Athens to Italy in Twelve Short Days

Dear friend of 56 years, Paula, visited for five days.  Ironically, she started with us in Athens exactly where she left the boat in October even though we've been to Turkey and back.

Our mission is to get to Rome for a flight to Toronto on July 9th, leaving Athens on June 3.  Crazy fast given there are so many wonderful places to visit along the way but we have a berth in Fiumara Grande, the Rome port and a direct flight home for a three week visit.

Day 1:  5th century BC Doric temple of Aphaia, another of Zues' many daughters and made into a goddess of fertility and the agricultural cycle by Artemis,  on Nisos Aegina.  We were anchored in a strange beach town but the temple was worth the hot climb.

Day 2, 3, 4 - Poros, an island separated from the Peloponnisos by a narrow channel and a big bay making it a popular, sheltered anchorage for yachts. 

Octopi out hanging in front of a restaurant to entice diners???

We took the ferry to Nisos Idhra from Poros, preferring to avoid the chaos of the "one of the most beautiful harbours in Greece".  We were very glad to see the island and to avoid the small harbour where boats lined up in floating pattern to get a berth.  No thanks.  We walked along the coast through a couple of fishing villages.  Otherwise devoid of vegetation.

No cars - only a garbage truck - are allowed on Idras so the donkeys are prized and still working as beasts of burden.  They share the trails with hikers.

A very beautiful place that has had many people appreciate it including Leonard Cohen.  He always had very good taste.  Idhra is now a fashionable resort thanks to the likes of Leonard.

A painting.

The lovely harbour is pure bedlam for boats.  Once you get a spot, you must be tempted to stay for days!  

Idhra was well worth the ferry visit.  Lovely streets and although full of tourists around the overpriced but tasteful harbour, the quaint lanes going up the steep hills were empty and flower-filled. 

We had already done the Corinth Canal last autumn and so elected to take the longer but new-to-us route through the Saronic Gulf, around the southern tip and up the west coast of the Peloponnisos to Zakinthos, an Ionian island and then cross to Italy.

Night 5:  Monemvasia.  Anchored only in the bay next door to this Byzantine town, rebuilt by Venetians.    Apparently, the view from the church on top of the wilds of the Peloponnisos is worth the climb.  But the view from the sea was pretty good too.

The town is geometrically delineated by walls...

...on a Gibraltar-esque rock joined to the Peloponnisos by a causeway.

As we left in the early morning...very cool.

Churches and monasteries clinging to cliffs on the tips of peninsulas and in the middle of nowhere.

Night 6:  Porto Kayio.  The Peloponnisos has three fingerlike peninsulas on it's southern side.  The middle one, Mani, was intriguing.  We would love to have gone ashore.  It seemed very wild and remote with tower houses which the family shut themselves into to secure themselves from another threatening clan.  Apparently, the Maniotes were a fierce race of people even among themselves.  On the shores of our anchorage were some of the stone tower homes, now being purchased and restored and still in the middle of nowhere.

Night 7: Methoni - a Turkish tower and Venetian fort dominate the point and sleepy town.  

An underwater archeological site in the bay where we anchored has revealed amphorae caskets for children.  Interesting but a little grisly.

Leaving the bay on a clear early morning.

Dramatic rock formations at the entrance to the large Ormos Navarinou where a decisive sea battle in the Greek War of Independence.  The British, French and Russian Allies were victorious against the Turko-Egyptian even though enormously outgunned and outnumbered.

Night 8: Pilos, Taken from the castle that overlooks the entrance to the bay.

Within the castle walls where a whole town had been, now stands a church, turned mosque, now church in a dramatic setting.

Night 9: Zakinthos, the most southern of the Ionian Islands. Milly anchored on the town wall in the happening capital.

Nights 10 & 11: On our way across the Ionian to Italy, our only view of the famous blue cave.

We loved what we saw of the Peloponnisos - a fiercely beautiful and wild coastline, far less impacted by tourism than other Greek islands, at least on the south and west side, greener than the Cyclades and packed full of mythological stories and history.  We're sorry we couldn't stay longer to check out the interior.  Another time at a later date perhaps.

Our first passage of more than a day in months.  We had to motor sail the entire way. Our fuel bill in the Med is huge!