Greek Cruise Adventure
Traveling to Greece is a dream come true. You’ve heard of the Greek Islands all your life and picture what they might be like. Then that picture becomes reality. It was a great opportunity, not only for me but also for my daughter. Therefore, to take in more in less time, we chose a cruise.
Mykonos was the first island we visited. It is an ancient city of Greece. In fact, tourism didn’t begin to flourish on this island until the early 1960s when it became the favorite shelter for the artists and later the hippies. Now it is one of the favorite Greek Isles with many sites of history still visible. The Archaeological Museum of Mykonos displays many artifacts of that history as well.
One iconic photo opt is the Mykonos windmills. They represent the earliest manufacturing units in Greece, showing the locals’ great use of innovation in their effort to harness the enormous power of the wind...which is always present. Obviously from my picture, it was a very popular place for island visitors.
Notice the frequent use of whitewash and blue paint used in Mykonos and Santorini and many other places in Greece. The Greeks are very proud of their flag with its blue and white colors. They honor it by painting their buildings, benches, poles, signs, walls, churches, gates, windmills, and most everything in blue and white.
Our next island to visit was Santorini. It is also one of the Cyclades islands in the Aegean Sea. It was devastated by a volcanic eruption in the 16th century BC, forever shaping its rugged landscape. The whitewashed, cubiform houses of its two principal towns, Fira and Oia, cling to cliffs above an underwater caldera (crater). They overlook the sea, small islands to the west and beaches made up of black, red and white lava pebbles.
To access the towns, which are all on top of the cliff, there were donkeys to provide the transportation or a long, steep walkway. Later other means of access became available, including a tram/cable car, which is much faster. Whatever mode of transportation you use, you will arrive at a most charming town.
The beautiful and unique blue and white churches and other buildings are everywhere in Santorini.
The next stop was Milos, a little-known Greek Island. It is the south-westernmost island in the Cyclades group. This Greek Isle is not as large or as populated as the other islands, but it has several nice beach-es that we enjoyed. This also offered the opportunity to see our ship, the Celestial Crystal.
Sailing along, we then visited Crete, now part of Greece. Humans have inhabited the island before 130,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic age. Crete was the center of Europe’s first advanced civilization, the Minoans. From 2700 to 1420 BC, it was overrun by the Mycenaean civilization. But now, Heraklion, the administrative capital, is a modern bustling city. You can still find bits of the old civilization as in the Minoan Palace of Knossos, the main Bronze Age archaeological site that is being excavated. That was interesting and worth seeing.
That was the old Crete. This is the new Crete.
We took a little zigzag into Turkey on this trip to visit the ancient city of Ephesus. It was destroyed in an earthquake a couple thousand years ago. They are now excavating and rebuilding the city. It’s mag-nificent. This is a picture of the Ephesus library.
Denise made a couple of new friends in Turkey.
You can’t imagine traveling through Greece or sailing to the Greek Isles without enjoying the Greek cuisine. As you can imagine, dining in a Greek restaurant in the U.S. is a very different experience from dining in a typical restaurant in Greece. While there are so many dishes to choose from using many varieties of fish, lamb, olives, etc., my favorite dish is Moussaka. My taste buds jumped for joy at traditional Moussaka baked in a clay pot which I learned was the ONLY way to cook it.
It doesn’t look that different and really doesn’t taste that different, but I was convinced that it wasn’t truly authentic unless made in Greece and that a clay receptacle was involved.
One Greek dish that I thoroughly enjoyed was Virgin Eggplant Salad. I had never tasted it before. In fact, I had never heard of it. (And I’m still not sure where the “Virgin” part came from.” But it was quite an enjoyable side dish and I’ve even made it since I’ve been back to the U.S. It’s fairly simple to make.
—Use a medium size eggplant, washed. Put the whole thing on a foil-lined pan in the oven at 350 degrees uncovered, and bake for about 1 hour. Remove the pan from the oven and let it cool. Then you will be able to easily peel off and dispose of the skin of the eggplant. Cut the eggplant (avoiding the part with the most seeds) in about 1-inch cubes into a bowl.
—Cut two tomatoes into cubes approximately the same size as the eggplant and add to the bowl.
—Finely chop about 1/4 Cup of red onion and add to the eggplant and tomatoes.
—Crumble “some” feta cheese into the mixture. It can’t be a Greek dish without feta cheese.
—Chop some parsley and add to give the dish a little extra color.
—Drizzle with fine extra-virgin olive oil. (Ah, maybe the source of the word “virgin” in the name.)
Serve chilled or at room temperature. Serves 4-6 as a side dish. Serves one Greek food connoisseur as a meal. Afterward, top it off with a shot of Ouzo and you know you’ve enjoyed a Greek meal.
While the Greek Islands are charming and full of history, the City of Athens will take your breath away. There, as you travel among all the modern features, you will suddenly come upon remnants of the heart of Ancient Greece. And towering high over the city sits the Acropolis as if watching over Athens.
This was the view of the Acropolis from the open window of the restaurant where we dined on our last night in Athens.
Then it was back to Athens! There is a lot to see there, so we kept on the run for our last two days in Greece.
It was a wonderful trip to Greece. I would highly recommend it to everyone. While you can travel back in time by thousands of years, you can also see modern day life right beside it. And it also verified that you can meet some of the nicest people in this world wherever you go.
