Day Off? No – Cruise 3 Islands!

Cruise Greek Islands

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Remember that this is Boxing Day, a national holiday (the day Father Christmas comes and brings the presents in the Greek Orthodox world) and most everything is closed. It was supposed to be a “day at leisure” but we had an opportunity to take a one day cruise of 3 Saronic islands. So we did. A bus picked us up at the hotel at 7:10am.

First stop Hydra. A large contingent of look-alike cats came to greet the boat. All cats look healthy and sleek. We hoped off and strolled around through some narrow streets, checked out the local shops and rested at a local cafe “Porto Fino” for a bit of refreshment. No cars allowed on this island.

Back on the boat and time for lunch. It’s salad, moussaka and a lemon cake! Very tasty!

And on to the second island of Poros for a brief 45 minutes. We walked along the waterfront road, looking for a map of Greece. Found one, walked on to find a better deal, but when we came back the shop was closed for siesta. Oh well.

The third island is Aegina. We opted for a side tour (20 Euros each) to see a church dedicated to the most recent Greek Saint (all hand made stuff on the interior – hard carved chairs, alters – very ornate – gorgeous). Then on to the ancient Temple of Aphaia (maybe she and Athena are the same goddess) on the east side of the island. Then back onto the bus for a stop at the pistachio factory. There are pistachio trees all over Aegina. We got a very brief demo of how pistachios are packaged and bought a couple bags of very freshly toasted (still warm) nuts.

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What did we do during the cruising part of the voyage? Why worked, of course. We spent about 5 hours talking over file layouts, changes to matrix functions, and technical details of new district features for our products. I know this probably doesn’t sound like fun to you, but I got about 10 pages of notes! Yay!
We were dropped off back at hotel about 7:30pm. A fun day!