Míkonos, Pátmos

We left Camping Athens (from where we could see the Parthenon) and caught a taxi to Pireás, Athens’ harbor. Want to bet we were early. Our cabin on the SS City of Rhodes had a small closet, bunk beds, a porthole, and about three feet of floor space, the length of the beds. The tiny bath had a porthole, sink, shower, and toilet. It reminded us of our cabin on our very first cruise (1969), on the “Carla-C,” with the name “Princess Cruise” printed on a bed sheet, hung over the side.

The buffet lunch was mediocre, nothing very tasty, but the dinner buffet was fine. We arrived on the island of Míkonos late afternoon, and spent a pleasant few hours walking around the town. Countryside is barren, but the white buildings are blanketed with red flowers, the walking streets are interesting, Míkonos really was all it was expected to be, and then some.

The SS City of Rhodes had anchored a few hundred yards from Míkonos, and we rode a small boat to and from the shore. As we returned to the ship that evening, the ship in silhouette in the sunset, and the town with its lights just taking effect, both made beautiful pictures.

At the Isle of Pátmos the next morning, we rode a taxi to near the St. John Monastery, at the top of the island. Emmy petted the garbage pick-up “vehicles” on the Isle of Pátmos — four donkeys with an oversupply of bags of garbage tied here and there. I also like it when she pets me.

We walked the rest of the way up the hill to the St. John Monastery. The buildings are quite colorful, with arches and rooms and stairways, and this and that. The library at the St. John Monastery contains 15,000 books, over 1,000 manuscripts, fragments of the famous Codex Purpureus (an early version of the Gospels, in Greek, with pictures, originally 800 pages long) on purple vellum from the 500’s, and other old documents.

We met Peter and Uli, a German Army Colonel and his wife, passengers on our ship, who shared our taxi down the hill to the Cave of the Apocalypsa, near the spot where St. John received his divine Revelation. What an inspiring place.

A couple of years later we spent the night in our RV, parked in the driveway, at the Colonel’s home in Buschhoven, Germany. (In Buschhoven, water is still delivered through a 2,000 year old Roman Aqueduct.)