Tourism in Greece



 Tourism in Greece



Friends arriving at Lemnos airport

Grandchildren coming toLemnos at Melbourne airpor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Australians are one of the world’s largest spenders on international travel on a per capita basis. In 2012, one in three of headed overseas, and while most went to New Zealand and Bali many went to Europe. It is expected that next year, 2015, many more Australians than usual will travel to Greece and Turkey, for the Gallipoli memorial.
Because so many Greeks have settled in Australia (about 350.000 in Melbourne alone) many of this year’s tourists will be travelling back to Greece.


At the Lemnos Gallipoli cemetry



Tourist Behaviour

1. Take a package tour!
2. Photograph everything in sight!
3. Fall for the local PR pitch!
4. Be on the look out for ‘cute’!

 

 

 

 

 

We too have been tourists

Takis and me, in Santorini 2003

One of the most popular islands for tourists is Santorini. This year in Athens airport there were hoards of foreigners waiting for the Santorini plane. We guessed that many were young couples either on their honeymoon or going there to get married. Our Lemnos plane was filled with locals on their way home.

But nowadays we do look for something different.  Cathedrals are one of the sights we go out of our way to visit. Here we will put up with the other tourists and join the hoards slowly making their way around these old monuments. Inside Chartres for instance you enter a forest of stone columns. In Notre Dame the columns hold up huge vaults. You need to sit down to gaze up at these ceilings. However unlike many we choose to use our own eyes, rather than use the eye of a camera. I do wonder how many of those snappers actually look at their pictures?

And have they looked long enough, with their bodies, to hold onto a sensation as well as a picture? It must be hard for Cathedral staff to maintain a balance that still looks after spiritual needs while dealing with this popular need for a picture. When in Canterbury a priest called for silence while she prayed and in most there are designated places where one can find a slightly quieter spot. But the best is to visit one of the lesser known, but still beautiful, churches, where you will find only a few praying, and lots of deep stone-surrounded silence.



Old style tourism? (Sea, Sunshine, Sites), Or? Something new?

Enterprising people in Greece are defying the financial crisis and using the riches of their local area to develop new types of holidays, a world away from old-style package tourism

Each of Greece's 400 + islands has something different to offer

EG.
Diving, climbing and walking - mountains hold their own delights, including an abundance of herbs such as thyme, oregano and rosemary, as well as honey that cannot be rivaled.
Multi-island cruises. Greece has over 400 islands, not just the main five that everyone knows about.
Organic farming retreats where owners demonstrate the old crafts, such as bakery and basketry, or perhaps offer cooking classes.

Cycling in Corfu
Volcanology and geo-tourism on Milos
Skopelos has vastly expanded its network of kalderimi paths to open its forest interior to walkers.
Mainland areas such as northern Mani has long been a favourite of more bohemian travellers (the writer Patrick Leigh Fermor built a house there in the 1960s).
Gastronomic tours in Athens. There has recently been a surge in wine bars, with cellars that are exclusively Greek, also restaurants serving regional delicacies.
Harvesting olives in Lesbos, has attracted visitors who are delighted to see how the olives are harvested off the tree, and then pressed and bottled without preservatives.

Lemnos and Tourist Problems

The main one may be that of access
However, from Athens, each day there is one flight to the island, with two in the summer. To fly to Lemnos takes about one hour and there are also connections to Saloniki and Mytilene.
Ferry boats arrive about twice a week from the ports of Pireus, Thessaloniki, Kavala. The trip from Pireus takes about 12 hours.



Ferries are great fun, however you need patience as they are not always available when you want them

If you have your own car, you can bring it on the ferry. The roads on Limnos are mostly good and the drivers are not too crazy or dangerous. If you want to go to special beaches with a car you need to be prepared to drive a few kilometers on dirt roads.

Other Lemian Ideas

This year I’m planning to check out if there are some new enterprises in Lemnos. To find out what has been happening in relation to tourism on this island.

Special activities I’ve enjoyed on Lemnos and encourage others to experience.

1. There many chapels dotted all over the island, each the location of a ritual celebrated on some day or other during the year. Once I went with Ourania and her friends to attend a saint’s day service, forty days after Easter, in a small chapel up in the hills above Myrina. The chapel is called (in translation) Our Lady of the Sore Throat. There were many people attending. It amazed me to see the number of people who’d made the effort to go to this special service in such an out of the way spot. This is an aspect of life in Lemnos that I’m sure most tourists were unaware of. While they might recognize that churches have a very prominent position in the landscape, they probably wouldn’t know how important they are in the everyday life of the people. Our local church celebrates Saint Pandeleimonos, the saint of good health, on the 26th of July. It is one of the best attended of all the island’s local gatherings. We usually sit on our balcony and watch the evening procession pass by. First there will be a number of priests carrying crosses, and then a couple of small local bands leading the throng of participants around the bounds of the village.



A cousin and Takis brother playing Trik Trak on the terrace

 

The children helping us crack almonds

2. I’ve also enjoyed learning some of the old crafts, many of which have not died out on Lemnos. In fact it has been our hope that when we had guests we’d be able to inspire them to try some aspects of the old-fashioned, countrified lifestyle we’d discovered – such as preserving, drying and bottling vegetables and fruit gathered from the garden. Thinking this would enrich holidays we’d delicately insert some practical activities into each person’s itinerary, though of course we knew that some just wanted to relax on the beach. Subtly we might start by suggesting to a cousin that he climb a ladder and pick a boxful of figs rather than just walk down to the tree to get one for himself. I suggested to our grand daughters that while they were with us they might crack almonds previously gathered from our old almond trees. This is tedious job but one that can be fun if shared with others. In the case of two others the extra ‘Lemnian’ experience involved lighting up the old furno and making a pizza.



And helping to weed



 

 

A friend learing to make pita

 

May in Lemnos

May in Lemnos

 

 

 

The island abloom with poppies and daisies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To Demeter

(from The Homeric Hymns)

Hesiod (c.800 B.C.) Translated by Thelma Sargent

(Persephone)
She with her friends, the full-breasted daughters of Ocean,
Gathered the flowers that grew in the soft, grassy meadow –
Roses and crocuses, beautiful violets, iris,
Hyacinth, too, and a magical, glowing narcissus,
Which, by the will of Zeus and as a boon to lord Hades,
Gaia sent forth as bait for the flowerlike girl.

Flowers spilling over the paths in my Garden

Late Lemnian Spring
Gone are the early glories of spring,
when warmer days the blossoms bring,
now roses are glowing in red and gold,
and greens upon greens in the garden unfold.
The scent of Honeysuckle far and wide
drifts through the garden and inside.
Sturdy trees hint at what they will bear,
with tiny apple and miniature pear.
The air is gentle, not searing or cold,
the winds are balmy, not rough and bold.
Friends arrive, with eggs from their hens,
for we all divide what spring-bounty sends.
I share carrots, with dirt on my jeans,
and a gardener’s gift of lettuce and beans.
Tomatoes now flowering soon will yield,
grasses are drying on hillside and field.
For winter has gone, ‘tho storms clouds tease,
with grumbles of thunder, no rain to please.
Soon sun will scorch both hill and field,
gardens will dry and need water to yield.
Wasps will feed off apple and pear,
not many unmarked for us to share.
When again will we see this season?
 At Persephone’s return is what we reason.

Julia Catton

On the Way

 

 

On the Way

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Takis is a very optimistic person, more so than me, and he is convinced that we can keep travelling to the other side of the world for half the year. I’m not so sure.

But though I’m often reluctant, travel to Europe can be exciting. We do enjoy our stopovers – which I might add are quite necessary seeing that the journey from our Australian door to our Greek door usually takes 35 hours plus. Increasingly I have discovered that the stopovers, on the way there or on the way back, have become my real holiday. Firstly these stops, though short stays, give us time to recover some sleep and walk our tired limbs into life again, and secondly in these hotels I don’t have to clean the bathrooms or make the beds!

Singapore

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the early years we took our stopovers in Singapore, as we were travelling on Singapore Airlines. I've enjoyed the neat organized city centre and the city's glorious orchid gardens.

 

 

Athens

View from our hotel room

 

More recently we try to travel straight through to Athens, and then take a rest in that city before travelling onto the island. A stopover here gives Takis and chance to catch up with his Greek family and old school friends.

 

England

Somerset and Bath

The class of '55

On a couple of occasions we have made a stopover in London, and here it is me that takes the opportunity to visit relatives and old school friends.

 

 

 

Arriving in London

Arriving at Heathrow Airport, and then taking the Heathrow Express one feels like entering a worm-tunnel through the universe; people all around you are talking all kinds of languages, wearing all kinds of gear, and carrying packages of all kinds of shapes and sizes. My poem says it all!

After a journey through London, using the underground to Charing Cross, we haul our suitcases along platforms, balance them down escalators, and drag them up flights of stairs. Though inevitably even this part of the journey is enlivened by encounters with cheerful locals; a helpful Indian ticket seller, an Albanian store holder - who pointed the way up the street to the next station, a Polish bus conductor - who encourages us to take his tour of the city, all speaking good London-English.

 

 

Highspeed trains

Travel cards, zones and underground stations,
Platform one if you’re going to Hastings.
Cases lugged through tunnels, up stairs;
On board conductor checks our fares.
Stations flash past on the Southeastern -
Later we’ll go on the First Great Western.
Canterbury, Wye, Tunbridge and Seven Oaks;
‘Please mind the gap when exiting folks.’
Reading, Didcot, Swindon and Bath;
Alongside a river and a forest path.
Whoosh, whiz, joggle, zip and bump,
Past factory outlets and a city dump.
Metro readers search for glasses,
Trolly dispensing coffee passes.
Fiona phones re’ a broken mower.
While leaving behind a life that is slower
City gents talk stock and trips to the Haig.
Success in fast lane, they think they’re made!
Time and houses flashing past,
These super trains carry busy folks fast.

Julia Catton

My visits to family and school friends usually take us out of London and provide glimpses of English countryside.

 

In Kent for my aunt's golden wedding aniversary

Canterbury, Kent, 2010

I find the scenery in Kent and Sussex very familiar, and on the high-speed train to Hastings I sit back for an hour or so and enjoy glimpses of rural England flashing past. We pass through cuttings where bluebells cut ribbons of blue through lush green woods, and onto higher ground where we can see across green fields to farm houses and converted oust houses, both surrounded by neat gardens. It is like watching a sped up documentary of the rural south. Born in Kent I am always particularly excited to be passing through stations I have known before, Seven Oaks where my father went to school, Tunbridge Wells, where I’d had afternoon tea with my grandparents, Battle, I remember a pub meal with my aunt and uncle.

Motherlode

Spring is sprung in Kent again;
Clouds dissolve in gusty rain,
Showers peter, sun peeps out,
But still it drips from water spout.
Lush green grass rolls up the hills,
Trees burst out and landscape fills.
Green Man laughs as winter wanes
And baby leaves green-arch the lanes.
Water sparkles in fields and dams,
Larger cream dots lie next to lambs.
Horse-chestnut, hawthorn and bluebell,
 All names recalled I once knew well.
The views are also much beloved,
Rolling downs with clouds above.
Kent my starting place, my dame,
You’re in my soul and in my vein.

Julia Catton

With Takis in Canterbury we stay at The House of Agnes, named, evidently, after David Copperfield’s final and true love. However the house actually dates a long way back, before Dickens. The house was here when medieval pilgrims arrived at the West Gate of Canterbury. And even before the house was built this was a Roman foundry, and here a Roman cemetery was sited, just outside the walls of the city.

The House of Agnes now stands among a row of houses, between a fish and chip shop, run by an Italian, and a real estate office. However it still impresses, with its tall pointed roofs and timbered facade. Inside the floor levels vary, and the beams extend in every direction, so that you must watch your step and your head.

Paris, 2014

 

View from our hotel room in  Paris

I was particularly looking forward to a very different stopover, in Paris. Arriving in there felt a bit like being in London in Spring. The linden and birch trees were covered with fragile new green leaves. Pink blossom covered the tops of the catalpas and was beginning to drop onto the pavements below. (And I found myself sneezing whenever I was under the lightly falling linden blossoms.)

I notice that pedestrians and traffic seem to mix with the same tolerance I’d noticed in Lemnos, giving the centre of this great city the feel of a small village. In the small squares elderly ladies pulled shopping trollies, and then disappeared through tall wooden doors into high elegant buildings.

Outside the museums there are gypsies. Two girls approached me and pretended they were deaf and dumb trying with sign language to get me to give a donation. I didn’t have any euros, and as soon as I made this know they moved on, chatting to each other!!

Not long after this, decided lining up outside a museum was not worth the time, Takis and I went to sit on a bench on a bridge over the Seine, under an umbrella. Another gypsy man approached us, pretending to pick up a gold ring then offered it to me, saying I am to be the lucky one. What an old trick! But Takis was one ahead of him. He let him know we were not taken in and asked him questions about his situation, finally telling him he would accompany him to a supermarket, to buy a sandwich. To my horror the two took off, leaving me sitting in the rain, imagining the worst. That Takis might be mugged, and I would never see him again! But they returned. The gypsy, now with his family, sat nearby eating lunch, and Takis and I wandered off to find ours. The ring? In the gypsy’s pocket, ready to catch the next gullible tourist.

Arriving in Lemnos

 

 

 

 From Athens we take an Aegean Airlines to Lemnos. John the taxi driver meets us with his Mercedes, and we have a comfortable ride as the evening darkens. All we see are dusky hedges and car lights as we wend through small lanes. Takis finds the key and we walk into this now very familiar house. We immediately begin re-acquainting ourselves with such simple objects as the kitchen table, the light switches, and finally the bed we are to sleep in that night.

Travel is not all good though, as in any adventure things do go wrong.

But when things go wrong I can depend on Takis always seeing the positive side of things. And should things go really bad and we are unable to return to Greece next year he’ll just say, ‘It’s gone bung’, and immediately look for the positives in our situation. Perhaps he’ll make one of his Greek jokes or just use that useful Greek gesture for acceptance of life and human follies – the shrug with circling hands, palms up, that often is accompanied by the words ‘then birasi’ (it doesn’t really matter).

 

What Awaits in Greece?

What Awaits in Greece?

Greek Heat!

A Different Daily Pattern

11 o'clock Coffee Time

Folk on the Terrace playing with their Comboloi

Anestis and our Grandchildren

Visits from Greek Neighbours

Another House and Garden

Lots of Watering

And Lots of Weeding

Beaches and Tavernas

Walks to the Castro

Sand so hot you can hardly walk on it

Warm seas, even at sunset!

Romantic evenings in tavernas

Friends and Family

Never less than six or seven for lunch

Friends from Australia

Takis with one of his daughters 

Our yearly visitors

For how much longer?

The Gray and Happy Wanderers

Pre-empting trouble is the way to go
to Europe. Smaller cases, easy to reach.
Better to lift off a carousel, and each
colourful enough our own to know.

First, visiting banks to get euro bills
tho’ sleepy from travel and jet lag.
We’ll sightsee slowly ‘til we’re past travel-sag,
Buoyed by supplies of our doctor’s pills.

Then, careful plan when choosing routes.
We’ll use public transport, and nice B&Bs 
with clean soft beds our limbs to ease.  
Glad that we packed our walking boots.

We hope to encounter a friendly host.
And after a sleep find the very best
breakfast of bacon and eggs. 
Then, perhaps, lunch with an English roast.

Sharing photos of what we’ve seen
with others of a similar ilk,
and chatting with them over a cup of tea 
we’ll note the places where we’ve all been. 

We’ll try to choose cheap eats and stays -
but we can if we wish sometimes sin
and book into a five star inn
with luxury beds and luxurious ways.

With only one outing planned for each day, 
plus toilets-stops and a coffee and bun. 
This limited schedule is OK 
for older folks on a holiday stay.     

Wanting awesome and stunning sights, 
Cathedrals, museums, will fill our tour. 
Then early to bed to rest our feet, 
not for us clubs and city lights.

Visiting our rellies, many younger few older,
we grey wanderers may feel our age.
But chuffed by those who express their surprise,
that adventurous still we’ve become bolder.

And for the few more years we’re able to roam
we’ll garner our strength and enjoy each day.
For the effort is worth the bliss at the end 
when the journey’s done and we return back home!

julia catton