Hydra Island, Greece

What an invigorating transition to Hydra - an island with 2000 resident humans, at least as many tourists, and a lot of donkeys, mules, horses, and goats.  No cars. Crystal clear, warm, salty water with pebble beaches and seemingly unlimited visibility.  Such a great place to escape from the urban press of the last two weeks.

We stayed at the amazing Mastorias Mansion B&B, an 18th-century mansion just renovated to a 5-room B&B by the former owner's grandson and family with much care, taste, and creativity.  Highly recommended to all!  

The crowning acheivement of the visit was a long climb from sea-level to the summit of 485-m Mount Eros, passing the Monastery of Elias the Prophet on the way.  This was by far the most intense and extensive exercise I've had since my symbiosis with Bartonella over a year ago (thanks Dr. Mozayeni!), and worth the climb.  The view down the steep south slope of the island, the crazy-horned goats, the many ways that plants can be thorned, and the long walk back down the hill in search of cold water and icecream.  

The next day we took a trail ride out to Plakas beach - Ingrid and Eli with western saddles, but I got the Greek saddle.  Wooden, uncomfortable, and best ridden side-saddle, but I was told that learning to ride the Greek saddle side-saddle takes a lot of experience and that I should ride astrid.  Fortunately treck was only 45 min.  Part of the fun was that the first half of the trip was all up and down staircases in the town until we emerged out of the town to a path through the farms out to the beaches east of town.  The horses were small and sure footed on the stairs, except that Elias' horse behind me kept picking fights with my horse because it didn't like to be second, and Ingrid's horse wanted to eat everything, including trying to steal apples from grocers' carts in the town.  But it led to a lovely day of swimming and fish watching, as well as seeing lots of urchins, sponges, gorgonians, and more.  

Finally we had to head back to Athens for one night, before heading off to Denmark again to visit friends, Legoland, and give talks at the University of Aarhus.  Our last day in Athens we took in the Byzantine museum, which included artwork of the strange world view and practices of the early Orthodox church.  

We also finished reading as a family James Shipman's Constantinopolis, a 2015 novel about the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.  It was a really great historical novel, and we enjoyed seeing so much of the places and seeing historical references to the people in the novel in our travels to both Istanbul and Athens.  Perhaps the most interesting for me was realizing that the flood of many educated Greeks from Constantinopolis to the West was at the same time as the development of the Güttenberg press, which was so instrumental in the spreading of the Greek philosophy, arts, and sciences into the European Renaissance.