Cape Sounion and one more beach day in Greece

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No snooze-alarm fest today! We were up at 9:20, well okay 2 snoozes. We got ready for the beach and went down for breakfast at the hotel. It was actually pretty delicious; they had cold cuts and hard boiled eggs but also eggs sunny side up and cooked ham and mini hot dogs (which seem to be the Greek version of sausages). They also had fruit, yogurt and cereal. So bellies full we grabbed our beach stuff and headed south.We decided to go to Cape Sounion first to see the Temple of Poseidon and then to the beach after.

The road the hotel is on is called Poseidonos and it’s the coastal road. It probably took us about an hour to drive down to Sounion as the road hugged the coast with lots of switchbacks, but the scenery and views were just gorgeous. We got to Sounion and Rachel decided not to go up to the Temple of Poseidon. Steve and I did and it was just gorgeous! Poseidon is the god of the sea in classical mythology. The remains of the temple are perched on the headland, surrounded on three sides by the sea. The ruins bear the deeply engraved name of English Romantic poet Lord Byron. What a view from up there! And being the southernmost point in Attica it was pretty much a 360 degree view. The sunset must be very dramatic and quite beautiful from here.

A surprise to me was that the temple was much more intact than I thought I would be. On the way back down to the car we passed a group of Americans (young guys – college age maybe?) one of whom was wearing a Celtics shirt. Steve happened to be wearing his Bruins t-shirt so we stopped and talked to one guy for a few minutes. They were from Philadelphia, how random and such a small world coincidence. They had been a week in Crete and said it was awesome there. Definitely keeping Crete on my list of places I want to go!

The drive back up the coast was just as beautiful. Steve drove so I could try to take some photos, but was hard because now the ocean was on the driver’s side of the car. We were looking for a beach that Anna & Stergios had suggested we visit called Mavro Lithari or Black something that I can’t find the translation for! Anyway I think we passed it, but the traffic and parking were difficult so we decided to just stop at the next good (read chairs, umbrellas and toilets!) beach heading north. We stopped at a beach in Saronida and parked on the opposite side of the road from the beach in a parking lot but luckily there was a pedestrian underpass so we didn’t have to play chicken to cross the busy 4 lane road.

Unfortunately all of the chairs and umbrellas were occupied so we settled for a spot way up from the water on the not so soft sand. As beautiful as this whole area is the sand is nowhere near as soft and powdery as on the islands. It was really hot so Steve and Rachel went straight down to the water and I laid down to try to get as much sun as possible on our last full day in Greece. I had only been lying there a few minutes when some kids decided to play paddle ball right behind me. Several times the ball landed on my towel and I couldn’t relax as I kept waiting to get beaned on the noggin!

I went down and took a swim when Steve and Rachel came up. Then we all just roasted ourselves in the sun for as long as we could stand it! The whole time we were in Greece Steve was hoping to see some boobies on the beach. Well finally a girl lay down near us on the other side of Rachel and took her bikini top off - BUT she couldn’t have been any flatter chested! Lol AND she had put wet paper towel circles over her nipples which looked really odd.

I got hungry so we decided to go check out the little food stand on the beach. It didn’t really have a lot of variety for cooked food; pretty much pork souvlaki, potatoes and salad. So that’s exactly what Steve and I got and boy it was absolutely delicious!! It probably tasted so good because the guy drowned everything in olive oil, salt and pepper. But yum – one of the simplest but most delicious meals we had in Greece.

So while we were there these strippers and there ‘protectors’ showed up. They literally looked straight out of Jersey Shore – too funny! After a while one of the African guys selling fake stuff (sunglasses in this case) goes over there to the Jersey Shore wannabe’s and they buy some glasses I guess. The next thing we know a fight breaks out! Holy crap – it was like an honest to goodness fist fight. The Jersey Shore guy knocks down the seller guy and finally some bystanders pull JS guy off because now the JS guy’s friends were coming over and it was really starting to be an unfair fight. The entire beach is completely engrossed in the drama at this point!

The fake sunglass seller guy leaves his board of sunglasses right where JS guy had knocked it out of his hands and goes over to the food shack. It’s fairly obvious now that the fake merchandise sellers are condoned and probably encouraged by the beach authorities probably because they give them a cut of sales. I had wondered why there were so many of these sellers everywhere we went and only the police seemed to half heartedly bother to try to run them off. It all makes more sense now. So the food shack guys come over and straighten out the JS kids and everything quiets down.

By now it’s around 4-4:30pm maybe and since I didn’t put any sun block on at all (except a little on my face) I’m starting to feel a bit crispy around the edges. We agree to take off around 5:00pm to go back to the hotel and relax before finishing up repacking and cleaning up and going to Taki and Lena’s for dinner. Back at the hotel Rachel got to Skype with Adrian and he was happy to see her!

We got most everything together for luggage and watched a beautiful sunset off our room’s balcony. We then headed out in the Nissan over to Taki & Lena’s. The GPS got us there fairly well, okay I misread one turn and we ended up making a cloverleaf turn but oh well. On the way we saw a Dominos and a high end car dealership, Steve said ‘if we come back this way we should get some photos’. We found a parking spot around the corner from Taki and Lena’s. They live in a congested and a bit sketchy neighborhood. It used to be nicer according to Anna, but now there are a lot of transitional people living there plus it’s not far from the Exarchia section of Athens where there a lot of anarchist protests and colleges. So needless to say we walked briskly and purposefully to the apartment! Lol. We had a vast array of takeout food; gyros, souvlaki, tzaziki and potatoes – quite fitting for our last dinner in Greece!

We visited for a while and took a few more photos. We also picked up Magda’s luggage and the piece of luggage of ours that we had Xristos ship by bus from Kozani to free up room in the car. Then came the tearful goodbyes with Taki, Lena and Stergios!

On the way back I totally forgot about the stupid photos of Dominos and the high end car dealer, but Steve didn’t! Unfortunately he didn’t remind me until we were almost past them and it was too late and man he harped on it the rest of the night! Then we had to haul the last 2 pieces of luggage up into the hotel room to check weights and shuffle a few things around amongst the bags. Finally we fell into bed for some sleep before the long plane ride home the next day.

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