Odyssey Cruise - Tuesday, September 30
And we were up early because we had a boat to catch. Today, Ryan and I and the two young people were joining the Odysseia boat cruise.
Odysseia Boat Cruise
This cruise had come highly recommended from both the owners of Villa Lemoni (and they’re locals!) and Helen, the villa’s manager. Visitors ride on a sailboat built as an “accurate” replica of the trireme in which Odysseus sailed the Mediterranean for ten years (maybe? it sort of looks like the oar holes are painted onto the sides, and Chris says the trireme hadn’t been invented in Homeric times) and explore the islands and sea next to Lefkada. With a visit to a small island town, ouzo time, a barbecue on a private beach, and multiple swimming stops, the cruise has something for everyone!
The boat holds just 80 passengers. The guys running the tour are very good at setting guests up in seats that will be theirs for the day. The tour is narrated by owner Gerasimos, a true character who delivers what must be an unvarying daily script with perpetual enthusiasm.
Our fellow travelers were a multinational crowd, including a large Israeli family, the requisite Germans, and a number of Cornish retirees. We were the only Americans on board.
The tour began by sailing to the neighboring island of Meganisi (“Big Island”). We stopped at the Papanikolis Cave, where a World War II submarine allegedly hid from Germans.
We docked at the town of Spartochori, or “Spartan Place,” so-called because of the great difficulty of living there in past times. Ryan and I joined the crowd of older people who chose a short tour of the old church up there; our guide shared his deep concerns about the problems of development facing these islands, which increase economic prosperity but at the great risk of destroying local culture irrevocably.
At lunchtime, we stopped at a private beach on Lefkada. The place is dotted with concrete-based umbrella stands, allowing guests to set up umbrellas wherever they wish. The beach is entirely large pebbles, unpleasant underfoot to those of us accustomed to the soft white sands of Pensacola. Many of us went in swimming; the water was cool but not impossibly so, and once I got used to it, it felt great to stretch our and really swim. (The Cornish people thought the water was perfectly warm, but then they would.)
For lunch, the crew set up a grill and cooked souvlaki, which they served with horiatiki, sadziki, and bread. It was very pleasant eating on the beach!
After lunch, we sailed by Skorpios Island, formerly owned by Aristotle Onassis, and the little island Sparti, where a famous poet lived and wrote a sad poem about his daughter, who “suicided due to love disappointment.”
We returned to port at 5. Chris and Casey met us at Portobello pizza restaurant. Our waiter, Spyros, turned out to be a cousin of the owner of Villa Lemoni! You get the feeling that Nidri society is really very small.
What the classicists did instead
Convinced that they already knew everything there is to know on the subject of Homer and the Odyssey, Chris and Casey declined to join the rest of the group on this full-day intensive seminar in advanced Odyssey topics. Instead, they stayed at Villa Lemoni and read The Iliad in Greek!
Chris then drove back to Lefkada to shop, where he found clay pot yogurt and plastic-bottle wine at Sklavenitis, which must be more downmarket than the fancy Alpha Beta grocery store.