Greek Isles: In the Wake of History

Let me put it this way: Had it not been for close friends suggesting that the four of us take a cruise through the Greek Isles this past September, we probably would have put this one off. Not that the Greek Isles weren't on "the list," just that they weren't on the short list. Having said that, I'm glad we went. This was a cruise through antiquity that included some spectacular scenery, excellent and unusual food and a degree of relaxation that can only come from the lulling of the sea. Of course, the sea didn't always lull (more on that later).

We boarded the Star Flyer, a 360-foot, four-masted clipper flying 30 sails (36,000 square feet) fully rigged. She was a beauty, no doubt about it. Our expectations were piqued in the preceding weeks by two favorable reviews we had read about the ship and its crew. She had even been featured in a picture book of the great sailing ships of all time. And she did not disappoint.

Owned and built by Star Clippers Ltd. (Monaco), the company that owns the Star Clipper and the Royal Clipper (of Caribbean fame), the Star Flyer is richly appointed with teak decks and bronze fittings throughout. There are plenty of little private areas to escape the crowds, but really, with a crew of 90 and a passenger capacity of 170 (our ship was only half full), there were no crowds from which to escape. When the desire to join other passengers called, there was the mid-ship Tropical Bar which includes an area that can alternately be used for meeting space, buffet tables and, at night, dancing.

Aft of the dance floor is the library, a quiet, luxurious cabin in the Edwardian style (read, lots of wood). Indeed, Edwardian is the principal interior design throughout the ship, creating the sense that you are traveling in an exclusive private club.

The Piano Bar, under cover and just forward of the Tropical Bar, is paneled in Brazilian mahogany and features circular booths with heavily padded settees and backs. Very cushy. Two short staircases join the master companionway into the main dining room, the heart of the ship. Here, teak is the predominant wood, so despite its generous use, the dining area is light and airy with gleaming port holes every couple of feet.

Staterooms extend fore and aft of the dining room, each nearly identical in its layout and lavish use of mahogany and brass.

What the beauty of wood, the romance of sail and the exhilaration of salt air could not provide was more than made up for in the charm, wit and sincere attention to our every need by the Star Flyer's crew. Within a couple of days, most of the crew knew most of the passengers by name, anticipating our afternoon cocktail order, our special requests at dinner and even providing our cabin number. (Within a day or so of boarding ship, many of us wandered around like happy zombies unable to remember when we'd been this relaxed, much less which cabin was ours).

IF YOU GO

* Begin by visiting www.starclippers.com for answers to most of your questions and photos of the ship above and below. * Expect to spend $3,000 to $3,500 per person, including airfare from Fort Myers or Miami, but expect also to be pampered from sun up to sunset by a truly professional and courteous crew. Rates include three meals a day. Shore tours range from $30 to $60. * Drinks range in price from $5 to $8 with gratuity cleverly hidden from sight until you are presented with the final bill at the end of the cruise -- all of it charged in euros to your credit card. *Speaking of which -- buy your euros in the States. Everything we'd heard about using our credit card for cash advances and purchases to get a better rate was simply not true. The final rate we paid was as much as 15 percent higher than if we'd bought our euros back home and paid cash. To add insult to our naivete, Visa charged us a processing fee, in addition to an inflated exchange rate, for every purchase we made, adding well over a hundred dollars to our final trip cost. * Dress is casual aboard the Star Flyer. There are no 'formal nights" and depending on the time of year, shorts are acceptable for all occasions except dinner in the main dining room. * Bring plenty of sunscreen and lip balm. Greece is an arid country and sun burn is inevitable without some kind of protection. * Dramamine. Just in case.

No doubt facilitating this near brain dead sense of calm was the utter lack of human noise aboard this vessel. Unlike the big cruise lines, there were no constant announcements: "Jack Pot Bingo at 10 a.m." or alerts "Hagan Das now on sale in the Parlour Aft." Absent was the incessant racket of poorly played Reggae, the positioning of loudspeakers every several feet in every conceivable location or the seeming requirement of the crew to constantly entertain every passenger on board.

Just the mellow whoosh of the sea being broken by the bow, the flutter of the wind in the sails and the creak of wood in response to the gently rolling sea (although not always gently).

Into this sanctuary of repose, I had brought a book, a paperback of dubious cerebral value, the type specifically designed to be devoured against a backdrop of blue ocean and warm breezes. It proved too intellectually demanding. Indeed, starring at the horizon became challenging, although I found it could be done provided one of my hands was holding a Mai Tai.

Our itinerary took us through the Southern Cyclades. The first 36 hours brought us down from Piraeus (the port city of Athens) to the Island of Rhodes, some 250 nautical miles, providing an excellent opportunity to sleep between meals. Since I never paid attention in my high school ancient history class, I had little idea of what Rhodes was about. Thankfully, a multi-lingual Greek tour guide captivated our group with her descriptions of the history of the sites around us. It was Cliff Notes, to be sure, but wrapped in a sensual Hellenic tongue.

Rhodes was a big battleground, as were all of the Greek Islands, so there were many ruins to be seen and many vaguely familiar names connected with them. Among those, one name surfaced again and again: The Apostle Paul. Turns out, this whole region was one of his stomping grounds, as we learned from our guide standing high above Apostle Bay in the Rhodes city of Lindos. Named in honor of his landing place, Apostle Bay is but one of many milestones marking the route that Paul took in the first century A.D., including a stop he made just up the coast in Ephesus (Turkey) as in "St. Paul's Letters to the Ephesians." Indeed, there are so many sites that a number of companies now offer tours under the general heading of "In the Steps of St. Paul." (Visit www.pilgrimtours.com then click on the 'Steps of Paul' tour.)

From Rhodes, we had an easy sail (59 nm) to Bodrum, Turkey. We were only in port for four or five hours, so we were not able to truly appreciate life in Bodrum. After a long walk up a step stairway to an abandoned fortress, I concluded that this part of the world has great Ruins, like the Parthenon, while so many others are just, well, ruins. Our guide on this tour was not able to answer several simple questions posed by some in our group which led me to believe that even he was disenchanted by the long trek up this mound of rubble.

Next stop was the Dalyan River (Turkish coast) which had a spooky aura about it, kind of Oliver Stone/Mekong Delta feeling. Again, we trekked up a hill to a dubious ruin with the same friendly, uninformed guide, although here, at least we were afforded an eagle's nest view of the area and of our ship anchored off in the horizon.

Our fifth day brought us to Santorini, easily the high point of our trip, both aesthetically and literally. The city of Santorini sits atop the rim of an ancient volcano, accessible only by donkey or tram (unless you're a cliff climber). The incline is so great that the tram cars behind you are out of sight for the entire mile and a half up the mountainside. Once on top, the views over the white-washed buildings crowned with blue roofs and domes are spectacular. Shopping abounds in this modern resort town as do fine hotels and restaurants. Perched at The Sphinx restaurant, we had excellent Greek food and Greek wine as we gazed across the blue Aegean. We concluded that Santorini, of the entire trip, would be the one place we would re-visit, but only for a few days. (Attention shoppers: This caveat does not apply to you).

The Island of Hydra, our final port of call, proved to be a nice surprise. We had expected a run-down little fishing village, but Hydra's port city is beautiful, clean and brimming with life. While our friends went to the beach, my wife and I wandered the town, shopped, ate a curious-tasting, but quite good Greek pizza (feta was the predominate topping) which we washed down with Greek beer (not bad) and in various ways whiled away the afternoon until our friends joined us for dinner at the Sunset Cafe. Despite the gusty winds, we enjoyed an excellent meal of Greek "specialties" (you don't ask, you just enjoy) and a bottle of Retsina as the sun set behind our ship anchored off in the distance. It was idyllic.

We were wise to book a two night stay in Athens at the end of our trip rather than at the beginning. Jet lag would have ruined the ruins for us, but after a week of relaxing we were up for some city life. We stayed at the Hotel Intercontinental in the heart of the Athens, an easy shuttle ride to the central shopping district and the Acropolis and Parthenon. Whenever I am standing before something extremely famous, something I have seen photos of all my life, a surreal sense comes over me suggesting that I am either dreaming or that what I'm looking at is somehow not real, like a fake, a big prop stuck there for the tourists. That is exactly how I felt from my first glimpse of the Parthenon to my last glance back.

As in Rhodes, we had an excellent tour guide. She explained the optical illusions that were designed and built into the Parthenon to make the columns look completely vertical from a far off distance. In reality, they are tapered slightly inward and, if extended, would touch several hundred feet up.

From the Acropolis, the famed hills of Athens are clearly distinguishable as is every conceivable approach to the bays and inlets of the shoreline miles away. We walked down into the city, into the bizarre, into a throng of tourists and Greeks, jamming restaurants and flooding stores for as far as we could see. Everything from fine jewelry to knick-knacks, from Turkish rugs to cheap souvenirs, from exquisite porcelain to common glassware was available for sale and, as far as we could tell, reasonably priced (see euro remarks in If You Go box).

All in all, this was a great trip, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a few negatives.

Seasickness: Most of the passengers on board the Star Flyer admitted to feeling queasy at least some of the time. Others confessed that what the dining room had giveth, the sea had often taketh away. These comments were heard even from people wearing patches and popping Dramamine, so beware. The Aegean is not always a gentle sea in September and October, so if motion sickness is a problem for you, you may want to consider a puddle jumpers' excursion of the Greek Isles.

Distance: Greece is long honkin' way from the United States and few cities offer nonstop service to Athens. Therefore, consider spending a night or two in any intermediate stop you can. By the time our flight arrived from our summer home in Minneapolis to Athens via a four-hour layover in Amsterdam, we were bleary-eyed and ornery. None of us needed, but all of us partook in the all-you-drink rum swizzles presented to upon embarkation. At least one us wishes he hadn't.

Staterooms: We spent our first night in Cabin 338, near the stern and we concluded directly above some type of machinery, perhaps the rudder housing. Whatever it was, we were awakened through the night by an intermittent whine and whistle accompanied by a waft of diesel fume. Luckily, the ship wasn't full and so the next morning we were able to switch cabins to one nearer the bow. If you book the Star Flyer, make sure you don't get a cabin near the stern, especially number 338. If that's all that's available, choose a different week, no discussion.

Several people complained about their hips being sore as a result of the hardness of the mattresses in the staterooms. True, my hips did hurt, but not to the point that I would never sail on this ship again. Instead, I used the soreness to justify yet another truly heavenly massage by the very skilled Marietta whose onboard therapy I highly recommend.