Trip to Syros part one .....

We have needed to do some research about where to overwinter the boat this year. Lots of help on various Internet forums but we wanted to avoid the Lefkas/Preveza area as we have done that to death, and fancied somewhere new. One possibility was a yard at Porto Hele, near Spetses, and another at nearby Khalida. After an email conversation, the yard at Porto Hele appeared to be fully booked, and we thought Khalida was just too quiet a place to spent the whole winter. We did discover other yards we previously had not heard of, dismissing them as too expensive, not sheltered enough, or too far from civilisation.
We then came across a single comment on a boating forum suggesting "why not try Syros".
Firstly, I had to look up Syros on a map. It's the capital of the Cyclades and is a proper working town, open all winter, next nearest island is Mykonos. Lots of Greek civil servants there, and an Athens university department. Fast ferries take two hours 20 mins. The capital city, Ermopoulis, is built on two hills with a big church on each, and surprisingly for Greece, the population is half Greek orthodox and half Catholic. Most places in Greece are 95% Greek orthodox.
So we planned our trip to Siros. We left the boat in Itea, near Galaxidi, on the northern coast of the gulf of Corinth, and took a four hour bus ride to Athens. It was 17 euro each, but well worth it. Wonderful mountain views, tiny villages, scary hairpin bends. We went through what, in the winter, is the biggest ski resort area in Greece, the houses look like chalets with sloping roofs.
We also passed through Delphi, famous for the god Apollo, and its oracle, which is not as I had previously thought, a book, but was a specially selected unblemished village woman who was taken into the mountains and sat on a type of throne positioned over a cleft in the earth through which some type of gas emanated, producing hallucinations and a type of madness! The mind boggles! Eminent people, royalty, battle leaders would approach her and ask her things. Not whether Portsmouth would ever in the FA cup again, but things like whether there would be famine, or would their battle be successful. All a bit vague really.

There is a modern online version at http://www.delphicoracle.net/ if you need the answer to a burning question. I typed in ... What will the weather be like today? ... And it told me -

What's more powerful a spice than salt?
When tears must fall, think on them glowingly,
For they have dissolved in them the story
Of a thousand kingdoms risen and gone.

Don't you hate people who can't make decisions?

Part two soon ..........