Marti & I arrived in Athens Friday afternoon May 12, totally wiped out from Bon Voyage partying until almost takeoff with pals from the States who were visiting us in Paris. We took a long afternoon hotel room siesta at the Esperia Palace. I hated the hotel. The room they gave us was dingy & shopworn. I had taken great pains to find us appropriately deluxe accommodations at our other destinations (this was, after all, a 25th Wedding Anniversary trip). We were only staying one night here at the outset, but planned be back for five nights at the end of our vacation. This room -- or this hotel -- would have to go! My bride & I embarked upon a late walk down to Plaka searching for our favorite Greek vegetarian restaurant, which is never open. We wound up instead at a meat resto called Stamatopoulo Palia Plakiotiki Taverna, sat outside in the lovely garden. There was a huge birthday or name day party, some of whose members got up & played & sang with "Crosby Stills & Taki," the regular entertainers. The music got slow & ballady late in the evening, beautiful old school pop songs that the remaining diehards sang along with & danced to . . . sweet!
On Saturday we caught the noon hydrofoil to Spetses, the lovely island where we'd be spending the next week.
Our digs on Spetses were the bomb. This was more like it. For the next seven days we'd be installed in a beautifully appointed three bedroom house with extraordinary views of the Palio Limani (Old Port).
Marti & I went to Tarsanas, our favorite resto in the Palio Limani, for lunch on our first afternoon. From our table on the pier we could see the villa where we were staying across the little harbor. (It's above the big blue propeller, just to the right of the orange umbrella.) Grilled fresh fish, sparkling white wine & dazzling sunlight. This would be just fine.
We enjoyed a very chill Sunday, went to the tiny Greek church of Saint Nicholas, then the cyber cafe to check e-mail. Marti & I had a greasy tourist lunch (the first & last on this trip), crashed & hung out at the house reading in the evening. I finished the Robert Mitchum bio, a terrific read. The day before we'd had the island grocery store deliver bottled water & some munchie items so we could hang at home Sunday night. We ate olives, cheese & ham with ouzo rocks while the boat people & Eurotrash disco'd late into the night in the bars across the Palio Limani.
On Monday we had strawberries & thick Greek yogurt for brekkie. I burned one down on one of our terraces, then took a bit of sun on another while listening to The Riley Martin Show (downloaded from Sirius last week to my 'Pod). "O-Qua Tangin Wann," baby! Riley is completely fucking wack, he was abducted by aliens in the 1950s, so his descriptions are totally Fifties style: classic flying saucers, bulb-headed creatures. He's on Howard Stern's satellite channel & is really hilarious. Marti & I headed into town, stopping enroute at Kapeloyiannis, the first kafenion (coffee shop) for frappes (ice coffees with milk & sugar) overlooking the harbor. We shopped a bit & I adopted an appropriately Eurotrash summer look: Emporio Armani tee & AlpineStars cap.
Marti & I had a much better lunch than the day before, this time at a place called O Roussos -- stuffed tomatoes & fresh fish Spetses-style -- at the same price point as the greaseball restaurant we'd gone to on Sunday: ouzos, bottled water, 2 first courses, 2 mains for a total of 25 euros in a nice setting by the water. A smiling Albert Finney lookalike (Greek version) served us & complemented Marti on her Greek (she nails those five syllable tongue twisters with the greatest of ease).
It was a Monday & for some reason the schoolkids had the day off. We kept running into them everywhere.
It must have been Kids Ride Free day for the island's hansom cabs. Elsewhere folks were spiffing up shops for the coming season.
Mati & I hit the 1800 Cafe for a little terminal time.
We chilled back at the house & went out for late dinner at a dockside resto nearby called Mourayo. This proved to be the most refined cuisine we'd had here in terms of preparation & presentation: horta (boiled greens with olive oil & lemon), roasted red peppers with feta, seafood spaghetti & swordfish steak . . . yum!
On the five-minute stroll back to the house we peeked into a boat-building shop; vessel construction is still a major activity in this little port.
Tuesday morning Marti & I slept late (the sound of the guys working in the dry dock boatyard across the road didn't even waken us).
Because of the timber available from the island's pine trees, boatbuilding originated here centuries ago.
Beverley the cleaning woman came at 11 am to tidy up the house & do our laundry. My bride & I stopped again at Kapeloyiannis for frappes, then continued into the Dapia (the main port & commercial center of town, a 20-min walk along the water). Our first destination was the cyber cafe. I had decided to post contemporaneous reports to my website using cellphone pics & Internet photos that I edited online, plus quick descriptions from the notes I was keeping.
We returned to the Palio Limani for lunch at Exedra, an outdoor taverna. Actually, everywhere we dined was outdoors, it was in the high 70s & sunny all the time here. Every day I looked out at the morning sun & in my greyest Parisian voice sarcastically asked Marti, "How can these people live like this!" Back at the ranch I surprised Marti with DVDs of All My Children that our pal David sends us from the States each week. We watched a few episodes (we're daytime drama pervs, we know, we know) on the big TV in the living room. For dinner I made a huge Greek salad with tomatoes, cukes, olives, feta & hard-boiled eggs.
On Wednesday we were slugs. We enjoyed a long hang at the house. In the morning I shot 30-sec movies of the harbor off the balcony. When I can find the time I'll upload a few to my MySpace page.
I turned on the satellite TV & caught some hot morning porn action featuring an Asian chick & a guy who was wearing weird cool alien sunglasses & boots for a costume. I video'd some of this as rescans off the monitor (for further research). We watched more All My Children, reran the Greek salad lefties with added tomatoes & ham for lunch, hung out some more. This was definitely the chill-out segment of our second honeymoon. Marti read in her book, The Magus, which is set on the island in the 1950s. I burned down fatties & surfed the satellite in between trips to the various balconies & terrasses to check on the harbor action. It's great, commercial & pleasure boats in & out all day.
Late in the evening we returned to our favorite taverna overlooking the water in the Palio Limani -- Tarsanas -- for succulent astakomakaronada (lobster & spaghetti). What a concept: two of my favorite food groups in one dish!
Next morning I whipped up the mother of all Greek omelets with three kinds of cheese (feta, graviera & manouri) plus two varieties of olives (Volos & Kalamata) We walked into town again after first chatting for a few minutes with the old fella who works at the boatyard across the road from our digs. He asked me where I learned to speak Greek & I gave him my standard reply: "from my yiayia" (my grandmother). This always elicits a big smile of approval from the natives. The guy already knew we lived in France & he praised the ports he'd visited there: Dieppe, Rouen, La Rochelle. He said they all had excellent boatyards. He told Marti & me that the boatbuilders in the Palio Limani have to chill during the high season because the noise offends the tourists. Personally, we're loving the fact that our part of the island has this busy boat construction scene. As city folk, the noise makes us feel right at home! On the way into town we saw a little fat kid being buried alive on the beach. Nice.
That afternoon Marti & I had a late lunch in town, did a bit of grocery shopping & checked our e-mail at the 1800 Cafe. After we got back to the house Marti ventured out again on a solitary late afternoon walk.
She checked out the lighthouse & the view from down the road. We stayed in that evening & I tried my hand at seafood spaghetti.
Friday we got off to a slow start (it's so easy to pick up the laid back vibe of this little island paradise), but then Marti & I packed a lot into the rest of our last full day here.
We had lunch in the Dapia overlooking the main port, wandered around the little backstreets of town & encountered an African grey parrot who says "Kalimera" (Good Day) in Greek (!) Then we headed for the water.
We hired a water taxi to take us all around the island for a red snapper's view of all the villas, beaches, forests.
Vassilis, our captain, also took us over to Spetsopoula, the Stavros Niarchos family's private island, just south of Spetses. It has its own exclusive port, fishing boats to supply fresh catch to the 65 folks who live there this time of year, a little village, the main villa & a couple of security islands to keep nosy tourists & paparazzi away.
Our voyage took about an hour and a half. When we got back on shore, it was time for another ouzo break.
Captain Vassilis had hipped us to a rare annual performance scheduled for the ancient amphitheater that evening, groups of schoolgirls wearing authentic costumes doing traditional dances. So, after our ouzo break by the harbor, we got a cab to take us up the mountain to the theater (overlooking the former British-style private school from The Magus) & wait until after the dancing to take us back home to the old port -- all for a whopping 15 euros!
Marti & I had a great time joining the parents who applauded their traditionally-clad dancing offspring.
I got a kick out of the little brothers & sisters who were putting on rival dance routines on the top steps of the amphitheater.
That evening we returned to Tarsanas for one last dinner on Spetses: lightly fried calamari, a lettuce & spinach salad with manouri cheese, a big grilled sea bream with a cold boiled veggie platter. Excellent. The wine was Thalasitis, from the island of Santorini. My beautiful bride & I wound up at a bar called Remezzo, where "Peter, Paul & Taki" were singing & playing Greek pop tunes on bouzouki, acoustic guitar & electric bass. Nice. We had Metaxas for nightcaps. We'd be leaving the island the next day. But we'd be back. And our 25th Wedding Anniversay celebration was now just a few days away.
