All Aboard

I’ve been married to a marine engineer for over 30 years.

When Joe talks about “going up ladders,” I know he means climbing the stairs, when he says, “starboard to,” I understand that the right side of our vehicle will be alongside the curb, if he suggests there’s something interesting portside,” I turn my head to the left and I’ve often heard myself say in times of desperation, “I need to go to the head.”

Joe has worked with ships ever since he graduated from the US Merchant Marine Academy in 1978, but I’ll admit that I never truly realized the depth of his love for these “engineering marvels,” as he calls them, until we landed on the Greek isles. The scores of photos he took of cruise ships, ferries, tankers and containers (but only rarely of the sleek sailboats, colorful dinghies or hard-working fishing boats we saw) in seafaring Greece, and the tender way he refers to a floating hulk as “she,” smiling in admiration at “her beautiful lines,” attests to his life-long fascination. He knows first-hand the complicated calculations that went into keeping these colossi afloat. We jumped on and off ferries every few days, including two for overnight journeys, over the course of our weeks in Greece. But now that we’ve boarded one of the hallowed white cruise vessels for a full ten days, I know we made the right decision since there is nothing that warms my heart more than seeing Joe transformed into a joyful little boy, happy in his surroundings and just itching to go into the engine room. A busman’s holiday for a marine engineer? Far from it. Joe was in ship heaven.

We’ve run out of superlatives to describe our trip but we’d better find some new ones fast now that we’re passengers on the Aegean Odyssey. It has been relaxing and rewarding, educational and enjoyable, invigorating and fulfilling and all at the same time. God is in the details, as they say, and on this ship, the god is Bacchus since very nice, quality wines were served and included in our fares. Every evening was an occasion and after we showered off the dust of the day accumulated at the ancient sites, we donned our best travel wear each night for dinner. Joe calls me his Bubba Gump of the black dress as I did my best to come up with new combinations of my layers: my long black dress with a black belt, without a belt, with a gold pashmina, with a purple scarf, with a long black sweater or with a short white one; my short black dress with black flats, with strappy brown sandals, with a white belt, with a brown belt and finally, with a silky black tee on top. I exhausted every combo possible and wondered if anyone other than Joe had noticed my minimalist wardrobe.

The cruise company is called Voyages to Antiquity and before we boarded we’d harbored a fear that it might be more appropriately called Voyages of the Antiquity. But while we were definitely on the younger side of the demographic (the average age was 68), there were several couples on board who were our juniors and many of the older crowd were quite young at heart. We met and got to know several of our fellow passengers, most of them British, Canadian, American and Australian – quite the Anglo crowd. As whenever groups of people find themselves together, there were very distinct types and once we gave them names, enjoyed watching them behave in character. I’m sure that others had their very own labels for us. And while I would love to imagine it was The Blond, Athletic Americans, it was more likely The Gap Year Americans in Their Hiking Boots or The Guy With The Wife Who Enjoys Her Wine.

There was Austin Powers, a perfect look-alike with big teeth, broad smile, black glasses, seventies hair and a twinkle in his eye; the Bulldog, his face in a permanent Grinch grimace, who finally smiled at me when I said a hearty good morning on the Lido Deck; the Betty Ford clone with a touch of Parkinson’s, who animatedly read the daily headlines to her husband each morning at breakfast; Miss Lonelyheart, a middle-aged British woman always by herself and looking terribly sad; and The Biker Canadians, who’d shared their stories of extended bicycle excursions in the American West. And then there was the nasty old woman with a constant scowl, wielding her black cane like a scepter as if to say, “Out of my way and don’t even try to mess with me.” On the second day of the cruise, we happened to be across from her on the tender heading back to the ship and once we arrived, she struggled to stand up. Joe kindly asked as he held out his hand in an offer of help, “Are you going to make it okay?” “Of course I’m going to make it,” she snapped back. “Let’s see how you do when you’re my age.” If her scowl hadn’t branded her, that response certainly did. From then on, she was simply “The Bitch.” There was no other way to describe her and time after time, for the rest of the trip, she lived up to her appropriately awarded label. This was a British company, so of course there was The Bridge Set of 24 or so passengers, who spent most of their time in the Observation Lounge on the 9^th deck playing cards. The space doubled as an Internet point and so we spent many an hour sitting beside those with a passion for the game while reading the news and catching up with emails. We overheard the foreign language of the bridge players in the background as they spoke of actions by north and south, second hand low, playing a trick, frozen suits, auctions, giving away tricks and one note trumps. We discovered that many in the lounge had boarded the cruise for the sole purpose of playing bridge and to be with their leader, Mr. Bridge, a well-known master of the game who organized the tournament. Several were so absorbed that they never even left the ship over the course of the ten days. That’s awfully far to travel and a pretty big price to pay to just sit around a table and play cards ad infinitum.

While I absolutely love to fly and find airports exhilarating, they pale in comparison to the romance of a journey by sea. The constant smell of the salt air, the ship’s deep whistle when we leave port and the excitement each time a new destination comes into view as we pull into its harbor and drop anchor are intoxicating. I am indeed the devoted wife of a marine engineer and while my passion for all-things-ship may not quite reach the level of Joe’s, I have definitely joined him in ship heaven since we’ve been aboard.

Pictures of our adventures: http://gapyeargirlgoestoeurope.shutterfly.com

Islomania

What is it about islands?

British writer, Lawrence Durrell, used the term “islomania” in his memoir, Reflections on a Marine Venus, about the time he spent on Rhodes after World War II. He wrote of an obsession with islands, an inexplicable enthusiasm for these chunks of land detached from the rest of the world. As far back as Plato’s story of Atlantis, written 2,500 years ago, the allure of islands has endured as a human passion and captor of our imagination. I once knew a man, a fellow travel literature book club member, with a manic attraction to islands, which led him to limit his travel to only these, both large and small, whenever he needed to get away. Durrell was also a confirmed islomane and at every opportunity fled to one of the many island paradises in the Mediterranean. The fantasy of the island as tranquil retreat for harried, frantic souls has long been around and it may be that the idea is as appealing as the reality. Yet there’s no denying that the stirrings of a deep physical response emerge as the shadow in the sea off the bow first comes into view, particularly in the half-light of dawn. What is at first indistinct soon clarifies into the detailed silhouette of a place filled with possibility, a source of fascination, inspiration and delight. There’s something about islands that taps into a fundamental desire for tranquility, for space and for solitude in a world where such are often rare commodities.

Must our idyllic, month-long retreat to the Greek isles really come to an end? Kos is the final island we visited independently (our upcoming cruise includes brief stops at Ithaca and Corfu) and we had a hard time accepting that we would soon have to leave. The most famous native son of Kos is Hippocrates, father of Western medicine and born on the island in 460 BC in the age of Pericles. Until we’d eaten during our month in Rome at a restaurant which shared the first modern doctor’s name and whose owners were from Kos, we’d never before heard of this particular Greek isle. The guidebooks describe it as a lovely place with a lively harbor and so we decided to give it a try. We booked a dirt-cheap hotel about a mile from town ($31 a night for a clean room with Internet, a basic breakfast and a pool) that was overrun by raucous, inebriated, young Australians (and they say Americans are noisy). We at long last met one US compatriot at the budget hotel: a college student from Kansas studying at a program in Athens who’d come to the island on her way to Patmos to visit the Cave of the Apocalypse in which St. John is said to have received revelations from God.

Kos was quite an international place, save, once again, the almost complete absence of Americans. There were scores of British, Scandinavians and Australians vacationing in the casual, beachy neighborhood in which we found ourselves with wall-to-wall seaside tavernas, bars and purveyors of every type of colorful beach gear imaginable. We saw the most beautiful rose displays in gardens that lined our daily walks into town – big, brilliant blooms in red, yellow, peach and pink on healthy, well-manicured bushes and strong, rambling vines. The harbor was indeed spirited, just as the travel guides had described, with ferries, luxury cruisers and fishing, excursion and pleasure boats coming and going alongside the massive fortress of the Knights of St. John. At the head of the harbor is the Tree of Hippocrates, a sprawling plane, reported to be the oldest in Europe (while the current tree is only about 500 years old, it is said to have sprung from the original which stood in the same spot on the square) and under which the master taught his students about modern medicine. Well-used bike lanes lined the harbor and ran all along miles of waterside. We had to carefully watch our way as we crossed back and forth and felt a bit like we were back in Amsterdam as we dodged the two-wheeled traffic.

While quite mountainous, Kos is significantly more verdant and less rocky than all the other islands we visited. We’d planned to rent a Vespa to make the circuit and explore its hidden coves and beaches but we soon discovered that when it came to motor vehicle regulations, not all islands are created equal. Smiling, gregarious Angelos was all set to hand us the keys to a shiny motorbike until we told him we didn’t have an international driving permit. We’d rented ATVs and cars on other islands with Joe’s Maryland license vouching for his driving ability but the insurance companies and police force of Kos demanded more. I’m not sure which I was more disappointed about: that my romantic vision of cruising around the island, my arms wrapped securely around Joe’s waist, would not become a reality or that we were unable to give Angelos our business. We ended up talking with him for a half hour about the failing Greek economy and the country’s complicated politics. And while our attempt to see the island in-depth was foiled by mundane indemnification details, we left Kos once again reassured that the fact that the Greek word xenos can mean both foreigner and guest is not a coincidence. Both are regarded in the same manner and are given warm, collegial welcomes; to be a foreigner in Greece is to be treated as a friend with all the respect of an honored guest.

We enjoyed the Dodecanese and met so many more people we can add to our list of kind-hearted Greeks (we’ll always have a soft spot for the Cyclades, however, perhaps because they were our first). Retracing your footsteps to places whose magic you so clearly recall can often disappoint – they’ve changed or you’ve changed or you so sadly discover that their particular allure was evanescent. The delight you first felt was fleeting – it belonged to a moment in time, locked away, safe in your memory. Not so with the Greek Isles. For us, their charm, their beauty and the unique romance they impart have endured. They were there then and they are still there now.

Am I an islomane? Without question, when it comes to the islands of Greece.

Pictures of our adventures: http://gapyeargirlgoestoeurope.shutterfly.com

We Can See Turkey From our Backyard

We landed in the Dodecanese, very different islands in look and feel from the whitewashed Cyclades we’d left behind. Our first stop was Rhodes, the fourth largest Greek island and a stone’s throw from the western coast of Turkey. There’s a palpable awareness and very real angst among Greeks that its long-established bitter adversary is just across the water. We could see the mountains of Turkey in the not far distance – effectively in our back yard – and there was a very visible military presence with armed guards keeping watch across the sea.

When we arrived in Rhodes Town, we innocently asked our taxi driver, “Which island is that across the way?”

“That’s no island,” he replied, “that’s Turkey. Do you like this place?”

“Should we?” Joe wisely retorted.

It’s not a prudent idea to show interest in “that place” across the way or even mention the possibility of a visit there when in Greece. We kept our plans for heading to Turkey in a few short weeks to ourselves.

The temperatures have gotten progressively higher as we’ve island-hopped our way south. It was in the mid 60s on Mykonos, in the low 70s on Naxos and Santorini and by the time we arrived on Rhodes, the midday temperatures had climbed to the upper 70s. The dismal gray skies and biting winds of Berlin and Amsterdam just a month before were distant memories. After several weeks in the bright Greek sun, our hair has bleached lighter than when we arrived and we’ve turned as brown as betel nuts, as Joe likes to say. The red-toned tan of my Mexican ancestors has come to the fore and even Joe, whose Irish skin is usually not fond of the sun, has gone bronze.

As happens when things heat up, people shed their clothing. And while underdressed, overexposed tourists can sometimes make for appealing people-watching, at other times, it’s an unwelcome interruption of the local color. Very rarely on our journey through Europe have we seen seriously overweight people, but we quickly learned once we arrived on Rhodes that the US does not have a monopoly on obesity. I don’t mean to be unkind but there were an incredible number of Central European and Russian visitors off mammoth cruise ships anchored in the harbor, just past where the Colossus of Rhodes once stood, in very little clothing, exposing way too much skin. I hadn’t seen such scantily clad corpulence since our last visit to Disneyworld. While Americans have rightly earned the reputation for carrying extra pounds, I believe our fellow citizens have met their match. Joe and I looked like absolute waifs by comparison. Everywhere we wandered through the winding streets of the town’s walled medieval city, sun-crisped tourists, their lily-white skin singed with bright pink burns that were painful to even look at, passed us by. We were the only fully clothed couple in a sea of half-dressed tourists with significant avoirdupois and all of them with too much exposed. The men were missing their shirts, their bellies hanging over and hiding their belts and the women in halter tops sported rolls of midriff and maximum cleavage.

While Rhodes has a rich history and some amazing sights, observing the hordes of international tourists was an ongoing distraction and over and over again there were similar refrains:

·      the grossly overweight couple in their 60s with matching bright plastic clogs (whoever introduced Crocs to Russia must have made a killing);

·      the leathery, tanned 50-something French woman in a bright bikini, flaunting her flat, brown stomach, white teeth and nails painted orange by the excursion boats;

·      the thickset Polish couple in identical plaid shirts and completely mismatched print shorts and sensible black leather sandals;

·      the beefy Russian woman in a too-short skirt, embroidered peasant blouse and hiking sandals with a tattoo of a five-inch hamster on her substantial calf (or perhaps it was a guinea pig given the five inches);

·      the scores of burly, bloated tourists glistening like seals under layers of oil on the brightly colored, padded lounge chairs on the pebbly beaches. 

We ran into not a single American on Rhodes; I’m sure they were there but we never saw them. Restaurateurs and retailers told us that we were two of the few Americans they’d encountered this year. In fact, Nikos, the young man from whom we rented a car on Rhodes, shared that we were the first “people from America” to whom he’d ever rented a vehicle.

While we were well aware that Greece is not a flat country, we learned that it is actually one of the most mountainous in Europe. It may not have the highest peaks, but by some estimates, mountains cover 80% of the landscape, including most of the islands. Our rental car took us away from the cruise ship crowds, into the cooler mountains and up and down the rugged, rocky terrain of Rhodes. We visited the island’s three ancient hilltop acropolises: one above Rhodes Town, one looking over the province of Kameiros and the final and most famous of all, Lindos. All were atop dramatic high points (akron meaning edge and polis meaning city in Greek, hence the term acropolis) and each of the ruins was fascinating. But those at Lindos were the most dramatic -- a natural citadel perched 370 feet directly above the sea on a promontory of solid rock. The acropolis and its Temple of Athena watched over the narrow streets of the picturesque 13^th century medieval village below. From the heights were spectacular views over the surrounding harbors and coastline including tiny St. Paul’s Bay with its clear blue waters, where the apostle temporarily cast anchor on his voyage to Ephesus in Turkey. First built by the Greeks and further fortified by the Romans, Byzantines, and Ottomans, Lindos prospered under the Knights of St. John who, when banished from the Holy Land, came to Rhodes. Their efforts were so important not only to the growth of Lindos, but to the history and development of the island’s main town as well. The architecture of Lindos was a visually pleasing mix of whitewashed and golden stone and not since the Dordogne had I taken so many pictures of delightful, interesting doorways.

Between acropolis visits, we stopped for lunch in the village of Emponas, in the heart of Rhodes’ wine-country hills, for its specialty, barbecued lamb, at a small taverna. We were served Greek salads, grilled eggplant and the town’s signature dish by the matron of the house who reminded us on each of her frequent visits to our table to check on us that we were in a family-run restaurant and that everything was homemade. It did indeed taste homemade, was all delicious and made for a perfect setting in the shade of a grape arbor.   

Back in Rhodes Town, we made time to visit the archeological museum. Even Joe, not generally a fan of such displays, was won over by the ancient treasures housed in the arched medieval building, formerly the Hospital of the Knights of St. John. The intricate mosaic floors, black- and red-figure pottery and graceful statues from Classical, Hellenistic and Roman times were stunning, as was the rose and oleander-filled garden that graced the museum’s courtyard.

We’d been told that the tiny island of Symi, just over an hour from Rhodes, was a beautiful place, so we boarded a boat for a one-day outing. The small gem of an island was completely different from its neighbor – quite Italian in feel, actually -- with its orderly, neoclassical homes in pastel melon colors of pink, peach, yellow and green filing up the hills. We walked all along the colorful harbor and around the headland to a small beach and then had lunch back alongside the fishing boat quay. Symi’s specialty is tiny little shrimp flash-fried, skin and all, and then popped in your mouth, minus the tail. The sweet little bites are much like soft-shell crabs, their outer layers adding just a bit of crunch to the sweet morsels. They were exquisite, just like little Symi.

Rhodes was a fascinating stop brimming over with history both inside and out of its walled city. Next up is an even closer encounter with Turkey as we head northwest to Kos.

Pictures of our adventures: http://gapyeargirlgoestoeurope.shutterfly.com