First -Happy 95th Birthday Mom!!
I hope Mom doesn't mind that I'm away for her big day-she instigated my love of travel!
It is wonderful to wake up and watch the sun rising over the calm blue Ionian sea. This is the life! I rarely know what time it is or the day! After another wonderful breakfast we snorkel for an hour, then we sail to a small deserted beach on the island of Ithica where Oddyseus hung out. Tonight we will spend our first night in port in the town of Kioni on Ithaca. We take a taxi tour of the island. Our driver takes us through small villages and tells us that there used to be 500-600 residents, now maybe 5-35 in a lot of them during the winter. The young people leave as there is no work. We wonder what will happen to these beautiful Greek villages! We visit a monastery and similar to the other one, only one monk and a very old couple that are the caretakers. We wonder what will happen when they die off. There was a young woman helping the monk to move a table from the chapel. Caroline is curious about this relationship and we recruit Jean ( who is the most tactful of our group) to ask our driver "who's the chick?" We have some good laughs about this over supper at the lovely Itika restaurant in the mountains. We had some more laughs when Randy told us his story about the demented aunt using the toilet sitting in middle of the rec room during bathroom renovations. Jim has another funny "plumbing" story so you can see things go downhill from here. And literally as our taxi driver takes us back to the harbour "the back way!"
One thing I haven't mentioned in my ravings is the camaderie you develop with your ship mates. We are lucky to be sharing this adventure with super people. We have learned alot from our fellow travellers and our crew. Another fun day on the Kristen.
Oh yes the chick is married to the caretakers' son.
Picture is of Kioni.
I hope Mom doesn't mind that I'm away for her big day-she instigated my love of travel!
It is wonderful to wake up and watch the sun rising over the calm blue Ionian sea. This is the life! I rarely know what time it is or the day! After another wonderful breakfast we snorkel for an hour, then we sail to a small deserted beach on the island of Ithica where Oddyseus hung out. Tonight we will spend our first night in port in the town of Kioni on Ithaca. We take a taxi tour of the island. Our driver takes us through small villages and tells us that there used to be 500-600 residents, now maybe 5-35 in a lot of them during the winter. The young people leave as there is no work. We wonder what will happen to these beautiful Greek villages! We visit a monastery and similar to the other one, only one monk and a very old couple that are the caretakers. We wonder what will happen when they die off. There was a young woman helping the monk to move a table from the chapel. Caroline is curious about this relationship and we recruit Jean ( who is the most tactful of our group) to ask our driver "who's the chick?" We have some good laughs about this over supper at the lovely Itika restaurant in the mountains. We had some more laughs when Randy told us his story about the demented aunt using the toilet sitting in middle of the rec room during bathroom renovations. Jim has another funny "plumbing" story so you can see things go downhill from here. And literally as our taxi driver takes us back to the harbour "the back way!"
One thing I haven't mentioned in my ravings is the camaderie you develop with your ship mates. We are lucky to be sharing this adventure with super people. We have learned alot from our fellow travellers and our crew. Another fun day on the Kristen.
Oh yes the chick is married to the caretakers' son.
Picture is of Kioni.
No comments:
Post a Comment