Greece (May 19-30, 2006)

This past May, Roanne and I took a trip to Greece. For me it was partly for school and partly for fun, and for Roanne it was all for fun. I was attending a conference on the Greek island of Kos, the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, along with another student from my lab, Sudip Shekhar. Roanne had been in Europe prior to the trip for work, so she was going to meet Sudip and I at our hotel in Kos. I flew out on Saturday May 19, and after transfers in Portland, Frankfurt, and Athens, I finally arrived in Kos. The final leg of my flight from Athens to Kos was delayed by a fair bit, so I didn’t make it to the hotel until after midnight, by which point I had been traveling for over 24 hours, so I was pretty tired. Roanne and Sudip had already arrived, so we talked for a bit and then went to bed. The next day Sudip and I went to the conference and Roanne sat by the pool at the hotel. That evening we went into Kos and walked around a bit, and saw some old ruins. Here are Roanne and Sudip standing under an arch:

The ruins were all grown in and pretty neglected, I guess in Greece ancient ruins are a dime a dozen, so unless it is really impressive like the Parthenon, no one cares too much about it. We then met up with my advisor, Dr. David Allstot for dinner at a really good Greek restaurant. Here is a photo from the dinner:

From right to left are my advisor Dave Allstot, Sudip, Waisu Lau (probably spelled incorrectly, sorry Waisu) who is a former student of Dave’s, and his wife, Roanne and myself, and a Professor from the Rochester Institute of Technology, named Paul. Our hotel was about a 20 minute walk from the conference venue, and on the first day we had been walking back and forth. On the second day we wised up, and rented scooters to get back and forth and wherever else we wanted to go. Actually, as Sudip pointed out, we rented “scooties”, since scooters are bigger than what we had. They were 80cc, and pretty fun to drive aside from the highly nonlinear acceleration characteristic which made them a bit hard to control. They were pretty fast though, Sudip and I got up to over 95 km/hr on them (on a road with a 50 km/hr posted limit, but in Greece being a crazy driver is a prerequisite to being on the road). Here is a photo of Roanne and myself on our yellow scootie:

That night we went to a banquet for the conference, which had mediocre and some super long and boring acceptance speeches for some awards. And we sat super close to a speaker, which totally sucked. This was the second major lesson I have learned about attending conferences: never attend banquets, even if they are free. The first (and even more important) lesson I learned is to never attend the plenary session. They are first thing in the morning, super boring, and a colossal waste of time. That afternoon we also went and checked out the Askeplion, which was the site of Hippocrates first school of medicine, the birthplace of Western (i.e., real and effective) medicine. Here are some photos from that outing. Here are Roanne and myself posing for a photo:

Note my super cool aviator glasses. Here is a nice photo of some pillars with some ruins in the background, with some nice light. One disappointing thing I learned in Greece is that all of the cool looking standing pillars you see (like the ones below) have not been standing for thousands of years as one might think, they have been re-erected in modern times. The discoloured sections on the pillars below are segments of concrete that have been used to piece together the broken pillars and stand them up again. I used to think that they were found standing up. This was a disheartening discovery for me.

Here is a picture of dear Sudip and myself standing amongst the pillars. The reason that Sudip will hereafter be referred to as “dear Sudip” is because that is what one of the students in the class that he is TAing calls him, and I think that is pretty funny.

Here is a nice photo of Hippocrates’ fountain of youth that we discovered. We all drank from it, so in a few years we will see if it worked.

The next morning we got up early to do a hike, and happened to see the sun rise, which was nice. Here is the rising sun reflected in the window of our hotel:

The hotel we were staying at (Hotel Archipelago) was pretty nice, it had a big pool. There were a ton of Germans staying there, lots of them had big bellies and loved lying in the sun all day. For me, the highlight of the hotel was one of the reception clerks who was super funny. I don’t think I can write anything that would convey how funny he was, so I won’t even try, but it was really fun talking with him. We then rode our scooters to the start of the hike, which was up a small mountain to the highest point on Kos. Here is a photo of Roanne and dear Sudip making upward progress:

There were tons of interesting plants that we encountered, and most of them were very thorny. The landscape was pretty arid, and I guess the plants need thorns to prevent getting eaten. Here is a photo of dear Sudip among the thorns, close to the top:

On top of the mountain there was a little church, which was neat, but even cooler were the turtles (or maybe tortoises) that we found. Here is a photo of me giving one a little affection.

Here is a photo of Roanne and myself inside of the church. The major religion in Greece is “Greek Orthodox”. I never quite understood what that was, but their churches all look the same, white structures with domes (often blue) on top.

Here is a photo of me outside the church:

That afternoon we attended the conference again, and for dinner Sudip and I went to a Greek Taverna and sampled some Ouzo. It is pretty strong stuff, about 40% alcohol, with a licorice taste to it. I don’t normally drink much, so I was feeling it a bit, and this coupled with Sudip’s “bottoms up” philosophy of drinking left me with a bit of an Ouzo headache for the rest of the night. In the evening we caught a flight back to Athens. We got in pretty late, around 11:30pm, but Roanne’s friend Thanos (an international product planner from Microsoft who she works with) was very kind to pick us up from the airport. Thanos drove us to central Athens where Sudip checked into a hostel he had prebooked and Roanne and I got a room in a cheap but super nice hotel. The next morning we set off bright and early (11:00) to go see Athens. We headed straight for the big money, the Acropolis. The Acropolis refers to a collection of ruins in the middle of Athens, up on a plateau with cliffs on three sides. The first thing we encountered was the Theater of Dionysis shown below:

I take no responsibility for spelling the names of Greek people or places, as I don’t feel like going to look anything up, and I am counting on memory and luck to spell things correctly. After this we realized that it was scorching hot and we had nothing to drink, so we exited the Acropolis compound to stock up on water and juice, and then re-entered. The next thing we encountered was the temple of Athena, shown below with Roanne and I posing in front of it as proof that we were there:

Notice all the scaffolding, a major project has been underway here since 2002 where they are completely disassembling the temple and rebuilding it. Most of the stuff here has gone through several major reconstructions, each one lasting at least 10 years, and spaced from one another by about 50 years. It seems that each time they screw it up, and then realize 50 years later that they need to redo it again. So if you ever go to see this stuff, the chances of it being under reconstruction are pretty good. The Parthenon was also under reconstruction, as were most of the other buildings within the Acropolis. Below is a shot of the Parthenon:

It was pretty awesome to see. This is a shot of the non-scaffolding side, which was a lot more impressive. Below is a shot of some ladies holding up a balcony with their heads:

And here is a view from the Acropolis looking down on some other ruins which also had a name, but apparently it wasn’t too catchy as it doesn’t come to mind:

Here is a photo looking back up at the Acropolis. They light it all up at night, and since it is right in the middle of Athens it is pretty cool to look at while you walking around the city in the evening:

We then took a subway to go up this high point in middle of the city called Mt. Likapodous. We took a slow and lame tram thing to get up which was a huge mistake, I could have walked up faster. There was, of course, a church on top, and some nice views. Here is Roanne posing, about to get mad at me for not wanting to go shopping:

Note the vast expanse of Athens. It has over 5 million people, but strangely enough there is no central business section with high rise office buildings. We didn’t see any buildings over about 10 stories. On the way back from Mt. Whatever we passed by the parliament buildings, and happened to see part of the changing of the guard. Greek soldiers wear strange outfits, they have giant pom poms on their shoes, and they walk like Basil Faulty in the episode where he is trying to cheer up the Germans by doing an Adolph Hitler impression.

We then took a subway to Piraeus, which is the main port of Athens. Here we boarded our ferry for an overnight trip to the island of Santorini (also referred to as Thira). Roanne and I had a cabin with bunk beds, so we get a bit of sleep during the night, with periodic awakenings by a loud announcement as we came into each intermediate port along the way. The ferry departed Athens at 10:00 pm, and we cruised into Santorini at 8:00 the next morning. Here is a photo of Roanne on the ferry in the morning:

Here is a photo of another boat that we took as we were arriving in the port of Santorini. In the background is a small unnamed island.

Arriving at the port, we were besieged by dozens of Greeks trying to trick us into staying at their low quality hotels. We knew better, so we hailed a taxi and headed to a travel agent. We ended up staying in a traditional villa in the town of Imerovigli. We had incredible views, as the villa was built into the side of a cliff that dropped off steeply to the Mediterranean. The island of Santorini is half of the caldera of an old volcano, so it is crescent shaped, and in the center is another island which is the cone of the volcano, which has erupted as recently as the 1950s. Here are some photos of our hotel, starting with the inside:

It was painted (as was most other stuff) in the Greek colours of blue and white. Here is a close up of the view out the window:

We also had a really nice pool, here is a shot of that at night. In the background on the upper left is our room.

We spent part of the morning getting our accommodations sorted out, then after lunch we hiked out to a rocky outcropping called Skaros that was close to our hotel. Here is a shot of Skaros from the approach:

We took the path that is visible in the photo, and once we got around the seaward side, we found, surprise, a church. All places in Greek that are not very accessible seem to have churchs. Greek parishioners must be very fit from the arduous approaches they have to make every Sunday. Here is a shot of the church:

In the background is the sea. We then continued up to the top of the formation, which was pretty fun, as it involved a couple of low fifth class moves (a gumby filter, if you will). Here is a photo of Roanne and myself up on the top:

The red circle to our left denotes our hotel we were staying at (although the resolution here is too low to pick it out). Here is another shot looking back towards our hotel, here you can see the caldera clearly. We are inside the volcano, and the cliffs in this photo are the inside of the rim.

After the hike we returned to our hotel, and after consulting with the guy who ran our hotel (a really nice guy named Vassili), we decided to do a hike north along the rim of the caldera (pictured above) to another village named “Ia”. Here is a photo of Roanne and I enroute to Ia via the caldera trail:

When we arrived in Ia we spent some time walking around the village and looking in shops. It was really pretty, all stone buildings with a narrow cobblestone road winding between them. Here is a photo of Ia, notice the windmills and also the path going down to the water.

From Ia we walked down some steps (352 to be exact) to a small harbour where there were a few seafood restaurants. We walked along a path beside the water, and I decided to take my first dip in the Greek Mediterranean in a rocky pool (see below). It turned out that this was a terrible idea, as there are these little spiny animals that stick to the rocks (like a tennis ball sized underwater porcupine), and not being able to see anything as I blindly waded into the rocky pool (that I had named the “generator tub”), I stepped on a couple of these, which was pretty painful, and for the remainder of the trip I had their needles embedded in my foot, which made walking pretty painful. Everyone else (Roanne, Sudip, Vassili, Vassili’s mom) thought I should go to a doctor to try and have them removed, but I was confident that my body would take care of them by itself, and it turns out I was right, as a few weeks later I am still alive.

We saw the sun set as we were hanging out on the water, which was really nice with some ships going by:

Here is another nice photo of the town of Ia, looking up from the harbour:

We then decided to eat at one of the seafood restaurants at the harbour, pictured below. We ate at the restaurant to the left. It was really good, even Roanne liked the fish that she ate, and normally she is repulsed by seafood.

After dinner we headed back up the steps to the town (during the day you can pay a local to ride a donkey up, but we didn’t try), and made our way back to our villa. The next morning (Saturday) we slept in a bit, and had a relaxing morning reading by the pool and swimming. Once we finally got rolling, we walked to the town of Fira and rented a scooter. This one was 1000 times better than the one we had in Kos, it actually had a predictable acceleration, although it was a bit lacking in topend speed, and the suspension was a bit soft. On the scooter we headed to the southern tip of the island (about 20 km) to one of the beaches named “Red Beach” (as explained by the photo below):

We read and swam here for a while, and then scooted over to another beach (can’t remember the name), which had black sand, and was also quite nice. Then we headed back to our hotel, and sat by the pool reading and watching the sun set. Here is a photo of me in lounge mode:

Here is Roanne doing the same. Note the wine and cheese, we made a point of only eating Greek cheese, and it was pretty good.

Here is a shot of Roanne with the sunset in the background.

That night we went and ate at a Greek restaurant that our host Vassili had recommended, called “Vanila”. It was really good, but so much food! I was feeling pretty full after the appetizers, and could barely walk by the time we were done. I have a policy of eating a lot when I am on vacation, but this was a bit too much. The next morning we again had a relaxing morning by the pool, and then headed over to another beach called Parissa beach. I had acquired a mask and snorkel the day before, so I made use of this, although there wasn’t too much interesting stuff to see at that location. I also did some traversing on some limestone cliffs, awesome rock with great pockets and features, it seems like Greece has tons of untapped climbing potential. After the beach we went to a winery where we toured through their wine museum (pictured below) which was all underground in these caves, and then had a wine tasting.

I tried some dessert wine, which I had never tasted, and it was pretty good, really thick, sweet, and syrupy. After this we scooted back to Ia since we had really liked that town, and wanted to walk around some more, and I wanted to go snorkeling in the generator tub and get an up close look at the creature that was currently residing in the sole of my foot. Here is Roanne walking through Ia:

Here is the view looking back from Ia towards our hotel in Imerovigli:

We then returned to Imerovigli, and decided to hike out to Skaros point to watch the sunset. It was really nice, we brought some wine and cheese, and there were great views in every direction. Here is a picture of Roane relaxing as the sun sets:

Here are a couple of shots looking back at our villa from Skaros, I circled our accommodation in red. Our villa had about 4 or 5 rooms, all of the places were really small and run by families.

Here is a close up where you can see our room, it is the boxy room that sticks up above the others (which contributed to the great views from our windows!):

And finally, the sun set on our last day in Santorini:

The next morning we made our way back to the harbour, and caught a high speed boat (see below) back to Athens.

Back in Athens we rendezvoused with Sudip who had left Santorini to spend some time on another Island called Mykonos, and we also met up with Thanos the manos again (Roanne’s friend from work who lives in Greece). We spent some time walking around the Athens flea market, and then Thanos took us to eat at a café with a great view of the Acropolis, especially as the sun set and they lit it up. We drank ouzo and Thanos educated us on Greek history and cuisine, and finally we made our way back to our hotel. The next morning we got up early and caught a taxi (taxis are way cheaper in Greece than they are in North America) to the airport for the long flight home.