Port of Piraeus and Mykonos

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Port of Piraeus near Athens

After a long flight from Seattle with stops in Philadelphia and Zurich I arrived in Athens, tired but ready to start experiencing a new part of the world. Athens airport is about 90 minutes by express bus from the port of Piraeus. I use the term express” loosely because it really isn’t far in actual distance but the traffic is terrible. Along the way I was amazed to see mile after mile of empty store fronts and small abandoned strip malls. Many of them appear to have been built within the last 10 or 15 years and have large plate glass showroom windows with nothing to show. I have read news stories about the economic troubles here in Greece, but unless one sees it in person it is hard to comprehend. The last decade or so has not been kind to Greece and though I don’t know all the reasons for its decline I understand that over spending, bank shenanigans, and too cheap loans on top of an unsustainable housing boom all contributed. Sounds very similar to what happened in the U.S. and many other countries. Greece is clearly having a very tough time recovering and probably will for a long time.

One thing that strikes me here in Greece is that it is a very dry, arid appearing country. The hills are brown and rocky. I don’t see how agriculture could be profitable here. It is clearly a country that relies heavily on the sea; for commerce and shipping as well as fishing. The Port of Piraeus is small but is choked with cruise ships, ferries and cargo vessels. The country is made of up many, many islands so the waterways and channels are a most important highway. Tonight after dinner I went to the upper deck to watch Nautica pull away from the pier and glide out through the breakwater. The moon was ¾ full, the harbor glowing with lights from other ships, the night air warm with a distinctive smell of the sea in the air. It was beautiful. And I remembered standing on this same deck on Nautica on a very long journey 18 months ago. Then I was sailing the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal; now I am off to experience the Black Sea.



<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Mykonos, Greece



The Nautica arrived at Mykonos this morning at 7. I had already been up to take my 45 minute morning walk at dawn on the walking/running track on deck 9. It was a balmy, clear morning and quite dark when I got up at 6. We are on the extreme western edge of a time zone so the day seems to get off to a very late start. I love those morning walks at sea. There are usually only a couple of like-minded folks up that hour so there is little to interrupt my enjoyment of the sea and my wonder at the foreign lands the ship is passing.

The harbor at Mykonos is small and shallow so the ship anchored off shore. After breakfast I took a tender into the town. This place is known as a playground of the rich and famous. Jackie Onassis was fond of the place and by the looks of the yachts in the harbor, it still attracts a well-set crowd. The island is very dry with minimal vegetation. The buildings are all painted white so the deep azure of the sea and the white of the buildings mimic the blue and white of the Greek flag. That’s probably not a coincidence. Greece is mostly islands and is tied to the sea and the white is necessary to reflect some of the heat of the relentless sun. Anyway the town is a maze of very narrow stone paved streets with many restaurants and shops mostly catering to tourists. I wandered around there for a short while and then convinced my friend Bill to go with me on a local ferry to the nearby island of Delos.

Delos was well worth the visit. It is the site of an ancient Greek city that has roots back to around 600 BC. It is a small island but once supported a city of about 30,000 before it was destroyed by a rival Greek city about 2,000 years ago. Now the only inhabitants appear to be caretakers of the archeological site and museum. It was fun to walk the stone streets and paved market places of this once beautiful city. At one time it was dominated by a huge statue of Apollo who in mythology was said to have been born there. The museum contains fine examples Hellenic art which has been discovered over the years buried for centuries. It is hard to imagine how a city of this size could have flourished for hundreds of years on such a barren, rocky island which is only 5 kilometers long and about 1800 meters wide. The harbor must have been constantly humming with ships bringing in the necessary supplies to feed and care for that many people. There appears to be many deep wells along the ancient streets which may indicate that there is an aquifer underground that supplied water. The presence of water was probably what lead to the place being settled in the first place.

At any rate, if anyone asked me about visiting Mykonos I would tell them to be sure and see it, but don’t just stay there. Take the ferry to Delos and really experience evidence of ancient Greek culture.

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