Easy cruising with a first stop at the isle of Kalymnos

Barbara Moser

March 2009

We arrived in Piraeus, the port of Athens, very late after a comfortable train ride and made our way by taxi to our hotel, sharing the ride with a young geologist who lived nearby. The taxi driver tried to charge us for two trips and after a long argument, he left with a nice tip for one trip.

Our room was underwhelming, especially for 89 euro ($144 Canadian), measly breakfast included. The next morning we walked around the picturesque yacht bay and found a more reasonably priced hotel for our return after our cruise. This nicer and better situated hotel was 55 euro, and would serve as our base for visiting Athens when we returned.

The view whose beauty brought me to tears

Our hotel manager told us we could walk to the port. Unfortunately it took an hour and by the time we arrived, I was a wreck! Irwin was fine, though. We boarded EasyCruise, a British line, for a one-week tour of Bodrum, Turkey, and the Greek islands of Kalymnos, Mykonos, Syros and Kos. Our cabin had a window, an unexpected upgrade from our booking of an inside cabin. Later, we learned we had probably paid more than most of the people on board who had made their reservations through the Internet.

All things considered, this was our kind of cruise: low key, with a lot of attention given to time spent off the ship. The ship typically docked between 10am and 2pm and left the port in the wee hours. This left us plenty of time to explore and no worries of being left high and dry at the destination.

Our tiny cabin was by no means luxurious, with two side-by-side cots and a small bathroom, but it suited our needs just fine and we soon settled in like campers, happy not to have to make accommodation decisions for an entire week.

The first lunch offered was a buffet that seemed plentiful and reasonably varied until we realized that it was the introduction to almost everything we would eat on board for the entire week. This was not going to be easy for a vegetarian, and the portions, after the buffet, weren’t the largest. I soon tired of Calamari and skimpy salads. I was most disappointed with the lack of Greek foods I have always loved in Montreal, such as tzatziki and taramosalata. Clearly this food was British with a touch of Greece.

The pool was a large bathtub that we could observe from the interior dining room. One young man thoughtlessly dove in head first and came out bloodied on the last morning of the cruise. The pool had to be emptied, but somehow the man got away without neurological injuries. Many of the servers and the doctor were from Russia and Ukraine, giving the cruise a definite multi-cultural feel. What we liked most was the mixture of cruisers – families, boomers, honeymooners and seniors from Europe, Canada and Australia. On the first day we docked at Kalymnos, which is approximately 100 square kilometres. The view from the dock of the terraced pastel houses built on the mountainside was so beautiful it made me cry.

It was a quiet Sunday and we set out strolling along the port past the touristy restaurants (only to return to one later after searching in vain for a more authentic one). We walked up through the serene, winding lanes

One of countless photo-worthy doors

past countless photo ops, featuring intricate blue and white achitectural designs on the faded facades. Flower pots draped their wares over doors, window boxes and archways. Like good journalists, we took postcard-worthy pictures of almost every one of them.

We returned to the port for a mediocre lunch served by a British boomer who had “retired” to the island. She advised us to hop a bus to the other side of the island and get in some beach time, which we did. It took about half an hour to reach the smooth sands and crystal clean water of the little village we had chosen to visit. At 5 pm we began an hour wait for the bus back, not having checked the schedule before we left. The small bus finally arrived and became more and more crowded with locals and tourists as we neared the port.

We relaxed on board that night and at 10pm the ship began its 24-hour journey to Bodrum, Turkey, our only destination that was not an island. I was excited to be going back to Turkey, a country we explored for five weeks, five years ago – even if this time it was just for one day.