We arrived by ferry into Sifnos at 11:15 p.m. on Thursday night. The ferry ride wasn’t much to report, Nathan and I were so tired that we took turns reading and nodding off. It was a decent ride, nearly 3 hours long. The boat was the Speed Runner 3, huge and monstrous, with room for all of the passengers up top, and room for people with their cars on the bottom. We had seat assignments which came in handy, but the boat wasn’t completely full anyway. We were very extremely tired, having trekked all over Athens for the whole day without a comfortable home base. We were hot, sweaty, and had been wearing our same clothes that we flew in the day before.
When we arrived in Sifnos, it was obviously night time and dark outside. Nathan and I made the “exodus” off the boat with the other passengers and then kinda looked at each other in a “now what?” type of manner. The two taxis that were available were claimed immediately by other passengers, leaving us to further wonder what the heck we were supposed to do. So we started walking down the main street, hoping another taxi would arrive. No such luck. I decided to ask a guy who worked for the Greek Coast Guard if he knew of our hotel. “Yes, Hotel Margado! Go 300 meters that way” as he pointed straight up the gigantic hill. Awesome. So we walked back the way we came and came to a fork in the road, one that went back to the dock and one that went up hill. I asked again, this time, asked a car rental guy. “Ah, yes, hotel Margado.” He gestured with his hands and said, “Go up there, then leeeft, riiiight, and then leeeeft and then riiiiiight.” OK? So we started walking, rather, climbing these steep hills with two large suitcases, Nathan’s messenger bag and both of my camera bags. I immediately was hit with memories of being lost in Lugano… the first day I had arrived there, meandering around and trying to find our residence with three other students that I had met. It was already 11:30 at night and I really didn’t want to be aimlessly wandering around Kamares, Sifnos. With the help of my wonderfully strong gallant husband, we made it up the three large slopes with all of our bags. The incline on the last hill up to the hotel was, no joke here, literally, 45 degrees. I was tempted to get my iPhone out, download the leveling App, and then see exactly what the angle was. Ha ha ha. Nathan made the trek up the hill first with his messenger bag, and hauling our two rolling suitcases behind him, me slowly and breathlessly following him, still not knowing if this is exactly where we should be going. Alas, at the top of Mt. Everest, was the Hotel Margado. It took us 5 minutes to catch our breath and head up more stairs to where the owner, Stella, was waiting for us by the beautiful terrace and pool area.
I told Stella, in a breathless voice, “We’re the Wilcke’s, we have a reservation.”
She replied with this, “Ah, yes, but you were supposed to go to the travel agent office and have them call me to come get you and bring you up here.”
WHAT? You mean we could have had a RIDE?
She continued, “The travel agent was supposed to inform you of this transfer? No?”
“No, we had no idea, so we walked.”
“Oh, ok, I call them.”
So she called them and seemed pretty upset at the agency, complaining that they hadn’t told us about her plan to come and get us. I was a bit, no, I was really mad.
Stella got us all settled in our room, a very plain room with two twin beds pushed together, but a nice balcony with a view of the port. All in all, it was a fine room, but with one the Euro style showers that I despise… itsy bitsy teeny weeny shower that when you turn it on, it gets everything wet in the bathroom. The Europeans just don’t shower like Americans. No wonder they stink. Ha.
Nathan showered, I showered, and then we both passed out and slept solidly, with only a thin sheet to cover us, until 9 AM the next morning. Ahhhhhhh, sleep.
We woke up in the morning and headed up for breakfast. I was expecting something a LITTLE more lavish than one kind of cheese, one kind of meat (looked like bologna), and like 8 different kinds of bread. There was one kind of cereal, which I chose to eat, strained Greek Yogurt, syrup, and jellies. The coffee was gross, just like Ana and Sandra had warned. Even sugar didn’t help. It just has a ‘funk’ to it… can’t really decide what that is exactly.
Anyway, after a huge let down of a breakfast (mind you, I wasn’t expecting an American style of breakfast anyway having had previous European experience), we showered and headed out.
We asked Stella if she would give us a ride down to the town’s center and she said, “No. I do the transfer only, but you should rent a car anyway. You only have one day to see the island, and it is much better to have a car than take the bus.”
After a bit more talking we decided that she was right, so she got on the phone and found us a car to rent for the day. A guy from Apollo car company agreed to come up to the Margado and get us to bring us from Kamares to Apolonia to sign for the car, but in a half hour or so. That was fine, to us, so we went back and got online, and researched a little more where we should venture with our car for the day. Between the tips we got from Stella, and the stuff I’d read in our Greek travel book and online, we had a pretty good plan of how to spend our day.
The guy, for fun, I’ll call him Apollo, picked us up wreaking of body odor. He spoke decent English and drove us to Apolonia to the car rental office. On our way, the 5 kilometer curvy drive around the island to the capital, he was telling us about the island and where we should go.
“If you follow the asphalt, it goes to all the important places.” Fair enough, okay. “Platy Gialos is very nice, it has big biches, and Vathy has biches too.” Yes, yes, he was saying biches, not beaches. Nathan and I had a good laugh about this later, and about how we would get to see so many big bitches. ;)
By the time we got on our way to start around on our Sifnos escapade, it was noon. We headed to Vathy, which is a small, very quiet town with lots of rooms to “let” and a thin but long beautiful beach with a bay. Cars are not allowed to drive in the town, so the are all to be parked in the parking lot just outside the town. We parked our cute little Chevy in gravel parking lot by one of the several olive trees and walked to the bay. There were plenty of restaurants on the shore, but there was one, Manolis, that we wanted. I had read about it on Matt Barret’s website about Sifnos, claiming that it had the best clay pot baked food on the island (one of the island specialties). We walked the wrong way first, which was okay by us, we got to see more of the restaurants and locals hanging out on the beach.
We found Manolis a bit later, and sat down to have lunch. I was intrigued and wanted to try another one the island’s specialty, chick pea stew cooked in a clay pot. I pointed to this item on the menu when the waiter took our order, and he replied with, “It has peppers, tomatoes, and rice.”
“Ok,” I said, sounds good.
Nathan ordered Mousaka, a beer (Mythos- yummy), and I tried Nescafe for the first time (by suggestion of my friend that had been to Greece before). Instant coffee. Are you kidding me? Ha. Where is STARBUCKS??? ;) I did see one in Athens….
Turns out that I hadn’t ordered what I thought I had ordered because when I received my food, I was presented with a stuffed green pepper with rice and a stuffed tomato with rice. Oooooooooooh? Wait. I thought I ordered the chick pea stew… Oh well. I ate it anyway and told Nathan that I would just have to get chick pea stew at dinner for an appetizer.
Nathan’s mousaka was delicious. It was layered like a lasagna with ground beef, cooked eggplant, and then mashed potatoes mixed with cheese for a devilishly delicious fattening top. He really enjoyed it, and I enjoyed a few bites of it myself.
At one point while we were sitting there at our table, Nathan said to me, “It took me a minute but I finally just realized what that is that she hung up over there. It’s an octopus.” HUH? I looked at him.
Indeed, the British gal staying in the B&B next to Manolis had hung up an octopus on the clothes line to dry in the sun. Really? Sick. So I took pictures of it. ;)
When I went over there, the girl, not really expecting me to speak English launches out with, “Everyone is taking pictures of my….” and then she noticed that I was looking at her and she stopped.
“I’m sorry,” I laughed, “That’s just so bizarre! We don’t eat octopus in the U.S.” Her husband told me that they were charging 20 Euro for a picture, but the first one was free. Ha ha, LOL silly Brit. No, he was really nice.
We finished up our not-so-good stuffed peppers and tomatoes and wonderful mousaka and headed out of Vathy to Platy Gialos for the bich, oh, I mean beach. Since we had rented a car it was easy enough to bring our suits with us. We had to buy a few towels at a local mini mart, but no big deal. We spent the rest of the afternoon on the coast of Platy Gialos, Sifnos sitting next to a young American couple from Tampa. Ha…
At 5 p.m. we wrapped up our beach time and headed back to our hotel in Kamares. We got showered and cleaned up and headed for the “not to be missed while in Sifnos” town of Kastro. Oh wow, did it live up to what we expected. We were told by Stella (owner of our B&B) to go at dusk/sunset because it’s so hot up there. We followed her lead and did what she said. The sun was setting, giving me an open shade paradise to photograph, white walls with blue doors, flower pots, and a white church stuck out on it’s own volcanic rock with the nearly full moon rising just above it. WOW. Amazing. Nathan sure was a sport letting me take my time to capture the shots, even holding lenses for me while changing them on my camera. What a sweetie. ;)
We headed to Apolonia, the island’s capital for dinner and the night life. We had dinner at a restaurant on the tiny “main drag” street; it was the main street for bars and restaurants, not wide enough for 5 people to walk side by side.
We splurged a bit and had a very good bottle of Greek Syrah with dinner, Thema a regional wine of Drama. I had my highly anticipated chick pea stew (served in a clay pot just like they said) and had another clay pot dish for my main course, pork with white wine and some kind of herb that I didn’t recognize. It was tasty, but I liked the chick pea stew the best. Nathan had meatballs with gruyere cheese. He enjoyed it very much, the meatballs were very tender.
I was on the hunt for something sweet after dinner, and about had a heart attack when I saw an ice cream/gelato place. Mmmm, hazelnut gelato in a sugar cone. I had worked for that, walking up those dang hills to that hotel, walking all over Athens, walking all over Sifnos. I definitely earned that gelato.
We had a night cap at one of the many bars lining this main street while waiting for the Friday night “nightlife” to begin. The clock struck 11 and no one else was even IN the bar. We decided to go back to the hotel and go to bed. So much for a night out on the town, probably a good thing since Nathan had to navigate the exceptionally tiny and winding roads of Sifnos in our rental car. I really gotta say that he was an amazing driver.
We woke up on Saturday morning and got our stuff ready to leave Sifnos. We packed up and took our car down to the town center for Apollo to pick it up (the biches guy). We had breakfast, thin omelets with ham and cheese, coffee and juice, and then boarded our ferry to Milos. Pulling out of Sifnos was beautiful, but it got even better as we approached Milos and saw the island of Kimolos. We had to stop there to exchange passengers for a few minutes, and then we were off to Milos. What a beautiful boat ride!
Thankfully, when we got to Milos, our hotel was in short walking distance from the port on a flat road. Oh thank heaven. We got settled into our room and just had lunch at Flisvos in the town’s center square… cheese pies (not that great even with a high recommendation from the guy who wrote our Lonely Planet book), green salad and chicken soulvlaki (sp?), basically a kebab of chicken and fries. I still have yet to be blown away with the great food that Greece supposedly has somewhere that I’ve heard about. Maybe in Santorini… ha.
