From Athens to Symi

To ease us back into Symi-mode, here’s the (rather long) story of arriving back to Symi from Athens on the Blue Star ferry, the Patmos.

Athens airport to Piraeus

There are various ways to do this, taxi, train or bus. On our return journey, we took the bus. The Patmos left Piraeus at 3pm, giving us plenty of time to travel across and around the city to the port and, as we were staying at the airport Sofitel, it was easy. The bus stop is outside arrivals on the right (as you come out of the terminal). There’s a booth for tickets and info and the times are up on the electronic boards. We took the 12.15 bus (they were running every half-hour at quarter past and quarter two), and the cost was €6.00 each. The bus takes you down to the coast and along, and the journey took one hour and 45 minutes. It may be quicker at other times of the day and when there are no roadworks causing delays. The roadworks, by the way, had encountered what is a common problem in Greece: start your preparations and before you know it, you’ve hit an ancient monument no-one knew you had, and everything has to slow to a stop while that’s taken care of. So, we saw plenty of buried ruins on our way.

The other neat thing about the bus is that it stops at the correct pier for the Symi ferries. What’s more, it’s the last stop on the route so you can’t miss it. Another electronic board on the bus tells you where you are during the journey. We exchanged our pre-booked tickets at the office, had a leisurely chat with the lady there about Symi and then waddled across the concrete to the boat. You can board about two hours before departure, and there was plenty of time to find our cabin and organise ourselves in it.

Aboard the Blue Star Patmos

There are various kinds of cabins, but we had gone for the cheapest, a two-birth (bunk beds), internal, and the combined cost for us two was €170.00 for the 16.5-hour journey. Now then, had we gone by plane, the cost would have been about the same if not more. Plane tickets (€60.00 each including the tax and luggage etc.), transfer to a hotel in Rhodes (minimum €2.50 each, or a taxi for €25.00), an overnight there, (€25.00 to €90 depending on where you stay) and the boat across to Symi (€16.50 each) – I’m educated guessing at those prices and adding them up at the lowest price, you get to €183.00 – so that’s the money side of things taken care of. What about the boat?

We picked up our door key-cards at reception on the boat and trundled off up a level and along a corridor to the bows. Cabins are numbered by the deck they are on and then a room number, so we were 7220 – deck 7 room 220. There are a lot of cabins. The cabin was small, as you’d expect but it had what we needed. Two beds, a wardrobe, a small desk with phone, mirror, ladder for the upper bunk (once we worked out how to lower it; there’s a button you push), life jackets and a surprisingly roomy shower/bathroom. We did have to negotiate each other a bit and give advanced warning of leaving the bathroom so we didn’t hit the other in the face with the door. The luggage lid under the bunk, giving us more room, and Paddington, having claimed top bunk, was later relegated to the desk for the night, so we had more room.

Cabin sorted, we went to watch the ferry load from one of the stern decks. There are a couple of these, plenty of outside space and a bar. The boat left late due to the amount of loading going on, and we spent an entertaining two hours watching it all. We were in no hurry but, as it turned out, the boat made up the time, and we arrived on Symi on schedule. Well, it is all downhill. A very nice young chap from Rhodes offered to take our photo together, which you can see here among the many others, and it turns out his girlfriend is from Symi, but he was going straight on to Rhodes.

After some sunbathing as we left the mainland, we headed inside for a cup of coffee and investigated the a la carte dining room. No need to book, even though the boat was busy, and I mean, very busy. This was the Thursday sailing before the start of Great Week, and there were many young soldiers and some families aboard travelling, I assume back to their islands for Easter. Here’s a tip. If you don’t have a cabin and are doing an overnight (as you must from Athens to Symi) then grab your floor/deck/seat space early. There are aircraft seats upstairs, plenty of sofas and corners to crash out in later, but I’d recommend the cabins.

We treated ourselves to dinner in the a la carte later that evening; I’d always wanted to try it. The menu isn’t huge, of course, but it was good. The salads are massive, and the prices are no more than you would expect to pay in a classy taverna. Two starters, two mains, water, bread and a bottle of wine came to around €35.00 each, which is way more than we usually pay to eat out, but then we tend to eat at the cheaperies rather than the gastro eateries. We felt very First Class, all dressed up and using real linen napkins. Afterwards, we headed back outside for a post-dinner glass of wine and, without being funny about it, it was like that sequence in Titanic where Jack has dinner in 1^st Class and then takes Rose to a real party in steerage. Some of the army boys struck up music on what looked like a dead goat, and we were treated to an hour or more of traditional Kalymnian folk music and singing.

Actually, the dead goat bagpipe is a dead goat bagpipe. “The Gaida is a bagpipe from the Balkans and Southeast Europe. Southeastern European bagpipes known as gaida include: Bulgarian and Macedonian гайда/гајда (gayda), the Greek γκάιντα, Albanian, Croatian and Serbian gajde and Slovak gajdy.”

Overnight

Sleeping was not as difficult as I thought it would be, not after dinner, dancing and wine, but it did take some getting used to. We had set every alarm we had to make sure we didn’t sleep through our Symi arrival at 7.30 the next day and bunked down at around 11pm. I missed Kalymnos, slept right through it, so wasn’t up to wave farewell to the dead-goat boys, but I did get woken by Kos. It’s not so much the noise, as you become immune to the churn of the engines (which you can only hear when the boat is manoeuvring, not while it’s sailing), it was more the vibration and, when the ship turned, the gentle glide to one end of the bunk. There were also the announcements. I think there’s a way of turning these off, so you don’t get them in your cabin, but I never sussed it out. When we vibrated into Tilos, I was ready to get up and face the day, and I wanted to wave at Tilos as I’ve been there a couple of times.

More passengers got on, and, it seemed, only a few had left at Kalymnos and Kos, and I recognised one of them, making me feel incredibly multi-islander. The only other people we’d met on the boat that we knew were our Mayor, Lefteris, and his family. We bumped into him within an hour of boarding, and it was very kind of him to come all that way just to escort us home.

Which is where, after 16.5 hours and this long rambling blog, we arrived dead on time on the Friday morning. There was no need for the alarm clock. Reception calls you on your cabin phone about half an hour before you’re due to arrive at your destination; very organised.

So, we are home (we’ve been home for over two weeks now), and from tomorrow, the blogs will be back to their usual few lines when I don’t know what to talk about, or longer posts when I think I do, and there will be Symi photos, of course.

 

 

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Final Split Photos

I could go on all month about our wonderful holiday to Croatia, but I know you’re keen to get back to my day-to-day Symi news. So, today, I will just mention a few more highlights and then put up a selection of photos for you to browse over the weekend. Then, come Monday, we should be back to Symi news – as I see it. I must get out and about with the camera, as all my recent photos have been shots from the window. But that’s for Monday…

I promised to tell you the ‘gravedigger’ story, so here it is in a nutshell. We called into an off-license a couple of times and, as with everywhere, found the two staff there young, helpful and friendly. As we didn’t have a corkscrew at our hotel (and didn’t like to disturb the receptionist for one because we are British), we asked the young chap in the wine shop to open the bottle, which he did. On our third visit, he was busy in the back room, and the young lady served us. We asked her if she could open it for us, but she only had one of those ‘impossible to use unless you are a wine waiter’ things that I’ve never got the hang of. Neither could she, so she called to her colleague in the stockroom. You don’t need to understand Croat or any language to get a gist in a situation like this, so when she called, ‘Hej, Grobber, dođite i otvorite ovu bocu!’* we knew what she was saying. Neil, picking up on his name, and because we had all bonded over the days, added jokily, ‘Ella, Grobber! Give us a hand,’ or something.

The poor girl behind the counter practically fell into her Merlot rack and had to grip the counter she was laughing so much. We were slightly mystified but instantly knew we’d said something wrong. The young chap appeared from the stock room and wondered what the laughter was about. She repeated what Neil had said, and we had two hysterical assistants on our hands. When the laughter calmed, we were able to learn that ‘Grobber’ (as we heard it) is a colloquial word used much in the same way as ‘malaka’ in Greek. Fine with your mates, ‘Hello me old *ucker!’ But not so good with people you don’t know, ‘Hey, *ucker, come and open this bottle,’ was fine for her, but they weren’t expecting Neil to use the word so fluently. No-one was offended, we all had a good laugh, and the word ‘Grobber’ has entered our vocabulary. Apparently, it means ‘gravedigger’ or something that comes from the root ‘Grob’, the Croat word for grave.

Our holiday continued with several more treats: a walk up Marjan Hill, a day out for my birthday to the Krka National Park (waterfalls and lakes), a visit to Trogir, walks in the sun, many a good meal, a private guided tour of some Game Of Thrones locations in Split, and generally enjoying the town and doing as little as possible. There was a surprise on my birthday. The hotel, having noted my date of birth when I checked in, and realising it was a special day, made me a surprise birthday cake for breakfast, complete with firework candle. Now, how special was that? I know a few places around here that could do with upping their customer care in this kind of subtle but meaningful way. (And I know several that already do.)

The journey back was an interesting one. Lazy morning, smart taxi to the airport, easy check-in… All a bit overshadowed by the 45 minutes we had to change planes in Munich. The transfer had started off as one hour when I booked, plenty of time as it was all with Lufthansa. Over time, the flight times changed slightly, and we were down to 45 minutes. Still just enough time. Then the plane from Split was 20 minutes late taking off – giving us 20 minutes. ‘Should be long enough, it’s a connecting flight, the planes won’t be far from each other…’ We landed as our next flight was boarding over at terminal K 33, or somewhere we hoped was close. ‘Where’s Gate K 33, please?’ ‘Down there, right to the end, downstairs, get on the train, across the other side, up and right down to the end…’ We were running before he’d finished his description. Along, left, down, onto a train, off a train, up, along and we arrived at our gate two minutes before it was due to close, only to find it was delayed by thirty minutes. Good exercise though.

We made it back to Athens, spent another night in the airport hotel and then, the next day, took the bus to Piraeus. Now that’s a journey you might want to know about – how to get from Athens airport to the Blue Star Patmos and on to Symi, but I will save that for next week. I’ve gone on long enough now, and all that remains is to thank everyone who gave us the gift of a honeymoon and to leave you with some random images from the 900 we took while we are away. Back on Monday with, I hope, blogs about Symi!

*(Btw, for those of you who read Croat, that translation was from Google so may only be 0.5% accurate.)

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Music and more Music

Now we are on March 22^nd, and I have realised my timeline was incorrect yesterday. We booked the theatre tickets on our first night in Split, and the concert was on our first full day, after the bell tower nightmare and meeting Adriana on the Riva. So, it’s still Thursday and, having had a large lunch, we felt no need for dinner. Just as well as the concert started at seven-thirty, a most inconvenient time to be somewhere other than in an eatery.

No complaints from here though. Knowing that we had some time, we stopped for a drink at a place we nicknamed Audrey’s because it had a large photo of, and a large quote, from Audrey Hepburn. Like all the other cafés we used, the staff were young and friendly, spoke very good English, and taught us some Croat words like ‘Živjeli’ for ‘Cheers.’ (One night in unusual circumstances we learned the word for ‘gravedigger’, but I will tell you about that another day.) A glass of wine later and we decided that we would have a drink at the theatre bar before the concert and so set off into a chilly night.

There was no bar at the theatre, at least not one that was open. We arrived at seven-ten and were asked to come back later. Not like a British theatre, I thought, where the audience begins to cluster a good hour before the show to read programmes, have wine, compare outfits and use Edwardian toilet facilities. We dashed back to Audrey’s and gulped another glass, not wanting to be late despite that fact that, apparently, in Croatia, audiences are not expected to be early.

Back at the theatre at seven-twenty-five and, as if by teleportation, the foyer was rammed by audience. I have no idea where they had been hiding only fifteen minutes before. Tickets shown, we found our seats and settled in for a bit of Beethoven. Two bits actually, a concerto for piano, violin and cello in ‘C-duru’, which is either C major or C minor, and the Erotica symphony, number ‘Treca’ (which actually means third) in Eb-duru which I now know means major. Glorious performance by the Orkestar HNK Split – the orchestra of the National Theatre, conducted by Ivo Lipanovic. The interval allowed for a quick visit to a 20^th-century toilet facility and a quick gasp of fresh, cold air outside and, after the concert, we returned to the city walls to find ‘Split’s only gay-friendly bar.’ (That’s what the unusual red photo is all about.) This wasn’t busy, but it was interesting with revolutionary murals and writing on the walls of the cavernous rooms in the medieval building and – sorry to mention them again – toilets that were from the same century as the walls; fourteenth, I should say.

There is a follow up to this story, and I’ll now fast forward to the Friday, the next day, and cover that quickly as, let’s face it, life’s too short for other people’s holiday stories. While wandering the town on Friday, having climbed the hill, had lunch at a graphic novel themed restaurant that even had Moaning Myrtle arising from the toilet bowl (clearly, today I am obsessed), and buying a massive and well-filled wrap for lunch (€1.20), we discovered that there was a free concert in the cathedral that night. Bless him, Neil kept a straight but enthusiastic face when I told him it was three Bach violin sonatas played by Orest Shourgot, professor of violin at the School of Music at the Arts Academy of Split.

We went, we listened, we were thrilled, and we forgot to eat dinner first. Afterwards, Neil recognised the man sitting just behind/beside me. He turned out to be the leader of last night’s orchestra. I complimented him on his orchestra and leadership, as you do, and Neil told him to keep up the good work. We shook hands and left him wondering who on earth we were while we went and mistakenly had another drink on an empty stomach, and then bought a bottle of wine for the room from an off-license housed in an old tram. The younger, English speaking staff running it were the cause of the gravedigger story which I will be getting to another day… Meanwhile, bonus photos:

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Let’s Split

No, let’s not as we are on honeymoon. Or at least we were a couple of weeks ago. We’re on day three of the stay in Split now, which was actually day seven of the trip away thanks to the weather and boat schedules and that stop in Rhodes for four days. As you’ll see from the photos, the town was starting to fill up a little more by this day. We worked out the reason for this later when we walked along the harbour front. There was a large cruise ship in and, a bit like Rhodes and Symi the town was invaded for a few hours.

That didn’t stop is from visiting the cathedral, which was once a mausoleum, hence its small size. Neil took a trot up the bell tower. I made it over halfway before the signs of an imminent panic attack were too strong, and I had to talk myself down. It’s an annoying thing, this ‘thing’ with heights that hit when I was forty, particularly as I used to love climbing mountains and abseiling down cliffs. These days, I have this worry that I will fall off, or worse, someone else will, and there will be nothing I can do about it. Anyway, he snapped the view from the top while I got my breath back at the bottom.

Later, we visited the Temple Of Jupiter, had another wander around the town, listened to the acapella singers in the ‘vestibule’, and walked along the seafront again. Later, we found the market not fifty feet from our hotel. The market sold everything in linked areas. In one place, you’d find all the fruit and veg grown locally on small homesteads. There is an area with butchers’ shops on either side selling their famous cured hams and dead things, there’s a place for clothes and very few stallholders trying to badger you inside.

In the afternoon, we popped into the National Theatre and bought tickets for a classical concert there the following night. We were able to buy two tickets in the mid stalls, in the row behind the most expensive seats in the house. The tickets cost us the equivalent of €9.00 each. That was to come the next day, and there will be more about that tomorrow.

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Athens – Frankfurt – Croatia

Today we’re travelling again. This time, it’s a mixed journey that started at seven in the morning with a flight to Frankfurt. It’s always a fun thing to do, fly over your destination on the way to somewhere else and then turn around and come back. Lack of direct flights to Split was the cause. We could have gone to Zagreb and taken a train but booked with Expedia and so took the most reasonably priced option including all flights. On the way up to Frankfurt, I had a good view from the window, and it was clear to see that we were heading for a cold climate.

Frankfurt airport wasn’t too bad in terms of transfer time, as we had a good couple of hours to kill. Just as well really because to get from A to B (literally as those were our arrival gate and departure gate areas) took 45 minutes, and yet the gates were directly opposite each other about fifty feet apart. Plenty of distractions along the way, shops, cafes and policemen with guns kept us entertained as we took advantage of the travellators to whisk us along. We stopped for a rest near our departure gate, and I salivated over some typically German sausages in buns. The last time I had one of those was in Berlin in 2007, and I was long overdue a Bratwurst, but I resisted, knowing that we would have lunch on the plane. We did, and an hour or so later landed in Croatia.

It was closed.

Well, it wasn’t, but we had the distinct feeling that we were the first tourist arrivals in Split. The airport is being extended, which bodes well for tourism to Dalmatia, were Split is, and I later found out that tourism is definitely on the increase there. Our taxi driver, Erin (male) who had been booked for us by the hotel, took us and our luggage to his swanky car and whisked us off to as close to the hotel as possible. That trip cost €40.00 which was, frighteningly, cheaper than the online offers I’d seen. It was also easier than taking the bus. We were met at the Riva (the frontage of cafes outside the old palace walls by the sea) by a helpful young chap from our hotel who accompanied us through the underground entrance to the old palace, through the Peristyle and around the corner to our hotel.

This place, the Hotel Murum, is less than half a minute’s walk from the cathedral and city museum, and very handy for everything within the palace. This palace, in case you don’t know, was the summer retirement home of the emperor Diocletian, and over the years has been developed from its Roman origins and now looks more like a walled, medieval city, albeit a small one. We checked in with the young and friendly receptionist (everyone at the hotel was young and friendly, mainly students gaining extra income while studying complicated subjects, or saving to head to the yUK for some reason), and our room was perfect. (See my hotel review on Trip Advisor.) That done, it was still early afternoon, and so an orientation walk was in order.

This is when it felt like we were the first to arrive. The Peristyle (where you gather to hear singing, enter the cathedral and bell tower) was deserted, as was the Riva, just about, and many of the winding, tunnelled, narrow streets of the old town. I’ll call it an old town rather than the palace, so you don’t think we were staying with royalty or anything. It was also cold. There was snow on the surrounding mountains, and we wore our thermals. After a good wander, we stopped for a glass of wine at a Riva café – a bit posh. One of those places where the glasses are big enough for a bottle of wine, and they give you a spit of the stuff somewhere towards the bottom. Very nice it was, mind you, and only €3.40 each, with acceptable modern music played against incongruous videos from MTV.

More walking, and, later, a shower and change of clothes, and a dinner at The Oil Bar, a place that makes its own olive oil and salt, and also sells it. I tucked into pumpkin soup and a dish of Pašticada, a traditional Dalmatian stew. That’s a beef stew from the region of Dalmatia, not a stew made by Cruella Deville. Neil had a bruschetta the size of a submarine, followed by a mass or pork, all with homemade bread and local wine. There was a quiet, warm atmosphere and friendly staff. Dinner for two here cost just under €50.00 including a €17.00 bottle of wine. There was none of that handy half-litre jug business we get here in Greece.

After that, a nightcap and a well-earned sleep. Tomorrow, we’re doing more Split exploration. See you there.

 

 

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