Athens to Syros!

Athens to Island of Syros...about 100 miles...4 hours by ferry.

The ferry we traveled on holds a hundred cars and up to a thousand people. It seemed fairly close to full. I've been on multiple kinds of car ferries before and generally knew what to expect. Along with all the cars and the walk-ons, there were a number of semi-trucks. 

I parked myself up in the enclosed area of the top deck. I knitted a while, read a while, laid my head down in my arms like a schoolchild at her desk for a while, and generally waited for the time to pass. We were rarely ever out of sight of land--looking at the map you can see there are so many islands off the coast of Greece that they dot the seascape.

As the day turned into twilight, Jeshua and I moved out onto the outside rear deck...beautiful skies above the sea.

A man with an accordion joined a group of women who circled round to dance and sing the traditional Greek folk dances.

Finally we got the half hour call to the Syros port! At 10 minutes before, we lined up to head down to the luggage hold. What a mess...no real order to the process, so it took awhile to get everyone sorted out, but down the ramp we went into the town of Hermopolis (pronounced er-mop-o-lee), the capital city of the Cyclades.

All the luggage at the top of the photo had to be handed out to its owner! What a mess!

Across the port from where the ferry anchored. Notice no wall or railing between you and the water. Our Hotel is just to the left of those buildings.

Our luggage was loaded into a truck. We could see our hotel across the u-shaped of the port, and we walked on the walkway at the water’s edge around the u to the Hermes Hotel, trooped up the front steps and into the lobby where we were welcomed and given some general instructions for our stay.

First, don't drink the tap water. This prohibition was not due to bacteria in the water, but to an excess of salt. The island uses desalination, but they've had some trouble and are recommending not drinking any of the tap water. Perfectly fine to brush your teeth or take a shower, but too much actual ingestion of it could cause digestive problems.

Second, don't leave your balcony doors open with the air conditioning on! Okay, I get that one.

Third, don't flush the toilet paper. I know this is shocking when you first encounter it, but I had already had plenty of practice in Thailand. A convenient, little. lidded can is provided beside each toilet-- wonderful Western toilets, I might add.

Breakfast is served between 7 and 10:30 each morning.

Welcome to Hermopolis!

It was after 1 a.m. local time by the time I crawled into bed. Mostly up for about 32 hours...and a 9:15a.m. meet up time in the morning. Took me a little while to settle down, but finally....ZZZZZ…..