Greece - 20th to 27th March 2007

  Athens, Poros, Greece
Sunday, August 19, 2007

20th March
Time to leave for Greece!! We took a coach from Birmingham to London where we took the Easyjet to Athen airport. The whole journey took us the whole day. By the time we reached Athen, it's already night time. The first thing after we reached our hotel (Attalos Hotel) is to find.... FOOD!!  As my roomies and me were so tired from the travelling so we decided to have our dinner in a local sandwich shop, have a quick dinner and back to the room to sleep.  

21th March  
Our first day in Athen. Breakfast is served from 730am onward. I must say that the breakfast in the hotel was not very sumptuous. Toast bread, cheese, ham, hard boiled egg, cereals, coffee/Tea/Juices etc. Very basic breakfast. After the breakfast, we gather at the lobby and proceed to Alpine Center (The Swiss Business School for Hotel and Tourism, Management Education in Greece) for some presentations by some professionals. The presentation was followed by Free and Easy. We all decided to go to the Acropolis which is near to our hotel. I enjoyed my time trekking up the slope to see the manificient buildings and statues. We were lucky because it is not the peak season therefore there are not many tourists there. However, one word of advice, if anyone of you would like to take your time to see Acropolis, either cater two days for it or be there when it open in the morning because the place closed quite early. We have to leave the place at around 430pm when the sun is still high up in the sky. There is one restaurant just below the hill where anyone would walked past to reach the gate to acropolis. That restaurant has a good location and many people (locals and foreigners) would take a rest and have a cup of drink before moving on.  

22nd March  
This day, we are going to Poros island where we will spend around 5 days on that island getting to know the island for our project. In the morning, our lecturers brought us to a canal which is one of the tourist attraction. That canal has very blue water and its high. Dare devils can go there to try the bungy jump. After the canal visit, we proceed to the biggest Amphi-theatre in Greece. It is in open space and it is huge. I suppose the theatre should easily contain thousands of people. We spent some time there before proceeding to take the ferry to Poros. I wonder if we are unlucky or lucky because when we reached poros, it started to rain and according to the driver, this rain was the first after 3 months of sunshine. Chinese has a saying that rain bring fortune. I hope that our first step into Poros will bring them fortune in the near future. The first impression I have for Poros was messy. To me, the houses are all clustered together in disorder manners.   By the time we reached the hotel, its already late afternoon. Most of us just relax in the hotel room and wait for dinner to be served. The dinner in the hotel is good. We had 3 course dinner everyday. The starter for this day was some kind of pasta and it taste real good. Followed by a plate of salad and the main course. We had pork on the first day there. The pork was soft and tender. Desert  was good but a little too sweet though.  

23rd March  
2nd day in Poros. We were welcomed by abundance sunshine in the morning. It is really hot when there is no wind. If you stand at the balcony, you can feel the heat penetrating your jean to your skin. Well, for me, it felt really good. It remind me of Singapore weather. How I missed the sunshine in Singapore. This day we have the time to ourselves so a group of us decided to walk around the town and explore the shopping area. I noticed that there are not many young people on the street. Its either students  (till  12 years old) or older people. Not sure if most of the young men and women have moved to the city to work. Anyway, we walked around the town and found that the shops closed in the early afternoon and reopened again in the late afternoon till night. It gave me the feeling that the people there really know how to enjoy themselves or perhaps it is not the peak season so they see no point in opening ther shops the whole day. We found a pastry shop in one of the street which sell greek desert/pastry. A few of us bought some to share and I must say that almost all greek deserts are really sweet. They input a lot of sugar syrup into the pastry so for people who have sweet tooths, they will definitely love it. Back in the hotel, we had chicken for our dinner.  

24th March  
On this day morning, our lecturers have made arrangement for all of us to take a morning tour around poros with Miss Pamela who will be our tour guide. A little introduction of Miss Pamela. She is a painter and fell in love with poros around 18 years ago when she came to this island to do painting. In the hotel that we stayed, almost all the paintings on the wall were painted by her. The first destination she brought us was the Monestry up the hill. She said that they have strict rules in the monestry for example no elbows of knees should be seen. They have skirts at the doors where people can use to cover their knees should they wore shorts to the monestry. She also mentioned that its their culture for people to kiss the hands of the priests and that we should not see that as some kind of jokes. Miss Pamela said that statues are not permitted in the area hence there are only paintings. Even paintings that resemble a real human being was not permitted. The locals feel that the "god" should not have any mortal face resemblance instead they should have some features that once you see it you will know that they are the saints. There is a story or a father who came to the monestry to seek the healing water for his daughter who was ill. In return, he painted for the monestry (even to this day, local would walk up to the monestry to drink the healing water). The healing water managed to prolong his daughter's life for another two years before she died. This father was devastated and request to paint her daughter in memory of her (during that time, painting a human face was not allowed) but love in greece is such a powerful thing hence the priests allowed him to do it. If you walked into the monestry, on the left side of the wall, you will be able to see this beautiful face of a lady who was supposed to be the daughter of the painter. Nice story hur??  I hope that I remembered the story as it is, anyone who read and knew otherwise, do let me know yah??   After the monestry, we proceed to the Sanctuary of Poseidon. It used to be a temple and now there are only rumbles and ruins left. One really need a lot of imagination to picture how the building used to be like. However, the view from the Poseidon was simply superb. The weather was so nice and we had a clear view of the sea, sun, land, mountains.   It is amazing that we covered quite a number of places in one morning. After the poseidon, we moved on to the library and clock tower where we stayed a while in both places to admire the beauty as well as gaining some knowledge of the sea life there in poros. In the afternoon, our lecturers hired a boat to bring all of us to an island called "love island" or "heart island", I cannot really remember. The story on this island is that in the past, there is a teacher who used to teach children greek languages secretly during the war time. There was nothing on this island except a house which was sealed. We spent our afternoon there relaxing and admire the sea. I had a lovely time there. It is soothing just relaxing in the sun and an occasional dip in the cold water.  

25th March  
We had two different itinery this day. One is to cycling around Poros and the other one is to travel to another island nearby called Hydra. 25th March marks the triump day for Greece for defeating Turkish. It is sort of their national day so everywhere in Greece is having celebration. A group of us chose to go to Hydra to take a look at this island so we can compare the difference between them and poros. We were just in time for the celebration. First on the list is a parade where young kids march past followed by older and older kids than the military or rather navy men. Its just a march parade nothing special actually. I would have expected more but well.... Anyway, after the march, it is followed by some school kids dancing local dance. Okay, that is something special. Its nice seeing the kids dancing the traditional greek dance I suppose. I felt that Hydra is much more a tourist place than Poros even during offpeak season. I figured maybe because shopping in Hydra is more fun since almost all shops are opened all day and quite a number of sovenier shops lining at the port. One attractive point about Hydra is that it does not have a single vehicle on the whole island. There is no road for cars only donkeys. You can sit on the donkeys for a tour around the island for only 10 euro (30minutes) or 5 Euro (15 minutes). I like the fact that this island is so basic. Most tourists who came to Hydra only stayed for a few hours and they usually travel with cruise. I saw a number of Japanese tourists there and I thought to myself, whichever island is able to draw japanese tourists will be able to make profit because normally they are more willing to spend money on luxury products like jewelleries. Anyway, that is my thoughts. Hydra is a nice place because the port is sheltered from the open sea and thus not much wind passes through and with the sun, everything seemed perfect for a relaxation. We spent the whole afternoon there before heading back to Poros. After dinner, we had our group meeting and shared the experiences with those who went for cycling. Dinner that night was Beef.  

26th March  
Early morning, the whole group of us took the ferry to see the lemon trees land. Well, there are a lot of lemon trees in this area and you can just pluck it from the trees and I suppose no one will care because the government actually paid the people to ignore the lemons. Not sure why they do that but perhaps there were just too many of them? A big part of the morning was spent on walking and walking and walking. For someone who enjoy trekking/Hiking, I find it a pleasure to just walk around.   Lunch was served in a restaurant back in Poros. This lunch was an invitation from the Mayor of Poros to thank us for coming down to assist them by providing some good suggestions to improve tourism in Poros. We had a fulfilling lunch. To "repay" the authority for the generousity, one of the student suggest giving poros something back and came up with the idea of cleaning up one of the beaches. Although most of us were relunctant but still tried our best in picking up as much rubbish as we could find on the beach. Its a nice sight actually to see everyone work towards a common goal. After dinner most people went back to their rooms to start packing their stuffs as we are returning to Athen the following day. Dinner was beef again.  

27th March  
Remember that I said on the first day I reached Poros that I find it very messy and disorder? After getting to know this island a little bit more, I find that they are actually beautiful. It is like you can see the beauty from the mess (luan4 zhong1 dai4 mei3). Hmm.. anyway, time to move on... At this point in time, I have mixed feeling. A part of me felt happy to go back while another part of me wish that we could stay for a few more days. I believe that this may come from the company and friends that I have known from this trip. This will be the first and last trip with the september starter group. How sad... they will be graduating soon and no one will know what will happen to the friendship. I am already missing them now when I am writting this blog. Anyway, that almost spell the end of the whole trip. We arrived back in Athen and spent our afternoon free and easy. After lunch, a few of us went shopping around the city of Athen and I must say that Athen is modern in the sense that there are a lot of fashion shops. In actual fact, it is not really what I thought it would be in the first place. An old city with a lot of monuments and ruins. Athen is a mixture of old and new. Ruins with modern shops. Odd combination? Nope, its tourism!! The power of tourism.