July 30 A Moonlight Cruise

Saturday we went in late afternoon, at the invitation of friends, to board a small boat in Loutraki to travel through the man-made channel between Peloponnese and the rest of the Greek mainland. Similar to the Panama canal in strategy, the deep channel is cut down through solid rock and allows ships to pass through instead of going around the huge Peloponnesian peninsula, a great savings in time. Before the six-kilometer-long channel was cut, boats were portaged across the mountain on a bed of timbers! After we traversed the channel and returned we continued cruising under a full moon, enjoying the beauty of the lights along the coast including those of the city of Corinth.

We stayed overnight with our friends and the next day went swimming, of course, and had wonderful food to eat, but the best part of the visit for me was the opportunity to spend two or three hours talking with two young Greeks who spoke fluent English. They were both well educated and obviously very bright, but I was impressed with how much they knew of Greek and also of American politics. Our conversation was wide ranging including not only politics, but economics, medical insurance, education, job opportunities, cars, foreign trade, movies and literature. I found them to be thoughtful, pragmatic and wanting something better for their homeland. One of the big differences, they said between the U.S. and Greece is that even though Greece has laws to protect its citizens, many laws are not enforced. (That certainly is obvious in traffic!) We had fun talking together and we enjoyed ourselves, sitting on the beach under an umbrella, sipping frappes, with Brazilian music playing behind us in the cafe, while the rest of the household had their nap.

I inevitably paid for not taking a nap, "running out of steam" later in the day and sleeping in the car on the way back to Athens. But not before we made a stop for "pagoto", ice cream. I will gain five pounds simply on the amount of ice cream I eat here!