Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 Heading towards
This morning we actually slept in until 8 am. This is our day to leave so we ate the last of the breakfast things and then prepared the house for leaving. We stripped the beds and emptied the trash (to take with us to the main road). We were actually ready to leave before noon but since the ferry boat doesn’t leave until 7:30 pm; we finished our books, washed our hair, watched lots of television: CNN over and over and over. They have an interesting segment here on Euro News; it’s called “No Comment” and it is raw footage on extremely current events without any commentary. We really like the concept.
We were a bit worried about whether or not the boat would sail tonight as the weather stormed off and on all day and we could see whitecaps on the
Just after 3 pm we locked the doors and headed out toward Naousa and our Internet Café for one last stop. Just before Maripass we saw all kinds of cars along the highway, lots of people standing around and a huge crane. We suddenly realized that one of the city buses had gone off the road on a hill and was lying on its side in the ditch. Do hope that no one was injured as the school kids use these buses also.
Naousa is about fifteen kilometers from the house so we were soon in our smoky little cafe with the school kids playing their online games, and music blaring so loud you could hardly talk to one another. I updated some programs that were “screaming” to be downloaded every time we were online, picked up new emails; and checked the bank account, the stock market and most importantly the weather for the next ten days in
Heading into Parikia we started getting rain and heavier wind. The skies were black with clouds; would we sail tonight or have to get a hotel room in Parikia for the night and wait until Wednesday night? We checked with the travel agent as soon as we arrived and she said a definite “yes, we will sail” to our question. We then went to find the car rental agent and pay for our rental. At that time we asked if we could keep the car until time for the ferry because of the bad weather and he said “yes”.
We left the luggage in the car and found a grill nearby where Jim had roasted chicken and fries while I had a lamb Gyro or Hero…you know…they slice the meat off the rack and wrap it in pita bread…VERY GOOD!
By 7 pm the dock area came to life with lights and people started arriving with luggage. The large trucks started lining up on the dock and we were sure we were leaving. When the whistle blew we turned in the car keys and pulled our luggage over to the dock. The rain was very light but the wind was something else. They had a very difficult time docking the ferry boat and had to realign several times before they were finally able to put the ramp down and we boarded. It was a rockin’ and rollin’ trip that lasted a little bit more than an hour. We were happy to land safely on the
Jim had worked very hard this afternoon researching the guide book for possible hotels near the port that he thought he might be able to rent for 50 euros. The one he wanted was several blocks up the hill; the plan was for me to stay with the luggage while he found the hotel and negotiated the price. As we got off the ship several different people approached us about rooms. We were about a block from the ship when a very nice gentleman with brochures in hand stopped and asked if we would consider his Hotel Greco, very nice and only another block? Jim said he’d picked one out already and could he help us with directions? The man was very gracious and gave Jim directions and then I asked him: “how much is your hotel?” Only 25 euros with a bathroom he said. WOW, how could we turn that down; so we quickly followed the man and are now in a plain, but clean hotel room for the night with a bathroom and a television.
Tomorrow we’ll have a few hours to explore Syros before we leave at 12:15 for
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