Looking on the Bright Side - Part 1.

A typical Piraeus pavement (sidewalk, guys) More about this further down the post.

At this time of the year, if you awake early enough, it’s important to try and get a few things done before the sun gets more than a finger’s width above the horizon. We’re lucky enough to be living in a rural area and, when I first arose this morning and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on for a pot of Earl Grey, I did the usual, which was to close the windows and blinds down tightly on the side of the house that faces east, because once the sun’s rays hit that wall, it will very soon raise the temperature inside way beyond what’s comfortable if you don’t.

As I closed the window above the kitchen sink, I stopped momentarily to marvel at the already busy cicadas. From inside I could only hear the few that were within a couple of meters of the window, and their sound rather resembled that of someone vigorously and rhythmically shaking a pair of maracas for all they were worth, to punk music timing.

Once the kettle was on, I ventured outside. It was around 8.15am. When you open the house door at this time of the year, even as early as just after eight, as you walk outside it’s rather like walking into a bread oven. The cicadas now all merge into one and, if you close your eyes, you could imagine that sound as rather resembling the noise of a giant tyre being deflated at speed, as though someone had plunged a knife into its wall. The tyre in question would be about the size of a London bus.

The cat wasn’t around, so I didn’t have to worry about feeding him today. Sometimes he’ll have left some of his dry food from the previous evening (usually when he’s not so hungry because he’s eaten a lizard the previous day) and he eats that at dawn, thus eliminating the need for a fresh dish-full until later. He was off on ‘patrol’ somewhere and so I did what I needed to do, which was to half-fill a watering can and top up our two plant pot trays that serve as bird baths. 

After not more than ten minutes outside, and already needing my first shower of the day, I was glad to get back inside to pour the tea, fish a couple of digestives out of the biscuit barrel, and take the tea back to bed for a while.

Then it was time to reflect on our whirlwind trip to Athens over the past weekend. I say Athens, but we were actually staying in a modest, yet almost new hotel in downtown Piraeus. I don't know how much you know about Piraeus, but it's held in very high esteem by writers of traditional Greek music, who extol the virtues of its Bouzoukia, its tavernas and coffee bars, its maritime culture, its women. Of course, such songs are highly romanticised, and they don't pay much mind to the downside of the place. Like its neighbour Athens, into which nowadays it seamlessly bleeds from an urban development point of view, it's a vast sprawl of five and six-storey buildings, which looks from the air very much like lichen all over a low stone wall.

Whenever we watch the national TV weather forecast here in Greece, we see the map sweeping all across Greece from satellite height, and eventually swooping into the Athens-Piraeus area, thus displaying the lichen-like effect on the landscape that I mentioned above. There are precious few skyscrapers in Athens, it's simply street after street, mainly in a grid-like pattern, inside of which one can very easily get hopelessly lost. At least, before the days of wi-fi and smartphones one could. These days, of course, most people can whip out their phone and within seconds know exactly where they are. Never has there been a stronger case for modern telecommunications technology than that, I can tell you.

We were in Athens with a bunch of friends and were block-booked into the hotel, which I'd gone searching for in Google-Earth 'Streetview' beforehand, since one of the friends had selected and booked our rooms, and thus I wanted to know what the place looked like, since we weren't all travelling together on the same flight to get there. When I typed the address into Google Earth's 'find' box, it took me to a street just one block away from the quay from which all the boats set sail for the islands. I was quite excited about this, because the last time we'd been there was in 1982, just a few years back then!

When I went into 'Streetview' I was able to stand on the exact corner where the hotel was located, since it lists its address with both street names. The building in question shows itself to be empty, derelict. This was why I concluded, rightly so it seems, that the hotel was a new venture. It was only a modest, two star affair, but despite the rooms being lacking in a few of the things you come to expect from a hotel, they were brand spanking new, had decent air conditioning at no extra cost and the bed was comfy. The only problem was the noise at night. Once we were past midnight, despite double-glazed windows, the music, the motorcycles, the rubbish trucks and the human voices were incessant until dawn.

To get there, we'd opted to take the bus from the airport. Fortunately, a friend here on Rhodes, whose son was doing his military service on the island of Poros, had gone to visit him a couple of years ago, and that trip had involved her flying to Athens, then getting to Piraeus and taking the island boat from the very quay which was just around the block from our hotel. The Piraeus Express bus service is perfect. For a mere €6 a head you get the same bus all the way from the airport (which is a very, very long way out of town these days) and it drops you metres from the quayside in Piraeus. So we followed her example and got off the bus around fifteen minutes walk from the hotel. We were travelling light, with very small hand baggage and only one modest suitcase, which has wheels.

Another advantage of taking the bus is that you don't get pestered continually during the ride by beggars, as happens perpetually on the train. Now, putting all morals about whether or not one gives to these poor unfortunates aside for a moment, the experience is nevertheless quite unpleasant, and some of them exude a truly awful smell from several feet away. Even with the best will in the world, they exist in such numbers that one simply cannot afford to give to all of them. On the bus, you avoid all of the moral hand-wringing anyway.

The photo at the top of this post was taken during the short walk from the bus stop to the hotel, and it's right across the road from where all the island boats tie up.

First impressions of downtown Piraeus? That those who write all the songs extolling its virtues are on drugs.

But our overall impression was to change over the three nights and four days of our stay.

More on that in the next post, along with a clutch of photos, of course.