We got to the Milos port about twenty minutes early just as a sea jet was pulling in. How uncharacteristic, I thought. The ferry is early.
The huge crowd started moving and as we made our way up I heard a lady yelling, “Santorini, Naxos, Mykonos!”
Our ferry isn’t early, it’s the other ferry, late!
Sure enough, our ship to Athens showed up right as scheduled, fifteen minutes late.
Sitting and waiting, some girl behind me was humming the theme song from Titanic.
And once again we board a ship full of people and so much luggage it overflows the bins and corners of the cabin. Interesting thing: you go through no security getting on the ferries. It is nice, freeing, and it reminds me of the old days flying, when you could just carry whatever: water, pocket knives, food, trying to explain the difference between a liquid shampoo, a sunscreen cream and a solid deodorant to a TSA officer, and you didn’t have to kick your shoes off and get a pat down.
So the ferry is packed, people standing, and I’m watching as the stewards walk checking tickets and directing people to their correct seats. Some people move willingly, others put up a fight because they want the extra leg room or window/aisle seat. The seat numbers are printed on the ticket, so either people don’t know how to read it (see helpful photo) or they just want a better seat because, you know, they are more important and deserving than the rest of us. I actually saw one middle aged lady cuss out a young girl because she was forced out of the girl’s seat by the steward (after the girl had asked politely on her own).
An hour into the ride we bought a beer and ate the bag of pistachios I brought. The rest of the time we read, the water speeding by outside the windows. These open sea high speed ferries are all interior seating, 14 seats across in threes and fours with aisles up to the snack bar and back to the WC. There is a small “club class” section upstairs with slightly larger seats, not worth the extra euros for such a short trip (in my opinion).
It was an uneventful three and a half hour trip to Piraeus Port. We showed up right on time as expected, that is a fashionable twenty five minutes late.
Thank god we didn’t have a tight connection time.
And so we walked from our dock over to near dock eight (where the Hydra ferries depart) and found a café the Metsovo Grill House, with pita gyros.
SCORE!
We both had good pork pitas, cold water on ice, and a cold Saronic beer.
“Saronic, nowhere else you can travel so smoothly and comfortable from the reality into the dream.” So says the label.
Maybe if you bump the alcohol from 5 to 15% that would be true?
So we passed our time until it was time to head to Hydra. We found the Flying Cat 3 halfway between gates 8 and 9, climbed aboard, and one hour later we walked off into a slower, older world.
Traveling to Hydra is, in the words of one famous philosopher, where “...you can travel so smoothly and comfortable from the reality into the dream.”
(Quote attributed to Saronic, Greek drinker and philosopher.)