We were a little later getting to port today. Our first views of Samos Island were about 8 am, and we both remarked at how much greener this island appears to the other we have visited. The hills are many, and they are predominantly green, rather than green patches on granite.
Our ship anchored in harbour this time, and we caught a tender to the shore. Today we booked a shore excursion through Explore…a hands on cooking experience in an authentic Greek restaurant. We met onboard at 9.30 before following our guide onto a bus and travelling about 25 minutes to the town of Pythagoreio - the town where Pythagoras was born and on the other side of the island. It was also the old capital of the Samos, or what our guide referred to as Samos Town….which is now where we were anchored.
Our cooking experience was at the Aphrodite Garden Restaurant and our instructing chef was Chef Evangelos who features on their website. There were 10 of us off the ship…a lovely English couple, an American family of four from Texas; a single American travel agent from Milwaukee; a retired beer loving German called Anita who left her husband sleeping on the ship, Fi and I. We were accompanied by Anastasia from the ship and our local guide was eJoana - a local who spoke quite good English. We were not informed what we would be making until arrival - Mousakka, Greek Salad, Tatziki were it…Fi and I looked at each other. We did little of the making…layering the mousaka, grating some cucumber and tossing the salad were about as hands on as it got. We then sat and enjoyed our lunch with a carafe or two of local white wine and that was it….no coffee, no desert and the chef nor his assistants sat with us. Both Fi and I felt a little underwhelmed…at E200 a head ($400) , we had expected a little more - with my marketing hat on I would have included a welcome cool drink, a morning coffee snack, a desert and a coffee/icecream to finish. It could have been wonderful as the setting was lovely - a garden courtyard with vine covered pergola. Unfortunately we felt short changed. We had about 40 minutes before the bus to head back to the ship and opted to walk to the Main Street to look at the local shops…feeling very hot and bothered.
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| Sailing into Samos |
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| One of the lovely small lanes in Pythagoreio |
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| Greek Salad (we were sternly informed has no lettuce!) |
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| The cooking group chef 3rd from right |
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| Mousakka |
We arrived in Paros - it was not a docking day but the ship anchored in the outer parts of the harbour. Paros was much smaller in in terms of obvious development than we had seen on Rhodes and Bodrum, but still a classic waterside town with everything facing the water and bare mountain tops.
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| Morning Sun at Paros |
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| St Nicholas Church …on an uninhabited isle off Paros |
The water surround the ship was aqua…just magical! We sat and enjoyed our breakfast looking out to see, watching the waves lap against some rocky outcrops that seem to appear out of nowhere… later in the day we were told that while it looked like sand on the bottom, it was indeed rock - hardened lava and that is what contributed to the colour.
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| Proof we swam in the Med! |
We disembarked and caught a taxi to Pountas Pro Dive Shop where we met with our boat host - George, who escorted a group of about 20 people down to the harbour to board the boat we were to use for the morning. We booked a 3.5 hour snorkeling experience and had three stops - spending about 30 minutes at each and jumping off the board for a swim. The water was much cooler than we expected - there is something about the bright blue that makes one think it is warm, however it was in fact only 17.5 C. Our breath was taken away when we dived in, but once we moved around, we warmed and it was refreshing. we used noodles on our first stop to float around…the current was quite strong and if you didn’t keep an eye out, you could easily have floated 50 metres from the boat without noticing - in fact we did see another boat packed with young people do exactly that and their partying behaviour made us think they may have been drinking so it would have been a hard swim back to the boat against the current!.
The second stop was amongst some rocky outcrops and we were told we might see octopus if we snorkelled so we donned flippers, mask and snorkel and swam quietly around. I saw fish, but no sighting of any octopus unfortunately.
The third stop was at the shallow join of Paros and Ante Paros (where the celebrities have houses - Tom Hanks, Hugh Jackman were two names our taxi driver mentioned). The water was the brightest aqua I had seen - it was deceiving in depth as it appeared to be quite shallow because it was so crystal clear you you see the bottom and I couldn’t fathom how the boat had anchored, yet the water was about 2 metres deep.
We sat on the deck, and marvelled how we could possibly be so lucky to be motoring through such beauty!
We returned to our ship, and made the most of our last night. We ate in the Marble & Co restaurant - where we enjoyed the most melt in your mouth steaks and lamb chops - perfectly season and cooked.
The last night entertainment was a tribute to Billy Joel - which was much better than the first night we attended the entertainment by the resident entertainers. This was was reasonably well sung and perhaps it was the songs, but we couldn’t stop dancing in our seats…which in turn (after an espresso martini or two) meant we lead the way to the dance floor where eventually a crowd joined. Once that finished we found our way to the Stern Lounge and continued dancing to Latin music before heading back to our cabin for the last time…..we didn’t have a great sleep as we both had had a little too much refreshment in the evening…we woke with a bit of a seedy feeling!
Paros : Pountas Snorkeling
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