I had a very busy day working from home, so these are "catch up" photos. I have a few days worth of photos from our trip to the island of Poros, so just be patient. Today they're all from the boat - mostly bird pictures.

This isn't the boat - it's the last of the pictures I took Sunday in church. You can tell by the light streaming in that it's late afternoon. The bright spot on the right is the screen where the overhead projector shines the words to the hymns.

The Port of Piraeus is really quite busy with boats of all shapes and sizes. There is a lot less freight shipping going on but I don't think a single passenger ship has canceled a trip. I'm not exaggerating to say there must've been 20 different ferries of different sizes pulling out within 30 minutes.

This time we took the larger, slower ferry boat. Unlike the faster boats, this one is more like a cruise ship in many ways: there are chairs out on

the deck and there are lounges inside where you can eat, drink, play cards, relax - whatever. This fast boat that was passing us just offers seats similar to a bus/airplane. There are TVs on board, and you can buy coffee, water, etc. but it's definitely less comfortable than the larger ferry boats that take cars, motorcycles, etc. Of course the smaller, faster hydrofoils make it to the island of Poros in about an hour. We took about 2 1/2, but we had an extra stop ( a port that some ferries visit, but not all).


Poros is probably not the most visited or well-
known Greek islands, but it does get a fair amount of visitors because of its proximity to Athens. Tons of ferries each day do the Aegina-Poros-Hydra run. You can book a tour that hits all three in one day. It must require running the whole time.


This is the main lounge on our ferry. The counter with food and drink is at the far end as are most of the passengers because they allow smoking in that section (of course - closest to the food). Mark, Martha Kim and I sat in here for a little while playing cards but the smoke was too much,
and the scenery outside too nice to sit in here.


This is a rather characteristic view. There's nothing special about it, but it just summarizes cruising along and seeing land pop up out of the sea. Some of it is large enough to be inhabited, some of it is little more than boulders sticking up out of the water.

When it comes to island hopping, I decided that getting there is more than half the fun for me. I'm not much for nightlife, and although many
islands have interesting historical sites, certainly one doesn't go to the islands for that. After all, you can get plenty of history in Athens.

I sat out on the back of the ship just looking at the wake for a long while. It was beautiful weather and a calm sea: who could ask for more?


When I was 16 my family took a ship to Italy. Kim, Nicole and I took the ferry in Italy before. I just looked out and was reminded of those previous occasions and felt nostalgic.

I don't know exactly how far out of Piraeus we were, or how long we had before reaching a port, but all of a sudden the boat was being followed by a flock of seagulls: no, not the musical group. I understand that maybe they were attracted to the fish that might be churned up by the wake, or perhaps they enjoyed riding the air currents produced by the ship, or maybe they came to expect people to throw them bread, but they weren't with us for any other part of the trip. They all just appeared at once and pretty much disappeared just as randomly.


It was very cool just watching them glide along. One of the reasons I have so many pictures is my futile attempt to get a good close-up. They came within feet of us.

Backing up: for our excursion Monday, we met Mark and Martha at the tram stop at 7 a.m. We took the tram toward the port, but got off to catch a bus that would get us closer to where we wanted to be. We arrived at the port, bought our tickets in plenty of time to board before the 8
a.m. departure, and they pulled out right on time. As I already mentioned we started out in the lounge (had our morning coffee/tea) and played cards before heading out.

Except for the height of season (July/August), you can usually just show up at the port and get a ticket. Since it's all open seating there's really no advantage to booking ahead. What surprises me is there's no advantage to booking round trip, either.

This video is only a couple of seconds.