Hydra (pronounced HEE-DRA)

  03 - May - Hydra Island

A relaxing day today on the island of Hydra. There are too many of us so we had to split up and stay in two different hotels.  We are staying in the hotel run by a nice  woman who is very  strict about the house rules.  She serves a mean breakfast that starts off with 'some vegetable juice which you should drink every day' according to her.  I took a pass on a glass of hot pumpkin juice.  We also had orange juice, coffee,  a boiled egg, lentil salad, bread, jam, tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach pie, a piece of cake and an individual jello mold.  Needless to say the folks from the other hotel were jealous.

Hotel Mistral Breakfast

After the extensive breakfast we took a walk along the coast for a while.  There are nice houses on the slopes but all you can see up close are the doors and gates to the stairways up or down.

Gate to a fancy house up the hill

Fancy house on the water.

Fancy art installation.  Reminds me of a breakfast cereal box.

After a bite of lunch, Mom went back to the hotel to rest (it was a long walk) and I continued the other direction on the coast to see the Leonard Cohen memorial bench.

Leonard lived here during the '60's and loved the place. He wrote poetry and songs here and his favorite restaurant has one of his poems on the back of the menu.

I bumped into a film crew shooting a commercial on the way back home.  This place is so picturesque that a lot of video is shot here.

Don't know what they were selling.

It was a very nice evening so Delfi threw a Happy Hour with lots of drinks and  traditional Greek mezes.

Our little party continued down at the harbor at the Pirate Bar.  They have an interesting drink menu.  

We did not try all of them.

The party ended a bit late so we had to sneak in without waking up the manager lady's dog.

A fine evening was had by all.  The dog never made a sound.