Day 103 - Monday April 10 - surprise visit to Katakolon, Greece

Katakolon photos
position at 7:30am: N36 31.22 latitude E22 06.15 longitude
(about 380 miles E of Siracusa, Sicily)
temperature: 58F, 92% humidity, cloudy
distance since FLL: 33,168 miles
Even though it was chilly on deck, it was pleasant walking this morning mainly because of the light winds. Clay had the deck to himself for the first couple of miles, but there were maybe 8-10 people walking by the time he quit.
At the start of the night leaving Kusadasi, the winds and swell had the cabin cracking and the ship swaying from side to side. But during the night, the cracking subsided, and this morning there is only a slight vibration that you can feel.
We received a letter overnight from the tour desk wanting to confirm our disembarkation details for FLL. This trip is rapidly coming to an end.
Debbie is still dealing with the anitbiotics' side effects, but she has started taking the stairs again instead of using the elevators so that is a good sign. She is still short of breath, but can make it slowly for 4 or 5 flights without gasping and coughing up a lung. We're happy for any small improvements at this point. Thanks to all for the good wishes for her improved health.
Did we mention yesterday that we love Turkey and the Turkish people? We do! If anyone out there is looking for a place to visit or revisit, we highly recommend Turkey. It is such a wonderful country and the people are so warm and friendly. There is so much of interest to see there. While we are eager to get home and stay there for a good, long while, we do look forward to returning to Turkey one day. We are still sad to have skipped Libya, but Kusadasi was an excellent substitute and we are very happy that we got to return there. If you are reading this Sue, we did not forget about Jessica's 7-day bracelet. Since Kusadasi is where we bought the first one, we did look for one yesterday. It seems that in the cleanup and improvements of the port area that they got rid of all the stock that they did not think would be of interest to tourists. Those bracelets were a kind of folkloric thing and they just did not carry them in any of the stores near the port any more. Sorry.
We are closely skirting the coast of Greece this morning before crossing over to Sicily. We are happy for the very calm seas this morning. This is the Mediterranean that we love and remember. We don't love the rough one! Though weremember that one, too. We were on TV this morning on Voyager Today! Clay was on his funnel climb and there was a lot of good footage of the inside of the funnel as well as the views from that high vantage point. Jamie also videotaped Debbie waving up to Clay and that was on TV, too. There was some footage of the woman passenger who went up with Clay and her big, long camera lense. Then, the footage of Clay with his little tiny pocket-sized camera. Clay has lamented long and hard about not having a smaller camera until this morning. Poor Clay with his little tiny camera! Clay got himself a brief case of lense envy this morning! Too funny!
Debbie slept in again today and we had a late breakfast at Compass Rose. We had a view of Greece going by the windows with the sun shining brightly behind the mountains. It was very scenic. Debbie had Eggs Benedict and Clay had 2 eggs over easy with baby lamb chops. Debbie also got a chocolate croissant. It was a good breakfast. We are happy for this sea day and hope to get lots of rest before we hit Europe.
Well, so much for the best laid plans! We were enjoying skirting Greece this morning but had wondered about it. As Mishiel finished off her morning deliveries of ice and fruit and Debbie was ready to take her morning nap and we just got a letter off the door that says we are docking in an hour to spend from noon to 6pm at Katakolon, Greece! Also, as SSS Gold members we are invited to a Special Event onshore. There will be a Greek Taverna Experience 10 minutes walking from the dock and will be open to us for Greek snacks, wine and music from 1pm to 3pm. OK, time to go go go again! Capt. Dag is speaking into our cabins right now and said that he would just be too sad to sail the Greek archipelago without a stop there on a World Cruise. Well said.
Dag said it is harder to arrange surprises for World Cruisers but that he is happy when he can do it.
Well, we are happy too and we are really surprised! Apparently, Olympia is a 45-minute drive away. We would hate to be this close and miss that but we will have to see what happens after we arrive.
Debbie decided to go ahead with her nap since the GPS looked like we were still pretty far away. We wound up not being docked until 12:30pm, so she got a one hour nap and that helped. We docked on the starboard side today and Capt. Dag must have been sad to have to pull straight in since that meant we had to leave by backing out. No signature spins here! We were on the dock by about 1pm and there was a bus to take people to the taverna, Mouragio. We walked around the other way on the dock to take pictures of Voyager and then started strolling towards the little, one lane village of Katakolon, of about 1000 people. There were a lot of taxis just outside the dock and several were offering Olympia. We discussed missing the Greek Taverna party and thought it would be OK with both of us. We asked about the 3rd driver who offered us Olympia, how much it was and how much time we needed. He said we could leave right now and have lunch on the road and he would wait for us 1 hour at Olympia and still get us back in plenty of time for the ship. He said that we could not do the archaelogical site and the museum at Olympia, just the site with stadium in 1 hour. The cost would be 50 Euros. He said it was about a 30-minute drive each way. He had a nice, new Mercedes with 4 doors. We decided we had to see the site of the original Olympics and off we went. Apparently, the taverna party was very nice and we were sorry to have missed it, but Olympia closed at 3pm so we could not do both, we had to chose. We still think we chose right. We stopped for lunch and to use an ATM to get some Euros in the modern town of Olympia. We ate at a nice little sidewalk cafe. Clay had gyros and a Mythos beer. Debbie had souvlaki and a Coke. It was a quick but very tasty lunch. We invited our driver, Andreas to eat with us but he said he already had lunch. He did sit with us and drink some juice. He had lived in Melbourne, Australia for a dozen years or so and that is where he learned to read and speak English. Debbie joked that he did not have an Aussie accent and he gave her a perfect 'gooday mate.' Debbie asked him when he knew our ship was coming, because we had not found out until 11am. He was shocked and said that he knew it on Friday, 3 days earlier. He lives in Pirgos now and comes to drive mostly tourists from the port to Olympia. He said that in the busy season of July and August there are an average of 35 ships a month through this tiny port of Katakolon. It has berths for 2 cruise ships and it can accept much larger ships than ours. He said that there is construction under way for a 3rd berth, but that work has been stopped for months and it was not clear why or when it would resume. He thought that the missing 3rd berth was costing the town some cruise business. It was a beautiful spring day at the archaeological sight. There were probably fewer than 100 people there and probably most of that was 2 buses of schoolkids. One bus of German tourists. We only saw one couple and the Spanish father and his 2 boys from the ship at Olympia. The 2 boys raced the length of the stadium, they pooped out and played on the way back up the length though. Debbie asked their Dad if he was clocking them, but he wasn't. Surprisingly for us, the stadium had no seats so you kind of had to use your imagination. But there was a lot of the temple complex left behind and they let you walk through the ruins of most of the big temples and other buildings. It was an another amazing place to witness history. The lawns were full of blooming wildflowers in white, yellow, purple, red and there were purple-flowered trees in bloom everywhere. There was a kind of tree like aspen, or cottonwood, that was sheding and the air was full of white fluff. It was a very scenic and photogenic place and we can only hope that in our rushed one hour tour that we got a few excellent pictures. We were back to the village of Katakolon by 3:30pm. We had a couple of hours to stroll the one street and the seaside walk of shops and restaurants. We were very surprised by how friendly every one we met in Greece was this time. When we traveled around Greece before in 1999, everyone was really nasty to us. We were in a lot of tourist towns then and not just Athens and the abusive treatment was uniform at that time. It did not leave us with a very good first impression of Greece and we had not thought to ever return to this country. So, we had pretty low expectations of our surprise visit here. Here all the shop people we spoke to in Katakolon and Olympia were welcoming and friendly and they all spoke English. Many of the taxi drivers seemed to speak English as well, and ours spoke excellent English, with either an American or Aussie accent on demand. This was an even bigger shock than the calming of the Turkish merchants in Kusadasi. (It was really funny that they all pointed out to us that they were "not aggressive" each time we did not buy from one of them. When we did buy they asked us if we appreciated that they had been "non-aggressive" and did not price so high that we were uncomfortable, but still high enough that they had time to work us through the bargaining deal. They had clearly gotten the memo about making Westerners uncomfortable with the yelling and grabbing.) We did not enjoy our time in Greece at all the first timein 1999, but today was a really pleasant shock. In addition to the shock of visiting Greece at all, the people could not have been nicer or more welcoming. We will have to reevaluate Greece as a place to return again in the future. Debbie picked out the house she wants to renovate and it is on a hillside near Pirgos. Clay thinks it looks like to much work. We did not see a house for us in Turkey though! Clay told Debbie not to look in the jewelry store windows today, but she did anyway and is still very happy with her bracelet.
Tonight is Informal and we are going to dress and go to Compass Rose. It was very crowded in CR tonight. Debbie had a plums appetizer and pear sherbet followed by a plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce. She also had her first glass of wine in 3 weeks or so. There was a welshreisling tonight and she likes that is drugfree at present (other than the continuing OD of meclizine, but that doesn't count.) Clay had 2 scallops, pear sherbet and rouladen. Clay had ice cream and Debbie had a custard and meringue dessert called Brasso di Mercedes. Debbie really liked her dessert but would not have ordered it based on what was written in the menu. She asked the waiter, Jason, and he accurately described it. Good.
We move the clocks back an hour tonight which is a good thing because Debbie is really desperate for some extra rest now. We are not scheduled to arrive in Siracusa, Sicily tomorrow until 10am, so hopefully she will sleep in again as well. The seas are very calm and smooth so far. It was not dark until about 8pm. We could see the island of Zakinthos pass by the windows of Compass Rose during dinner. It was nice. While a restful day would have been much appreciated today, we are very pleased with the big surprise day that Capt. Dag had for us instead. Now, we missed Libya but we got Turkey and Greece instead, so even if you had been to both it was a two-fer and that is always a good deal.
Katakolon photos