Summer has been coming and going over the last few weeks, a day of sunshine, seats outside, sandals, then back to rain, jackets, feet dyed blue from navy moccasins worn without socks. But now the days are so long, the evenings so light, and the countdown to a few days in the sun in June has begun. But, before then, and because my parents recently followed (roughly) in our footsteps, some long overdue posts from last June...
We got to Athens in a roundabout way. A flight to
Frankfurt and a night in a hotel with German beers bought from the
airport supermarket. When we arrived we waited
for the bus to the port, cramming ourselves on, resigning ourselves to a long
trip spent standing up all the way. At Piraeus we found the ferry, set out to
buy food for the journey, and I acquainted myself with the perilous mix that is
saltwater sandals and marble pavements meaning that for that first week my bikini
would be accessorised with a giant bruise on my hip. Onwards - cheese pies, beers, a
seat in the sun on the deck of the ferry as it filled up - families from our
flight, Greek people heading to islands. The first stop in 3.5 hours would be
ours, Syros, the last in the early hours of the morning. We were giddy for most
of those hours, the sun, the blue, the islands that we passed with solitary
white churches on outcrops of rock.
Those two nights on Syros were marked with a small hotel, the view from the balcony - a blue-domed church in one direction, the port in the other, walks on marble pavements and through marble squares (treading carefully, my lesson learned), swimming from rocks where children launched themselves into the sea while older men and women sat under trees watching on, Greek music playing, an elderly man teaching the littlest ones how to click their fingers in time. We swam there twice, once luxuriating in our first swim of the holiday, retreating eventually to sit outside under bougainvillea for lunch, the second time as the sun dropped, the water colder, the light astonishing. We swam every day after that until we got back to Athens.
Those two nights on Syros were marked with a small hotel, the view from the balcony - a blue-domed church in one direction, the port in the other, walks on marble pavements and through marble squares (treading carefully, my lesson learned), swimming from rocks where children launched themselves into the sea while older men and women sat under trees watching on, Greek music playing, an elderly man teaching the littlest ones how to click their fingers in time. We swam there twice, once luxuriating in our first swim of the holiday, retreating eventually to sit outside under bougainvillea for lunch, the second time as the sun dropped, the water colder, the light astonishing. We swam every day after that until we got back to Athens.
Posts
