Onboard the Andrea Cay: The Changing of the Guard

Saturday (9/8), Carol, Peter, John and I rented a car once again and drove around the southern peninsula of mainland Greece. We went to the port city of Nafplion (not too far from the Corinth Canal we passed through several weeks ago). The town sits at the base of very steep hills, surrounded by several imposing and well-preserved forts. The greatest "find" for us, was the local Saturday morning market, which must have had 70-80 vendors who sold everything from local fruits and vegetables, fish, flowers, nuts and candies, and even plastic bottles of the locally produced wines. We had a great time, and came back to the boat loaded with all sorts of wonderful fresh produce.

We also visited a 3rd century amphitheater at Epidavros, one of the most acoustically perfect in all of Greece. It seats 13,000 people and is still used for concerts and theatre productions today. (I will have to say though, they certainly were not the most comfortable seats.) We climbed to the top and really could hear people whispering from the center of the stage floor. It was really cool. Peter entertained us with a few choice political comments...

It was with great excitement we greeted our newest cruising guests Monday: Jeff & Judy, Sandy & Andy, and my sister, Cindy. They flew into Athens and took a 40-minute, high speed ferry to Aegina where we were anchored. With an equal amount of disappointment, we bid farewell to Carol and Peter, our longest-lasting guests/crew. We will miss them a lot, from Carol’s constant researching of the sites we visited, to Peter’s brilliant political commentaries under the influence of his scintillating “wine personality”. Hopefully, we can talk them in to re-joining us after they’ve had some time to recover from the demands of the last few months, which included many, many “watches” (day and night), boat cleaning, cooking, and restaurant selections, not to mention John’s abuse at the bridge table. We did manage to talk them into staying one extra night to party with our new arrivals, and a great time was had by all, with the help of a little Greek wine of course… (It’s still not our favorite, but it is growing on us.)

After giving everyone a lazy first day to get over their jet lag, we rented cars Tuesday and drove around the island, showing them our favorite sights from our first visit here 2 weeks ago. We visited the very large Ayios Nekarios Byzantine church and monastery, the remains of the 300+ small churches on the hillside nearby and the Temple of Aphaia. And of course, we had a big, fat, Greek lunch.

Today, we headed down to Hydra, to spend a couple hours in what I consider one of the most charming towns we’ve visited, and are now heading east back towards Mykonos. The Meltemi winds subsided this morning and we have a great forecast for the next 6 days, so we plan on visiting several new islands in that area.