The Technicolor Ankle
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2008
1
80
148
Trip End
Dec 09, 2008
Hydra,
Saronic Gulf Islands,
Greece
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Breakfast was included at the Hotel Ippokampos, and this was no meager continental breakfast, this was a major spread of yumminess. They put some ice on my foot. We checked out of the hotel and spent more time wandering along the harbor and up the stonework stronghold on the point. The thunderstorm last night had blown away most of the overcast skies, and the light sparkling on the water and gilding the houses filled my heart.
Hotel Ippokampos, Hydra
We ate lunch outside at a taverna right on the water, and the Rembetika band from last night was barely thirty feet away from us lunching and jamming, so we got another little concert. We have decided that Gramma and Nurse Cubby will be buying a summer house here on Hydra, and Dutch will be founding the first Hydra shelter for stray animals. Chaplain and I will come to visit every summer and we will have meetings of the Balkan chapter of BibFem!
Unfortunately, we had to tear ourselves away from Hydra and head back to Athens in the afternoon. The flying dolphin ferry loaded very quickly, and we didn't realize until the boat was pulling away that we had left a bag behind at the taverna. Thanks to the very kind efforts of several compassionate strangers, we eventually got the bag back. A woman on the boat (at first we thought she was an employee, but she turned out just to be a nice passenger) figured out how to call the taverna in Hydra. A taverna employee found our bag and put it on the next ferry to Athens. Then our taxi driver (if you come to Greece, you MUST use the taxi service of Famous George) rearranged his schedule to first take Dutch, Chaplain, and me home, and he turned around and went back to the port to pick up Nurse Cubby and Chaplain, who had stayed behind to meet the later boat. A lot of drama for a little orange shopping bag, but it more than renewed our faith in the kind hospitality of Greece, and some lucky grandkid of Gramma's is going to get the Greek spider encased in lucite that was in that bag.
