James Salter

Finally

I’ve finally finished with my photos from Greece, which can now be seen in the photo album.

Greece Blog

While I was away in Greece, I tried to write blog entries about my adventures on my mobile’s Outlook calendar. Writing extensively via predictive text, I discovered, is a non-trivial activity. Sometimes therefore I just wrote a few notes.

Over the last couple of evenings I’ve been working on expanding those entries and making them a bit more legible. What you see now on my blog here are the entries I wrote as I travelled, but tidied up a bit. I’ve added some relevant hyperlinks, photos and maps. The full set of photos should be online soon.

Back Home

So, here I am back in the UK, reflecting on what has been a brilliant few days in Greece. I think a fitting summary and conclusion to the trip comes in the words of one of the guidebooks I took with me:

“The Greeks are a special people on a unique journey. They are heir to a multilayered heritage in a vital part of the world. They are generous, mercurial, emotional, instinctive, practical, and supreme improvisers. Personal interaction is vital to them. This means that life in Greece operates on many levels. Or rather, it operates on many crisscrossing levels, offering plenty of possibilities and a tremendous variety of lifestyles. The country embraces geographical variations one would associate with a small continent, only easily accessible. Socially, it has everything from the intensely private to the busy and cosmopolitan. The new generation understands its responsibilities, though not necessarily the challenges that lie ahead. Greeks live for the here and now, and this means they are ready to deal with just about anything, as it happens. The engaged visitor will emerge from the Greek experience enriched for life.”

For every moment I’ve been confused or irritated by the little cultural differences over the past few days, there have been many times greater numbers of exhilarating experiences, laughter, beautiful sights, great conversations and a friendly people trying hard to make sure we are mutually understood (”eyes, eyes, take off your eyes!”)

As the quotation says, the Greeks are a special people on a unique journey. It�s a journey I hope to witness further. I’ll be back…

Back to the Mainland

This morning’s checkout was awful. Remember how we’d been assured that everything was fine and the university had sent through credit card details to the hotel to pay in advance? Well, sure enough they’d sent through the details, but the hotel had not taken the money in advance (purely guessing, but the finance people probably never told them to). Anyway, after much deliberation, they agree to process the payment using those card details, but the credit card machine was having none of it. They tried several times, but it kept coming back saying that the payment was not authorised. After all the hassle of organising for the hotel payment and all the forms we had to fill in, the end result was we ended up having to pay with our own credit cards. Lucky I brought mine with me, or I’d probably be stuck at the hotel right now. At the moment I’m so annoyed. Anyway, we won’t let it spoil the rest of our trip…

We left the hotel at about midday and took a taxi to the airport for our 1335 flight. We probably shouldn’t have been surprised that the plane was late, considering it was an Olympic Airlines flight, and didn’t take off until 1410. This had a knock-on effect when we reached Athens, meaning we had to wait ages for our baggage.

Nick’s father Panos met us at the airport and drove us to their house a few kilometres outside Athens. Nick’s mum Katerina was waiting to greet us with some very welcome and delicious mousaka. Time for a bit of a rest now, in preparation for what promises to be an interesting evening.

Sunset Over Samos

We spent our final evening on Samos back in Vath�, eating at a very nice pizza restaurant. We arrived in the town just in time to see the sun setting over the bay. A great way to end our island adventure.

On Tour

Since yesterday was the final day of the conference, today we had the entire day free to explore the island. The original plan had been to do the “loop” around the island, but since we’d already seen much of the southern part of the route during our trip to Pyrgos, we decided instead to drive both ways along the northern coast road.

Having taken in Vath� and Kokkari previously, we zoomed past those to take in the beautiful shore line a little further along. This road sticks close to the water almost all the way to the island’s major port, Karl�vassi. This was not a particularly aesthetically pleasing place, feeling the most touristic of all the places we have seen on Samos. In fact, there was quite a bit of Blackpool-style tackiness mixed in. Strangely, we didn’t stick around for long.From Karl�vassi our route took us inland and up between Samos’ two major mountains, Mount �mbelos (1153m) to the east and Mount K�rkis (1437m) to the west. K�rkis is the second highest summit in the Aegean, and looked like a fantastic peak to climb on a cooler day. As for today, we stayed at road level to reach the village of Marath�kambos at the far end of our route. This was a very picturesque village, laid out on the side of the mountain like an amphitheatre.Our return along the same route included a stop off for lunch. One of the conference organisers had recommended Psarades, a small fish taverna in a tiny place called �yios Nik�laos. This was a truly spectacular place, with a terrace overlooking the sea. They served some of the best fish I’ve ever tasted - the taverna’s owner goes out in his boat each evening to catch it. In fact, the food is so good that the Greek Prime Minister has eaten there three times. The owner could not have been more hospitable - after we’d eaten our fried and grilled shark and squid, he gave us melon and homemade wine for free. Such a nice gesture, and one that ensured we’d all be visiting again if and when we return to Samos.