The Cyclades (Part 1 of our Odyssey) - Summer 1989

September 9, 2024

About the Author:
Lisa Papageras is an American writer, digital marketing consultant, wife, mother and small business owner from Hudson, OH. She spent her childhood in Pittsburgh, PA and Chautauqua, NY. She has spent 30+ years bouncing between Greece and and Hudson. She loves her family and the Beatles, and strongly dislikes writing about herself in the 3rd person.

Toward the end of the first summer I traveled to Greece, my boyfriend asked me if I wanted to leave Thessaloniki/Nea Vrasna and vacation in Santorini. Despite growing up in Greece, he had never been to Santorini. I didn’t know much about Santorini, but all my travel books had the blue-domed churches printed on their covers, so I figured it was probably one of the more well-known places in Greece. So, sure, I wanted to see Santorini.

Honestly, we just wanted some time alone away from his family. His family was awesome, but ahhhh... to be young and in love. We wanted to go, but as Homer says in The Odyssey, "they themselves with their own reckless ways compound their pains beyond their proper share." What does this mean? It meant that our execution of this vacation left a lot to be desired, and because of this, 35 years later, I now have some stories to tell about this adventure.

Before I get into the stories, though, let's talk about what the Cyclades are to people today. Nowadays, these are island jewels, with Santorini and Mykonos being the most sparkling of all the gems. They are THE Greek tourist destinations. I've been asked if I've been to these islands more often than I've been asked if I've been to Athens. It’s 100% the "celebrity factor," and the fact that all the luxury cruise lines routinely stop at these places puts it over the top. We’re not talking Carnival Cruise Lines…we’re talking Oceania and Viking Cruise Lines.

Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, well-known for their Greek ties, appear in Santorini across the social media feeds:

And Lindsay Lohan famously bought a resort on Mykonos:

But the one that actually made me giddy was reading about Paul McCartney's yacht excursion off Mykonos for his 80th birthday. Look, you would (and can) expect to see Rita Wilson and Nia Vardalos flitting about the islands, but when Macca is there, that tells me the islands are now exclusive and expensive.

For Gen Z and younger Millennials, the island of Ios is the new draw because Justin Bieber owns property there. So, in my experience, many people go to Greece for the islands, but more specifically, the Cyclades. They don’t go for the myths, art, history, democracy, or the Parthenon. They go to the Cyclades to see and be seen. If we were planning to vacation in Santorini today, I guarantee there would be a LOT of planning before we set sail. Not so in 1989.

We started off without a ticket to get there, a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of drachmas (pre-Euro currency), and no hotel reservation. That’s not to say that Santorini wasn’t popular—it was. It was on the covers of all my travel books. It just wasn’t shore-to-shore packed with people like it is today.

My boyfriend and I set out for Santorini on August 13th. We went to the bus station in Thessaloniki and bought tickets for an 8-hour ride down to Athens. For those who don’t know, 80% of Greece is mountains and cliffs, and it’s a whole lot of "Holy Mother of Go..." when you’re wobbling along a cliff, hugging a jagged mountain, in an old, massive, saltine canister on wheels with ineffective, squeaky brakes. And did I mention that this bus shared a narrow two-lane road with three lanes of traffic? Again, 1989. Today, the roads are modernized with tolls, and my nerves thank the Greek government and its people for these updates.

We arrived in Athens in the early evening and bought tickets for the most affordable means of transportation to the island: a 12 hour ferry. We embarked, and actually, the seats were sort of like those in a 1940s luxury plane, but in orange vinyl.

The seats weren’t too bad. You could walk around, so I felt like it was a better prospect than that 8-hour bus fiasco I had just left. Boy, was I wrong!

We departed, and within a few hours, just as it became dark, the worst storm I’ve ever been in stirred up our boat and tossed it around the sea like a toy in a bathtub going round in circles after the drain was unplugged. Afterwards, it was said that only the captain and I didn’t lose our meals that night. I remember the torrential rain, lightning, thunder, and wind. I remember the stench of the boat after everyone became sick and the restrooms were too full to accommodate the nauseous souls. I remember the cool, salt air and bright lights inside the ship, and the relief I felt when we arrived at the island port just after sunrise.

When we arrived on that bright, calm, sunny morning of August 14th, people fled the ferry and made a mad dash for the buses that would take them from the port and up the cliff, where they could rent rooms.

Now, August 15th is Maria's Name Day in Greece. This is the second most celebrated holiday in the country after Greek Orthodox Easter. As a result, travelers from all over Europe and Greece go on vacation this week. In those days, most Greeks used to take all of August for “holiday.” That’s why both the bus and the ferry were packed. It was why thousands of people were spilling out from ferries and boarding the buses to go up the mountain to the village on the cliff. And it was why I nearly lost my boyfriend while he was trying to get our luggage on board.

He asked me to stay with him while a Greek bus employee was putting our luggage into the bus. But as I saw the people pouring into the bus and was afraid of getting separated from our luggage, I ran into the bus to get us seats. The bus quickly filled up, and my boyfriend wasn’t coming inside! Then the bus started moving! I pushed my way through the people to get off the bus at the exit in the middle of the bus. At the exact same time, my boyfriend pushed his way onto the bus at the entrance at the front of the bus! Seeing me standing outside, he hollered to the bus driver, forced his way off the bus to ensure I wasn’t left alone, and got our luggage off the bus. They left us behind. 😟 Fortunately, we weren’t separated, but I honestly think I’d still be trying to make my way back to Pittsburgh today if he hadn’t gotten off the bus. There were no cell phones back then. Quite the mess.

The bus we ultimately took was the last to leave the port, and by the time we made the steep, scary climb, we disembarked to find that there was not a single room to rent on the entire island.

What will our heroes do? Where will they stay? Will the short American girl, dragging her stupid, large luggage (like Anna Kendrick in Up in the Air), become dehydrated and exhausted and sleep on a beach, or worse...on the side of the road? Tune in next time to find out. 😏