Eric & Autumn's World Roll Up: Hydra

Friday, October 7, 2011

Hydra 2

After a good night's sleep, we got up ready to shop! At breakfast, Autumn ended up with some very sketchy bran-mush-cereal with "disgusting milk", but powered through in order to give the "crap-a-rias" her all. We found a few treasures in between touring around town, cat viewing and getting ready to hop on the "Flyingdolphin" back to Athens just in time to do a bit of laundry and catch our flight to Turkey.

Upon our arrival in Turkey, our driver picked us up from to the airport and whisked us off to our apartment for the weekend. Now, I will be the first to admit that our basement / sub-basement rental was NOT my best hotel find. The location was the redeeming factor, but the mini-scorpions were not something that was mentioned in the guidebook or the brochure!!

Once we settled in and finished our pest eradication, we headed out on the town to check out the neighborhood. Near the Grand Bazaar, an old man tried to talk Virgile into some late-night shopping with some friendly soul-patch petting, but we decided not to take him up on his offer of great deals, and instead grabbed some Turkish delight and went off to bed.

More cobblestone streets of Hydra.

Cat-a-palooza! These pretty kitties just wanted some of the daily catch from the early morning fisherman.

Byzantine mosaics at the local town church.

Time to shop!

No matter where we go, Autumn can sniff out a cactus a mile away!

View of the harbor.

Buenos dias Grecia!

FIRE!

The Flyingdolphin!!

Our first sight in Turkey...Turkish Delight!! Yum :)

View from the room in Istanbul...

HELP!

Note: As an additional bonus, there was most definitely a sweatshop on the other side of the apartment across from our razor wire fence in our "Garden Patio".

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Hydra 1

This morning we trekked out of Athens to the islands. We took the metro to Pireaus port which included getting on a train and riding one stop backwards before bypassing the station we started at to continue on our way. Confused? So were we. Although the Greeks invented logic, they apparently choose not to employ it in creating construction detour routes...

Anyway, we made it down to the port and grabbed some questionable pastries for breakfast. We thought we had found the right ship, but after checking the ticket booth with no one working at it, we found a maintenance guy who directed us to the right boat with a combo of Greek mumblings and charades. On the boat, we were treated to two hours of Greek soap operas on board before arriving at Hydra.

It was a very cute town with donkeys instead of cars and cats instead of off-season tourists. We checked into our hotel, which was blue and whitewashed and very Greeky before heading out for the day. Our first stop was at a cliff-side cafe for lunch before walking around the island to the beach. The guidebook said we would be strolling through quaint villages with "pocket sized harbors" which apparently was code for schlepping up a donkey trail then bungling our way through a labyrinth of weird, empty towns populated solely by scraggly stray cats and hermits.

Over an hour later, we finally found the palapa filled "beach" and got to relax in the shade with cold drinks and our trashy vacation novels...aka paradise! A somewhat unfriendly off-season worker collected our 6 euros for two beach chairs and we were set. I went for a swim, and we tried to ignore the topless sunbathers (mostly old ladies who really should have left their nude sunbathing days behind them about 100 years ago!). All in all, it was a unique experience.

When we were ready to leave, we hailed a water taxi back to town for pasta at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the rooftops and mountains.

Hmmm...it looks good, but maybe we should have taken the sign that advertised in English "All pastries have been frozen!" as a sign that this was not a good choice!

At last, the Flyingcat!

A warm "Kalimera" (good morning) welcome from the local donkeys.

Que greeky!

Really Europe...Have you not hear of queen beds?!!? REALLY?

I guess the view from the room made up for it...

I had hoped to see a fridge or a big screen TV, but I guess roofing is funny enough to see on a donkey!

Yeah! Were on an island!

Ok, so there were like one million cats to every one Greek on Hydra (and in the rest of Greece as you will see in upcoming posts). It was kind of like "Where's Waldo", so I decided to take a picture of every cat I saw...I swear I'm not just a crazy cat person!