A journey stumbling through the Aegean. Backpack laden with Turkish gifts (and other holiday paraphernalia), my familiarity and enchantment with the Anatolian Aegean left me thinking it was time to head into that ancient sea and explore some Greek territory. My experiences of Hellas were not quite as I expected: the landscape and people differing bewilderingly from those of Turkey. The inviting temptations of the verdant tresses of pine forests toppling into the 'Turquoise Coast' were lost as I wandered inalienably through barren islands inviolably prankt on the sapphire sea. * There was a lot to learn, for when I return: so here I shall share as much as I dare, in my own prosaic poetry, my tumbling tale, with the tools of the trade I gathered along the way. May it be useful for your adventures in this (alas once-thriving) land! In a series of blog posts I will follow the journey I made, setting sail from Halicarnassus (Bodrum, Muğla, Turkey) to the island of Kos, just a few kilometers away - a distance so short it could be swum, but a nation so separate a double passport control is required. I will include tips for each place I visited: the transport system in Greece and its various parts isn't always the most intuitive, and the expected norms and behaviours aren't quite what a Western European, nor an Aegean Turk, would necessarily be used to. Let's just say my jaw dropped more than once - often with neither the sunset nor architecture responsible. As I did not stay in hotels or hostels for the most part, but with locals (through the wonder that is Couchsurfing), I was privy to much Greek translation, local knowledge, travel tips, and off-the-beaten-track treasures, that I hope can give you an extra special time beyond what scouring Tripadvisor may or may not achieve. My route, seen in the map, avoids party islands and seeks a diverse experience of the country in a somewhat limited time. The key areas explored are: Patmos island Athens Andros island Kalabaka (Meteora monasteries) Volos and Pelion area Thessaloniki The first crossingBye Bye Bodrum Turquoise Coast soon becomes Sapphire Sea Stepping onto Kos island the first thing you might notice is that suddenly you are in an Orthodox Christian European country and no longer in the Muslim Middle East...except you wouldn't. Yes most people walked through the streets in bikini tops and while bikinis and skimpy whats-its alike abound in the South and West coasts of Turkey, perhaps the only difference would be that once you're off the beach and on the road, in Turkey you should put your top back on...here, the town and the beach were one. Many people from Bodrum take a day trip to Kos, but whether or not this is your intention be very aware of the ferry times which are...a little dictatorial. Depart from Bodrum Castle port at 9/9:30am and return at 4:30/5pm. The discrepancies depend on the season (and the whim of the ferry companies). I turned up bright and early at the port having woken at 6am from a far away part of the Bodrum peninsula and bought my ticket there and then, leaving them my bag to go and find a çay. The experience is like that of an airport, bags are scanned, visa are checked, passport is nodded at by a serious looking policeman in a box, and there's even a duty free. And an hour later once you've made the crossing don't expect to go skipping straight to the beach. There's another rowdy queue for passport control. Once through that though there's beach to the right and some sites of interest a walk around the bay to the left. Heading inwards towards what looked like something of interest I came upon Hippocrates Square and...perhaps an ancient ruin...? A few days before me coming here I had experienced the intense earthquake and its still pretty intense aftershocks while in Bodrum on 21st July. I was scared, and despite some practice shakes in equally untrustworthy Italian buildings this long rumble had me trembling inside and out. The most structural damage was seen in Kos and due to collapsing buildings, 2 people were sadly killed. So in this picture what we're seeing is, that big tree is a the Plane tree under which Hippocrates supposedly taught (or rather its ancestor seeing as its only around 500 hundred years old). And the broken pile of columns and a discernible dome was just a little Ottoman water fountain built by a Turkish governor Gazi Hassan. (It turns out noone was particularly bothered by its crumbling). Yes those vague scratches on the roof are indeed Arabic engravings. As you can see in the background there is a very distinctive minaret and indeed many of the Greek churches resemble mosques with domed roofs and converted minarets, but due to its 'colourful' past, -governed by Turks, Italians, Germans, Brits and Greeks without even venturing into antique times- a wide variety of influences from Venetian houses to the medieval Castle of the Knights can be observed. However I am not going to write a history lesson, there's plenty of museums, books and Wikipedia for that. I spent very little time on Kos for I had an Athenian friend from Rome to catch on the mainland and Patmos to pass by on the way. *Excuse the Shelley quote but I couldn't quite find the words myself.
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