going round making sure everyone got a sample of each wine (they were pretty good sized samples, around a third of a glass, and needless to say nobody was spitting it out into a bucket), but then things degenerated a bit, and by the end of it hardly anybody was paying attention to the poor chap from the winery, and people were just coming up and helping themselves to the bottles, even before he'd started to talk about that wine. Still, I'm not one to complain about free alcohol. And with the possible exception of the rosé I really enjoyed all the wines; the whites were light and refreshing, the reds a bit rough but with quite a distinctive character (Dave claimed he didn't like the reds at all but he's a wine philistine, you can ignore his opinion).
Holding the wine tasting was a good idea, and not just because it allowed us to get tanked up on free booze. Greek wine isn't really all that well known, and some of the unfamiliar grape varieties and names on the label could be a bit off-putting. The chance to show off how good Greek wine can be, and to give people the chance to decide which particular bottle they liked was definitely worthwhile. That said, I had some reservations, particularly about the timing of it. Holding it during happy hour was just cruel on us, and having it when the restaurant was still packed with people eating their evening meal wasn't the best idea either, with the wine-swillers getting in the way of people trying to use the buffet, and the food-stuffers having wine forced upon them that they didn't necessarily want and which us pissheads would have been quite happy to finish off. OK, maybe that last bit wasn't true... The restaurant was so packed that we had to stand at the front, which turned out to be the best place to be as it was nearest the bottles.
Anyway, by the time the wine tasting was over I was rocking a bit, so I decided to have another stroll into town to take in some fresh air and hopefully find something to eat. It was not to be. The fresh air part was fine, obviously, but I spent 40 minutes walking round the town centre and couldn't see anything that looked like it was serving food, at least not in the quantities that I required. Perhaps I'm being unfair to Kiato, after all we were there at the beginning of March so the tourist season hadn't started, but this was only place on the cruise where we had this problem. So in the end there was nothing else for it but to head back to the boat. I made it back to the Restaurant on 4 to find that Dave had been adopted by a group of mature Americans (it's strange how tourists often take pity on stray animals) who judging by their demeanor had been somewhat over-served in the course of the evening (we'd started talking to them at the wine tasting and they were pretty well oiled before that even started). Still, they were very nice and we ended up giving them lessons in British swearing (they asked!). Anyway, we finally got some food; for some reason I decided to have another burger while Dave had the chicken olivada, and to wash it down we ordered a bottle of wine. Each. Dave had a bottle of one of the whites (Moschofilero), I tried one of the reds (Semeli, which hadn't been part of the wine-tasting, but it was gorgeous, much nicer than the ones we'd sampled earlier). Needless to say that didn't really improve our condition, and although things start to become a little hazy from this point on we ended up at the bar on deck 5 again, Heineken was involved, as was dancing. I could not state with any great accuracy what time I went to bed.
Like I said, a very full day. Don't worry, tomorrow is a bit less hectic.
Day 3 - Ithaca
Some time late on Tuesday morning the ship sailed into the harbour at Vathy, capital of the island of Ithaca. For reasons that may have been in some way connected to the previous evening's wine consumption I wasn't out of my cabin to witness it... Ithaca is one of the Ionian islands, to the north of Kefalonia, and according to legend was the home of Odysseus, hero of the Iliad and the Odyssey. "According to legend" can be translated as "there isn't any actual evidence for it" but in fairness to the island apart from the obligatory Odysseus hotels and tavernas, a rather camp statue of the man himself in the town, and the identification of a few sites on the island and places mentioned in the legends they don't push the dubious connection too far.
Ithaca was the only spot on the itinerary where there wasn't a pre-arranged tour, although it was possible to sign up at reception the day before to go on one of two trips (which, as they set of at the same time meant you couldn't do both of them, a fact that appeared to cause a great deal of confusion among certain passengers...), either a long hike to a couple of the sites associated with Odysseus or a coach trip around the north of the island (which according to some of the people we spoke to who went on it involved a rather unpleasant combination of narrow, steep twisting roads and a slightly too large coach). We opted for a lazy day and signed up for neither.
We spent what was left of the morning exploring Vathy town. Vathy is built around a huge natural harbour (one of the world's largest, I've been told), home to a few small fishing boats, surrounded by green hills that in turn climb into some high mountains. The town itself is a thin ribbon of buildings around the water's edge, a collection of multi-coloured cottages, tavernas and shops, with a few graceful churches. Basically, if you were asked to picture an idyllic Greek island village it would probably look something like this [the preceding paragraph is © 2008].
The town isn't big; it took me less than 15 minutes to walk from where the ship was docked round to the opposite end of the harbour, and I wasn't hurrying. Although many buildings on the island were destroyed in an earthquake in 1953 it still looks picturesque enough, and some of the churches at least seem to have survived the earthquake (who says praying doesn't work?). On a more practical level Vathy also boasts a post office, a small supermarket and some other food shops, some tourist-tat shops, a moped rental outfit (which we resisted the temptation of, wisely I think), some cafes on what passes for the main town square, and a decent collection of tavernas and restaurants.
Having skipped breakfast, as usual, we settled down for a quick snack at one of those main square cafes. Well, I settled down for a quick snack, that fat bastard Dave decided to order a huge pizza, although in fairness to him he did let me have a slice of it, and very nice it was too. After that we decided to go on a hike; the fact that we had no directions, a map, or a compass was no obstacle to us. As you might have guessed, neither of us was in the boy scouts. At least not when we were boys....
Dave's Rough Guide mentioned a long walk to some Odysseus-connected spring that was supposed to be sign-posted, but having walked round the length of the harbour front we couldn't find the damned thing (a lady on the boat who did eventually make it to the spring told us that the sign-post was at the end of the walk, which probably explains our inability to find it) so instead we decided to improvise. Normally that's a recipe for disaster, but this time things worked out pretty well. The route we took went past the town's small archaeological museum and then we turned right (in-land, up-hill, and away from the town) when we reached the yellow church with the tall spire. It was a pretty challenging walk (by our standards) climbing up the side of a pretty steep hill, and very energy-sapping (by our standards) especially as it was a hot day and once we'd left Vathy there wasn't an open taverna to be found. The amazing scenery of the interior of the island more than made up for our exertions, and after a few treks up dead-ends in an unsuccessful attempt to reach the actual summit of the hill we carried on heading in-land and were rewarded with the views of the coast on the other side of the island; a deserted bay, a pristine looking beach, and deep turquoise sea. Something rather like this in fact.
Having had a glimpse of such a Paradise we decided that we could hardly turn back, even though there didn't appear to be any tavernas there either, and so we headed off down the other side of the hill towards the sea (although there was the nagging fear in the back of my mind that once we actually reached the beach Dave might suggest a spot of skinny-dipping, in which case I'd probably have sprinted all the way back to Vathy and locked myself in my cabin for the remainder of the week...). Anyway we made it, and although up-close it was a bit of a disappointment (the thing about deserted beaches is that there's no one around to clear up all the crap that washes up) the water was still clear and cool (I know this because I dipped my fingers in it; no skinny dipping for us, we being manly men), the fresh sea air was most invigorating, and we had the sense of achievement of reaching a place untouched by human footfall since someone had lit a camp fire there a day or so previously.
Of course, the problem with marching miles to these deserted coves is that you then have to march all the way back again... But we made it, and in the end it took us only about an hour to walk back to Vathy, partly because we walked straight back without taking any of the diversions we'd taken on the way there and partly because we had the thought of a cool Mythos spurring us on...
Unfortunately by the time we got back to Vathy the archaeological museum had closed so we decided to find a bar instead. Actually the bar found us... As we were walking past one a couple of blokes we didn't initially recognise started waving at us and calling us over. I'm not one to resist an invitation like that, especially when it's coming from bar, and we got a bit closer we recognised them as a couple of the easycruise crew, Konstantinos the barman and Giorgios (George) the DJ who were off-duty and having a couple of drinks with one of the girls from reception (who's name I'm afraid I can't remember) and they invited us to join them, which was very considerate of them. So rather than the quick drink to slake our thirsts that we'd been planning on we spent a very pleasant couple of hours which involved a handful of beers and a wide-ranging and rather eclectic conversation (can conversations be eclectic? I don't see why not...). Anyway, I can't remember the name of the bar but it was on the other side of the road from the water front, right at the furthest end of the harbour and pretty much opposite the entrance to the harbour, a big building with a lot of tables and fat palm trees in the courtyard, set round what appears to be a pool (which is actually part of the harbour; there's a tunnel going under the road, which means that the pool is full of fish; try crunching up some crisps and throwing them into the water and you'll soon attract hundreds of the buggers. You might want to bring a net...). There's only one bar in Vathy that looks like that, so it should be easy to find. Dave also had a look inside the place (he wanted to check out the toilets; it's a proclivity of his...) and reported that it looked rather posh inside. It might have been a restaurant too for all I know, all I can tell you is that they serve Mythos and crisps.
After that we headed back to the boat for a very leisurely, Heineken-fuelled evening. We took our normal place on the outdoor deck on deck five and before long Dave ended up in the hot tub; to cover my shame and avert my gaze from such a grotesque spectacle I caught up on my postcard writing but, shamefully, at a certain point in the evening I'd sunk enough Heineken to overcome any inhibitions I had previously had, and I'm afraid I have to report that I ended up in the hot tub too.... A quick word about the hot tub. First of all it's pretty small; 6 people can fit in it reasonably comfortably (possibly less if 2 of them happen to be me and Dave), but if you tried to fit any more than that in I think you could officially classify it as an orgy. Second, there's only one tub. If you want to wait until it's empty before getting in you might be waiting for a while. So, if there's space in there hop in and introduce yourself. Naturally, for a repressed Brit hopping into a hot-tub with a bunch of complete strangers is a bit of an alien concept, but after you've done it once you'll get used to it. Hell, even I was getting the hang of it by the end of the cruise, although that probably had something to do with the rivers of Heineken I was knocking back... [The preceding paragraph was sponsored by Heineken - "The Best Beer On easycruiseone"]
So anyway, back to the hot tub. How to describe such pleasures? A band of angels spraying your body with warm champagne? OK, that'd probably be a bit of an exaggeration, but by crikey it felt pretty damned good in there...After an hour so I felt rejuvenated enough to have walked all the way around the island. The only downsides are that you have to get out of the tub to stock up on fresh drinks and it can be so hot in there that your beer can get warm quickly (obvious solution - drink the beer before this happens...). Needless to say that wasn't the last time I ended up in there, but I'll come to that later, and I'm now trying to figure out a way of fitting a hot-tub into my flat. It'd probably mean getting rid of my kitchen, but what the hell... And I could always use it to boil eggs.
After a few hours of such indulgence we headed back into town in search of a bite to eat. We'd spotted one or two rather fancy looking restaurants on our earlier explorations but we both felt in need of something a bit more down to earth, and substantial. We ended up in a place called Kalkanis Taverna, which seemed to be full of fellow easycruise passengers, but which best of all had a collection of rather fat waiters which I always find, as regular readers of this site will know, is the sign of an impending good feed. We weren't disappointed. Dave had the chicken souvlaki, big chunks of marinated grilled chicken on a spit. I had a mixed grill, which was a combination of lamb and chicken kebab meat, but it also came with liver (which I'm not too keen on, possibly because eating it reminds me of the state of my own; most of that got fed to a cat... He seemed to like it.) Very nice it all was too, far tastier and much less fatty than what you'd get from a kebab shop in the UK, and it was the first time I've been served kebab meat on an actual plate! You live and learn. The taverna has its own website.
Anyway we headed back to the boat, and had a couple of quick ones for the road on deck 5. The hot tub was still open (officially it closes at 12 but they were flexible about this; as long as people were still in it and the bar was still open they seemed to keep it going) and I was tempted, but it was absolutely packed so it had to wait for another day...
Ithaca was one of the days on the cruise I enjoyed most. The feeling of being on an island helped, as did the fact that Vathy is such a charming town. But I think the main thing was that in the middle of organised tours it was nice just to have a free day, where we could do as much or as little as we wanted, and at our own pace (or lack of it).
Day 4 - Patras
Easycruiseone spent Wednesday in Patras, the largest city on the Peleponnese and the third largest in Greece. Although today for the most part the city looks like a fairly ugly modern port it has ancient roots and its setting, with the sea in front and snow-capped mountains rising steeply behind, is spectacular. We didn't have the chance to explore the city during the day, which seems a shame as apparently there are a few interesting sites scattered among all that nasty modern concrete. There's a Roman Odeon that is still used as a theatre; a castle in the upper city, originally built by the Romans on the site of Patras' ancient acropolis, then modified by the Byzantines, Venetians, and Ottomans; and the Church of Agios Andreas (apparently the biggest church in the Balkans, although several others also make that claim) built on the site of the crucifixion of St. Andrew. Personally, if I lived in a city that had murdered a close, personal friend of Jesus I'd try and keep it quiet rather than building a huge church to celebrate the fact....
Anyway, the main focus of our day wasn't Patras but the site of Ancient Olympia which was nearly 2 hours away by coach, by far the furthest distance we had to travel to visit any of the sites on the cruise.
The site of Olympia was probably first settled in around 3000 BC; by 2000 BC it had ceased to become a place of settlement and was a mainly a religious site, initially dedicated to all the Gods, but by 1000 BC it was mainly devoted to the worship of Zeus. Don't you just love all these nice, round dates? If you want something more precise the first Olympic Games were held in 776 BC, and according to legend were either founded by King Pelops (after whom the Peleponnese is named) or Herakles. The games were Pan-Hellenic, meaning they were open to anyone who spoke Greek, and further games were held at Delphi, Nemea, and Isthmia (near Corinth). The games were held under a sacred truce, meaning that athletes on their way to the games could not be harassed, and forbidding violence at the site of the games themselves, an important consideration seeing as the city states that took part at the games were frequently at war with one another. They were held every 4 years and only lasted for 5 days, although the athletes had to be at Olympia for 30 days before the games got under way to train under the strict supervision of the judges. All the athletes and judges had to declare an oath to uphold the rules and ideals of the games while standing on the genitals of a goat. Quite how the goat felt about this arrangement is not recorded. Winners received ever-lasting fame and glory and a crown of laurel leaves, everyone else got bugger all. The games were later adopted by the Romans (the Emperor Nero was declared the winner of the chariot race, even though he cheated; they waited until he died before stripping him of the title), who made many additions to the site but in 393 AD the Byzantine-Roman Emperor Theodisius I decreed that the games should cease. In 426 Theodisius II had Olympia burned; what a miserable pair of bastards. Whatever was left was further damaged by 2 huge earthquakes in the 6th century AD, and by the 7th century the site was finally abandoned, to be gradually silted over by the flooding of the nearby River Alphios. The site was rediscovered in the 19th century and was initially excavated by the French, but once most of their finds started appearing in the Louvre the Greek Government replaced them with the Germans, who are still working at Olympia today (not the exact same ones, obviously). Olympia was spruced-up and the museum renovated to celebrate the Athens Olympic Games of 2004. In 2007 huge tracts of the Peleponnese were devastated by fires; the flames came literally within feet of Olympia before an unexpected change in the direction of the wind saved the site. Maybe Zeus still keeps an eye on the place after all?
Going in through the main entrance you get a good idea of the different ages of occupation of the site. On the left are some fairly well-preserved Roman baths, on the right the older ancient Greek gymnasium, built in the 2nd century BC as a place for the athletes to train. We headed left, towards the stadium, passing fist the Philippeion, a round shrine, started by King Philip II of Macedon in 338 BC and completed by his slightly more famous son, Alexander the Great. It has been recently restored, and even though only 3 of its pillars have been re-stacked it still looks very nice. Next door to the Philippeion is the Temple of Hera, built in around 600 BC. Again, only a few of the pillars have been re-assembled, but the layout of the temple is easy to make out, and some of the interior walls are still standing (although not to their full height) so it's not too difficult to imagine how it would have originally looked. To the east of the Temple is the Altar of Hera; it is here that the Olympic flames are lit (using a magnifying glass), the torch is then carried around the world to mark the approach of the next Olympic Games. This "tradition" was actually the idea of the Nazis who devised it for the Berlin Games of 1936. The tradition was later refined by the Chinese who surrounded the torch with a band of track-suited thugs to beat up any protestors who come near it. Just to the north, and on the edge of the site is a row of small buildings called the treasuries, each one built by one of the different Greek city-states that took part in the games to house loot and offerings to the Gods. Just before you reach the stadium you'll see a row of empty plinths; these used to the bases of statues. Anyone caught cheating at the games had to pay for a bronze statue Zeus; on the base of the statue the cheat's name was engraved, along with his offence. Sounds a good idea to me, although if they were ever to revive the tradition there probably wouldn't be enough bronze in the world to make all the statues they'd need...
OK, you've now arrived at the Olympic stadium. The entrance to it is down a little tunnel known as the Krypte (the arch over the entrance to it is Roman); this is the entrance that was only used by the athletes, judges, priests and other officials. The spectators would just climb over the banks. Inside the stadium the sides are made up of grass banks. Apart from a few seats for the officials all the spectators would have just sat on the grass. As the athletes competed stark bollock naked (good job they didn't have events like the pole vault back then...) married women weren't allowed in, although in what seems a sensible compromise unmarried girls were allowed to letch away. I wonder how easy it was to lie about your marital status back then... On the rest day during the games there were races for the girls to take part in, and although they sadly didn't take part au naturel, apparently the tunics they did wear didn't leave much to the imagination... Bloody hell, if only someone had invented the video camera a few millennia earlier. The stadium as it appears now is believed to be the third stadium at Olympia; the others were located closer to the centre of the site, and it is thought that they weren't surrounded by embankments. The stadium would have held over 40,000 people, but none of the books I have read have made any mention of there being any of the facilities that you'd expect at a modern stadium, such as a pie stall or toilets for the spectators. The total length of the track is 212 metres, although the distance between the start and finish lines (both still visible as a row of stones) is 192 metres. All events were run in straight lines, so there was none of this "accelerating off the bend" nonsense.
Anyway, here we were at the original Olympic stadium, so there was only one thing to do - race! Out of respect for our fellow easycruisers, all the other tourists who were there, the Olympic spirit, the Greek nation, and humanity in general we decided not to do it with complete authenticity and so we kept our pants on. We also considered that as everyone else had decided to run up and down the track we would do something original, and as walking is now an Olympic event we decided to do that. I won. I didn't actually bother to let Dave know that we were racing, which may have partly explained my victory, but nevertheless I won.
After recovering from our race we left the stadium. The big building (or to be more accurate, pile of stones and pillars) on the left as you exit the stadium is known as the Echo Stoa as when it used to have walls and a roof it also used to have an echo. From here we headed towards the centre of the site and what was once its grandest building, the Temple of Zeus. The temple was built between 470 and 456 BC and used to house the 40 foot high marble, ivory, and gold Statue of Zeus, one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World. When Theodisius II ordered the temple to be burned he first had the statue removed and it was carted off to Byzantium where it was destroyed, ironically or through divine retribution, in a fire in 475 AD. There's not much left standing of the temple, although one of the pillars was reassembled in 2004 and gives some idea of the vast scale of the building. To make the temple appear even more imposing it was built on a raised platform which has survived and which still takes a bit of effort to climb on top off, the outline and ground plan of the temple can still easily be made out, and the whole temple is surrounded by huge chunks of masonry and stacks of toppled pillars.
There was still plenty more to see at Olympia, but unfortunately we weren't given enough time to look at it all. We did have chance to go into the Workshop of Pheidas. Pheidas was a sculptor; he worked on the Parthenon in Athens but he also created the Statue of Zeus (in this very building). The dimensions of his workshop are the same as those of the temple, probably to help him to work out how to best fit the statue in the temple. The workshop was later turned into an early Christian bascillica, some elements of which can still be made out. Among the other things we had time to have a quick look at were more Roman baths and hostels, and the Palaistra which was used for the education and training of the athletes. The site of Olympia is big, and parts of yet have to be fully excavated (other parts, such as the Hippodrome, where horse racing and chariot events were held, are believed to have been washed away by the river). To take everything in would have required much more time than we had there. One of the good things about Olympia is that even with the hordes of tourist groups that infest the site you can still find an isolated spot for a bit of peaceful contemplation, if you so choose.
From the main site we headed off to the Archaeological Museum, a 5 minute walk away and reckoned to be one of the finest of its type in Greece, which houses many of the finds found in the excavations of Olympia. So what can I tell you about the museum? Well.... The toilets are clean and modern and the cafe sells cold, reasonably priced Lowenbrau. Look I'm sorry, but it was a nice sunny day, I still hadn't quite recovered from our race down the stadium, or the euphoria of winning it and I'm basically an idle borderline alcoholic so I decided to skip the museum and sit on a bench outside with a can of beer instead. Anyway, according to the guidebook I bought among the treasures you'll find inside the museum are a collection of ancient bronze figures, lots of bronze helmets (including the helmet of Miltiades, the Athenian general who won the Battle of Marathon; he donated the helmet to the Temple of Zeus as a way of giving thanks for his victory), and the sculptures that were originally on the outside of the Temple of Zeus. There's also a marble statue of Hermes, noted for what were considered to be his ideal physique, and for having a very small knob. According to Kelly, easycruiseone's Classical Greece co-ordinator the Ancient Greeks that having a small penis was a sign that you were civilised. I can safely say that Ancient Greece would have been one of the few cultures where Dave would have been thought to be one of the most civilised men around... Anyway, I'm sure that everything in the museum was very nice, but then again so was my lager. Je ne regrette rien.
After a quick visit to a nearby souvenir shop (where I actually managed to find a t-shirt that fit me) it was a short coach ride into the modern town of Olympia where it was time for lunch. I can't remember the name of the restaurant we were taken to I'm afraid, but it was quite a big place on the main street. We were given three courses, starting with a feta cheese salad, then pasticchio (pasta and meat sauce squashed together into squares; there was a vegetarian option but I wasn't paying attention so I've no idea what it was) and finally some kind of creme brulee for pudding. The food was OK, if not outstanding, but I heard several people complaining that their pasticchio was cold, and mine was just over lukewarm, so it would appear that they hadn't re-heated it properly. I didn't hear of anyone going down with a case of the shits afterwards though. And the company we had at our table was most agreeable, Mark and Valerie an extremely entertaining Ukrainian-American couple, and Tracey who Dave had first accosted outside Mycenae and who bravely volunteered to eat with us anyway.
After the food we were given around 40 minutes to have a look round the modern town of Olympia. It didn't look that big, and most of the shops on the main street were souvenir/tourist-tat emporiums so Dave and I found a nice looking restaurant and sat at a table outside drinking Mythos in the sun. It was very pleasant. Then of course we had the 2 hour journey back to Patras. I suppose once we'd arrived back there it would have been a good chance to explore the city a bit, especially as it was only a 2 minute walk from the boat to the city centre, but surprise surprise we ended up in the bar on deck 5 again, and almost immediately found ourselves back in the hot tub, which I'd enjoyed so much the previous day that I cast aside my ingrained British reserve and jumped into almost stone cold sober. We were in there for quite a while, until after happy hour and the sun had gone down, I seem to recall, watching some of the huge ferries coming and going from the harbour. We then decided to head into the city to find somewhere to eat, and the fool-hardy Tracey again agreed to join us. On our way into town we bumped into a couple of girls from the boat who told us that they'd had a lot of difficulty finding a restaurant and had ended up eating in a TGI Fridays. It didn't put us off; this was the third largest city in Greece, how hard could it be to find a restaurant, especially considering that my gut acts as a kind of magnet that can home in on sources of food in the most unlikely places?
While we were in Patras it was carnival season (which seems to last for months, according to my guidebook) so everyone was in party mood. There were street lights and decorations (large paper mache caricatures of people we didn't recognise seemed to be on every street), people in fancy dress, and street vendors selling fancy dress. There were dozens of bars, most of them packed to the rafters, but none of them seemed to be serving food. We also saw a mobile bar, a small truck with a bar running down the length of the back of it, and bar stools attached to the side, that was driving round the streets a rapid rate with dedicated drinkers perched precariously on stools stuck to the side of it. It was one of the greatest regrets of my holiday, if not my life, that we were unable to catch up with this bar and claim a seat. If we had I think I'd be there still. Anyway, we walked for a while up and down the main streets, then off the main streets, then round a few blocks and while we saw dozens of bars we didn't see anywhere that appeared to be serving food. After around half an hour of this Dave gave into his hunger and ordered a sweaty looking cheese and ham slice from a takeaway, at which point I promptly found a nice looking bar that also had a fairly extensive menu, and when the barman confirmed that the kitchen was still open we took an out door table and waited for Dave to finish his tasty slice before he joined us. Again I'm afraid I can't remember the name of this restaurant but it was on Agiou Nikolaou, on the left hand side of the street (as we headed away from the sea front) just after the junction with Mezonos. Dave and I ordered one of the specials of the day, chicken with potatoes, a sort of chicken casserole, which was very nice, Tracey ordered a salad which turned out to be absolutely enormous. And Mythos to wash it all down, it goes without saying. It was a good place, the food was very nice, the waiter was very friendly, and the bill was a lot less than we were expecting so we were pretty much satisfied on all counts. In retrospect, I think a lot of the bars that we'd passed earlier would probably have also been serving food if we'd bothered asking, and according to Dave's Rough Guide we should have passed plenty of tavernas on our wanderings, so I think it was just a case being stupid rather than there being a shortage of restaurants in Patras.
Anyway we headed back to the boat (arriving too late to take part in the on-board "Salsa Night", so I can't tell you what that involved), a few more al-fresco beers while casting longing glances at the hot tub and it was time for bed!
Basics -
AUSTRIA - BULGARIA - CUBA
- CZECH REPUBLIC -
LITHUANIA - POLAND - SLOVAKIA - SLOVENIA