a quick stop in Athens

between our drop off at Piraeus (the port) and Arachova - we headed up to the Acropolis.... and for the sake of brevity I will also include two photos from our last day (hours) in Athens before our brutal 3:30 AM wake up call for the airport transfer...

since we had spent a week in Athens one year over the Christmas holidays and just after they had gotten all shiny and spruced up for the Olympics- I had lots of Acropolis photos - some things were further along there in the reconstruction but nothing appreciable--- this is going to be the project of our lifetimes--- LOL- and it is still hard to capture photos without scaffolding....

a refurbished stadium not on the Acropolis but near our hotel:

our last island :-(

well here we have arrived at our last island - Syros, home to the capital of the Cyclades... the lovely town where we docked is called Ermoupolis.  this is a real island home for its citizens - not a touristic spot.  the town is alive with commercial activity but no souvenir stands and as far as I could tell - no t-shirt shops....

we arrive around dinner and stroll along the quay in the evening.  the next day we tour the town and are treated to an amazing breakfast pastry filled with custard (I know - in the photo it looks like cheese but trust me - this is better than a Dunkin Boston Creme when it comes to morning treats!)

most of our touring is through working markets and local stores.  no beach on this side of the island- just regular folks leading regular lives.  so on to some photos:

from the balcony of our cabin:

along the quay at night:

looking up to the top of the town in the evening:

the next day touring the market area of town:

above the sign for the pastry place- with the name of the pastry in the list (who knows which one?) and the pastry shown below - waaaay yummy!- remember - CUSTARD not cheese! (although come to think of it cheese would be a good lunch time treat...LOL)

the few souvenir style items we spied in the market:

a lone sun worshipper on his concrete "beach"-

one of the lovely cafes on a side street-

Scrabble in greek letters anyone???? LOL

our little ship in port on Syros island:

and finally- just to give you a better feel of the size of our little ship- here is a photo from last fall - the large ship docked next to our (circled) small ship was only a modest size cruise ship and you can see how it dwarfs the 26 cabin ship we have now been lucky enough to cruise on twice....

so with this we end our island touring but move on to the mainland for Athens, Arachova, Delphi, Itea, Meteora and then back to Athens for flights home- so stay tuned...

a small aside

I have written about chance in getting something unexpectedly cool with photos before - so this is not new- but tonight - while reviewing the photos from Mykonos and ditching about half of them in the edit process I came across this photo-

what was cool about it was at first a mistake - the camera and my hands reflected in the bottom of the window.  but I knew I could fix it by simply blacking out the two panes that had the "offending" intrusion-

but when I was doing this I did the left lower center pane and then started on the right and saw that at a certain point the hands were almost praying in the reflection and I decided to stop there- serendipity giving me something less than what I intended in the first round and something more in the second.... how cool is that?

mykonos- tourist mecca!

we were scheduled for an afternoon on Mykonos - and before we got there I wondered why such a famous destination would be given such short shrift on the itinerary.  it took us less than two hours to find out why.... of all the islands we had been to or would go to this was the least appealing.

it was the most overrun with tourists and had the most tacky souvenir shops along with a few higher end galleries  - I am sure we would have felt cheated if we hadn't stopped there but having done so, I was thrilled our ship was sailing later in the afternoon and that our time was limited.

photos- some of which make it look appealing- LOL

and finally the famous windmills-

onward to Syros- our last island before heading to Athens and other mainland destinations....