After all the sightseeing that Laure and I had done so far in Greece, we headed off to a quaint little island named Hydra for two nights of R&R. We drove as far south as we could and boarded a small boat for the short ride to the town of Hydra.
Hydra's port.
Hydra is a fairly low key island that is completely car free with many little cobblestone alleys to explore. We had decided to come here and enjoy the relatively slow pace rhythm of a small island before visiting one of the more popular ones that would surely be packed with tourists.
Donkeys are the only mode of transportation on the island besides walking. You can spot donkeys carrying furniture.
We stayed at Hotel Sophia, which overlooks the port and promenade.
The island was filled with blooming spring flowers.
We also went out on a little hike along the coast.
The quietness of the island turned out to be a two sided coin. On on side, it was great to explore this romantic little town without throngs of people. On the other side, we sometimes felt like we were walking in a ghost town especially since we went early in the spring and the island depends heavily on tourism. This lonesome serenity was especially strong at night.
Hydra sleeps.
Aimless wandering.
Our main company at night were the island cats.
Every now and then, we would come across a cute lively courtyard restaurant.
The specialty meal on the Greek islands is unsurprisingly fish. The standard procedure is to go with the waiter to choose from a selection of fish on display. The waiter helps by describing the variety of fish and the recommended methods of cooking them. At the end of the meal, you pay by the weight.
Laure went to Greece really excited about eating lots of fish. Even though I'm not a fish connoisseur, I was able to definitely taste that we were eating great fish. Unfortunately, Laure's pregnancy really screwed with her taste buds and she was really bummed out that all the fish she ate tasted bland!
Eating outdoors in the Greek islands is a must.
Selecting our lunch.
This cute kitty tried charming us for some fish.
Locals like cats because they keep the rat population down. You hear that, NYC?
We also came across a pretty good Italian style gelataria, The Cool Mule. To our pleasant surprise, we found good gelatarias not only in Hydra but also in subsequent islands that we visited. Who would have guessed that Greek islanders have mastered this Italian art form?
After checking out some of the famous highlights, we decided to check out some of the less popular spots during our Baklava Babymoon.
Mycenae
We drove to Mycenae, which was the center of Greek civilization during the aptly named Mycenaean period between 1600 and 1100 BC. The Mycenaeans were a people of aggressive warriors that conquered a lot of the surrounding region. Some believe they were one of the key players in the mythical Trojan Wars.
The Lion Gate is the most impressive structure that survived from the Mycenaen period.
Apart from the Lion Gate, a lot of Mycenae has unfortunately crumbled over the last 3,000 years. So I consider it as one of those places that you need to mentally visualize its former grandeur to really appreciate it.
There was also a nice museum at the site with artifacts from the civilization.
Nafplio
Next on our trip was the former Greek capital Nafplio. While planning our trip, we had decided pass there simply because it was between places we wanted to see. But then Nafplio really surprised us. It felt like a much sanitized and scaled down version of Cairo, which made it more approachable and relaxing.
We stayed at an awesome place named Pension Marianna overlooking the city.
The room looked like it was out of a castle.
Nafplio has many interesting places like this good chocolate shop we stumbled upon.
Shortly after arriving in Nafplio, we realized we should have probably planned to spend at least one full day there to leisurely check out all the interesting shops and the good restaurants.
Epidaurus Ancient Theater
Next, we checked out the Epidaurus Ancient Theater, where artists have performed plays and music since ancient times until now at this outdoor auditorium.
The acoustics are so good that everyone can hear the person in the center.
For a crazy second, I considered reciting a Shakespearean monologue.
My wife and my then-unborn child.
There's also a museum with some ancient stuff.
After all that sightseeing, we were ready to relax and see what the legendary Greek islands are all about. That's coming next.
Next on our Baklava Babymoon, Laure and I went to consult the Oracle of Delphi about the sex of the baby that Laure was carrying. To our dismay, we found out that the oracle had been out of commission for nearly 2000 years.
The Temple of Apollo housed the Oracle of Delphi.
As with many ancient ruins, we had to use our imagination to mentally reconstruct the grandness of Delphi at an attempt to appreciate its value. For a few hundred years, many people from commoners to great generals visited the oracle to listen to her prophecies. These visitors presented Delphi with gifts and monuments in order to please the gods and improve their chances of a positive prophecy.
This painting I ripped off the internet is a guess of what Delphi might have looked in its heyday.
Above the Temple of Apollo is an amphitheater that's worth checking out.
We stayed a night in the modern day city of Delphi that is located down the hill from the temple. This turned out to be a nice place to rest after the hustle and bustle of the big city of Athens. We took the opportunity to check out a small family owned restaurant for some traditional Greek food.
At Gargadua Grill, we ate moussaka, which is sort of like an eggplant lasagna.
Telescope café offers good mountain views, the friendliest of services, and a good Greek coffee.
If you're wondering, Greek coffee is the same as Turkish coffee, although many Greeks refuse to acknowledge it.
After Delphi, we were back on the road and decided to take a long way to our next destination in the Peloponnese peninsula. On the way, we stopped at a sleepy town named Nafpaktos for lunch, where it was amazingly difficult to find an open restaurant because it was still "too early" for them to open at 12:30pm. We eventually stumbled upon an old bar-like establishment that served a single option of food: souvlaki.
Souvlaki is a deliciously simple snack: grilled skewered meat; sometimes with veggies.
This seems to be by far the most popular Greek fast food; more so than gyro sandwiches.
This nameless establishment was the only place we found serving food at 12:30pm.
Maybe people eat lunch at home in the small town of Nafpaktos.
After our quick lunch, we were back on the road to our next destination in the Peloponnese peninsula.
Our first Baklava Babymoon (a.k.a. Feta Filled Fetus tour) stop was Athens. Frankly speaking, the Greek capital has an infamous reputation for being dirty, which is perhaps the main reason that most people just visit long enough to see the Acropolis and then leave. Athens was officially the most polluted city in Western Europe in the 1980s. But in more recent years, they have made big strides in cleaning up the air and making their city more pedestrian friendly. This convinced me and Laure to take a few days to check out the sights, meet the locals, and (of course) eat some good food.
Day 1: wandering around the historic old town
After checking into our hotel, we wandered around the old town.
Ariston is a century old casual bakery that sells local pies and pastries.
We came across some people bboying.
Part of me wanted to join the fun.
The other part of me realized I would get my ass kicked.
Walking around Athen's old town is quite nice. Some years ago, the city prohibited car traffic on the historical streets. At first locals and business were outraged, but over time they realized that decision actually attracted more people.
We caught the changing of the Evzones, who are the elite presidential guards.
They wear shoes with pom-poms.
This trip gave us a quick introduction to the Orthodox Christian religion. Most, but not all, of the old churches we visited in Greece were small in comparison to the churches we are used to seeing in the rest Europe. In my opinion this makes the churches seem more approachable and intimate.
Church of Kapnikarea's orange bricks look especially dramatic during sunset.
At night, we had our first proper restaurant meal. My impression of Greek food is that it is normally made out of simple but decent quality ingredients. And although Greek olive oil is not as famous as Italian, I actually found Greek oil to be generally more flavorful.
The Greek salad quickly became the appetizer of every meal.
Simple ingredients with a big presence of olive oil.
After dinner, we walked around a bit and witnessed the local crowds going out and socializing. I really like how the Greek like to socialize not only in restaurants, bars, and dance clubs, but they also hang out outside in public squares. Actually, this is true for much of Europe. I wish this was also true in the US, but I suppose the general prohibition of drinking in public is a literal buzz kill.
Musicians set the mood for the crowd to dance at Monastiraki Square.
Day 2: culture overload and a fancy dinner
On our second day, Laure and I headed over to the National Archeological Museum, which contains some of the most important ancient Greek art starting all the way back to 7000 B.C.
It is mind boggling to believe that I was looking at things made by humans about 9,000 years ago. That's twice as old as the Great Pyramid in Egypt. The same way we look at the pyramids and think "wow, that is ridiculously old" is the same way the Egyptians at the time would look back at these and think the same thing -- assuming they knew about their existence and assuming they could think in English.
Today we don't know if these ancient 9000-year old Cycladic figurines are depictions of goddesses or maybe just porn.
The famous but misnamed golden Mask of Agamemnon.
This beautifully decorated knife shows the importance of war to the Mycenaeans.
After the museum, Laure and I decided to grab a Greek snack known worldwide: gyro sandwiches. After a little bit of online research we settled on a place that turned out to have okay sandwiches accompanied by quasi-rude service.
That tzatziki sauce looks suspiciously like mayonnaise.
After a few more attempts later on the trip, I came to realize that gyro sandwiches in Greece are generally not any better or worse than what you would find anywhere else. Actually, it seemed like the more popular snack among Greeks are actually souvlakis, which are skewered meats -- think Greek kebabs.
After our disappointing lunch, we checked out the Agora, which was the commercial, political, and social heart of ancient Athens. That was where the residents would go to hang out, shop, and vote.
What am I looking at?
I believe that visiting the Agora in Athens is very similar to visiting the Forum in Rome. Most of what remains are in rubbles, so you need to use a lot of your imagination to reconstruct what was there before. Both places are only interesting if you take the time to understand some of the history and importance of what was there before. Otherwise it's pretty meaningless to look at rocks on the ground.
For that reason, Laure and I downloaded audio tours to play on our phones while we walked around, which is easier, faster, and more entertaining than reading a book. You could probably find some different options, but we are huge fans of the free Rick Steves audio tours as well as his books.
Next, we climbed up to Athens' most famous sight by far: the Acropolis.
The Acropolis was getting a makeover.
As impressive as the remains of the Parthenon looks today, we need to imagine what it must have been in its full glory: full of ornate sculptures surrounding an impressive 12-meter statue of Athena. Perhaps most interestingly, the Parthenon used to be colorfully painted, which is hard to imagine looking at its monochromatic remains. I find it funny that many modern banks are built to resemble Greek architecture but are painted completely white.
How did this look full of color?
After walking around the Acropolis, we walked on a nice pedestrian walkway named the Dionysiou street.
The Dionysiou walking path has talented street performers.
For dinner, we decided to splurge and eat at a fancy restaurant, which is one of the things we figured would be difficult later with a newborn child. After a bit of research ahead of time, we settled on a restaurant named The Funky Gourmet.
How did they fill this hollow cracker with warm soup?
The Funky Gourmet is part of a food trend named "molecular gastronomy", which is a buzz term for the way that chefs try coming up with new combinations of ingredients to present dishes with new flavors in an inventive way. Frankly, I'm generally pretty skeptic because this stuff seems a bit gimmicky to me.
But this dinner dispelled my skepticism. The food not only looked good, but it was also very delicious. The service was excellent without being excessively formal. Although the cost was high compared to other local restaurants, it was a bargain compared to anything near the same quality back in Switzerland. All in all, this has been my favorite high end restaurant experience to date.
I thought it was insane that they would serve white chocolate on caviar.
Until the flavor and texture knocked my socks off.
Sure, they served food with excessive amounts of liquid nitrogen to put on a show, but the food still tasted great.
And it's cool that our table looked like a haunted house.
Day 3: The Acropolis Museum and our departure from Athens
On our last day in Athens, we checked out the Acropolis Museum, which houses some of the original sculptures from the Acropolis that were moved from their original location due to the terrible corrosion from pollution. A few decades from pollution outside in the last century did significantly more damage to these sculptures than the preceding two thousand years.
The caryatids don't look a day over 1000.
Although the Acropolis Museum was built to house the most precious sculptures from the Acropolis, many of them are actually in the British Museum in London. Greece is trying to recover them; they do it sometimes aggressively (like by suing in international courts) and sometimes passive-aggressively (like with reminders throughout the museum and at the airport explaining that the original pieces are in the British Museum).
After the museum, Laure and I picked up a rental car to head out of Athens. We had read that driving in Athens is crazy (a claim that turned out to be somewhat exaggerated), so we decided to leave outside of traffic rush hours.
Driving in Athens was pretty easy although some Greeks angrily honked their horns and shouted at me when I illegally parked the car to load baggage. It's no use crying over spilled milk.
Our babymoon wasn't going to be our final vacation before our little one arrived
and we certainly hoped to continue traveling after our kid's arrival but we could not resist an excuse to travel. So when I was seven months pregnant, we set out for our Baklava Babymoon in Greece.
The baby announcement to our family.
We chose to expand on the popular babymoon itinerary of relaxing at a beach and include some of our other favorite activities - city visit, history and food. We spent 10 days seeing some of the highlights of Greece: Athens, Delphi, Nafplio, Hydra, and Oia. We enjoyed the country so much that by the end of our trip we were already talking about returning again with our little one to explore more of this beautiful country.
As the current ski season draws to a close, I should recap the ski touring that we did on the previous season. Since Laure was pregnant, we took things relatively laid back for the most part.
Oberiberg night tour with Stephen
Early in the season, I decided to go ski touring as much as possible as a form of training for the Japan ski trip later. I met a guy named Stephen through a Meet Up group on the internet that wanted to train at a local resort at night, so I said, why not?
It seemed kind of crazy but cool to go ski touring at night.
Stephen turned out to be a super cool guy that was starting to do Ski Mountaineering races. He had a bunch of super light ski gear that he could put on or take off in a matter of seconds. Since the avalanche danger was basically zero (we were practicing on the resort piste), Stephen and I split up and he did three laps during the time that I did two.
During the couple hours we were out, we came across a few other skiers. It felt like we were part of some cool club. On the other hand, I had this crazy fear that a Snow Cat would pop out of nowhere and run me over without noticing my headlamp.
Furgellen hut with Laure and Ralf
Last season, Ralf finally agreed to go on a tour with me and Laure despite the fact that we're splitboarders. We went up to cute little place called Furgellen hut located somewhere within an hour drive.
I love seeing ski touring and snowshoeing signs in Switzerland.
The sports are so approachable here compared to back in the States.
The tour was nice and mellow, which was a nice way for Laure to warm up her legs for the season while baking a bun in the oven.
Taking it easy.
The hut is a short 431 m climb from the trailhead.
As luck would have it, the ridge was pretty windy. So instead of summiting the peak, we decided to hang out at the hut and slurp down some hot soup while our jackets dried. At the hut, we saw many other skiers, some of whom were probably in their 60s. I love how ski touring is a national sport in Switzerland for all sexes and ages.
Laure and I attempted to climb a peak named Schafberg. Unfortunately most of the tour was under the clouds, which was cold and somewhat depressing. Since we started late and were running short on time, we decided to turn around early to ensure that we could make our way back without risking losing sunlight. We came to a mere 124 vertical meters and 1 km away from the hut, so it was a difficult decision to turn around. Times like these test our rationality and commitment to safety.
Laure's huge smile when we cleared the clouds.
Finally above the clouds.
On our way down, we were once again engulfed in the clouds. Our visibility was so terrible that we could barely see our own snowboards. We had to move very slowly to ensure we didn't go off a cliff. This made our descent painfully slow and cold. To make maters worse, Laure had a major equipment failure and one of her bindings broke just before we rode down. We improvised with a multi-use strap to hold her foot down to the board to get her down the mountain.
We always carry this orange strap with us. So many uses for just 5 dollars.
Crappy visibility once we were back under the clouds.
Despite our failed attempt at Schafberg, a 960 m climb over 12.7 km is still not too bad for a pregnant lady!
Stotzigen Firsten attempt with Luc, Mark, and Eleanor
Next day, I met up with other ski tourers to attempt climbing Stotzigen Firsten -- spoiler alert: we failed. I had known Luc through work and I had gone ski touring with Mark and Eleaner in a guided tour during the previous season. Laure decided to take the day off from skiing that day.
Eleanor had previously done this route and led us most of the way.
We were climbing some badly wind scoured stuff. The other side of the valley looked better.
We stopped at a hut shelter for a quick lunch as the clouds started kicking in.
From the hut shelter, it seemed that all the ski tracks above us had been hammered flat by the wind. We were uncertain about continuing the route on a very solid snowpack without any visual cues of previous skiers. We also saw an alternative route that had been protected from the wind south of the ridge. But it was on a roughly 28 degree bowl without any previous tracks, which seemed borderline risky for avalanches. A few of us (myself included) felt unsure about proceeding, so we all agreed to turn around and enjoy the snow below us.
In hindsight, we would have probably been okay to climb the original route with ski crampons, but it would have been purely just to summit. The snow on the ridge was likely scoured all the way to the summit with terrible snow for skiing.
Eleanor near the point where we turned around.
The clouds kept shifting in and out with the wind.
Arrrgh!
We actually got some great low angled snow as consolation prize.
My last tour last season was climbing Blüemberg with my friend Fernando, who was visiting from the States.
We start by taking a public "bus" to the gondola.
The tiny gondola looked like something preserved from the mining days of the nearby village.
Lidernenhütte is a popular hut located near the top of the gondola.
From the top of the gondola, we made a short ascent to a nearby peak named Blüemberg. The sun was out and the sky was clear, which was great weather for touring. Fernando was still getting over his jet lag, so he was hurting a little.
The last few meters to the peak are steep and require some scrambling with a steel cable.
We descended the north face of Blüemberg, which was surprisingly tracked out.
It's funny how you can sometimes find more ski tracks in the backcountry than at resorts in Switzerland.
The snowpack was very stable, which was great for us to descend a slope that usually has a non-trivial danger of avalanches. On the other hand, the snow was tracked out and heavy, which was not the best for skiing. I guess you can't have it all.
The snow thinned out at lower elevations and we hiked the rest of the way.
We climbed 786 meters to Blüemberg and descended 1,742 meters on its north face covering 14.2 km.
