The Third Patmos Adventure Begins

"I am VERY impressed!" Sennen exclaimed. This is perhaps the highest Sennen compliment short of I love you.

The Blue Star 1 ferry that connects Athens to the Dodecanese island chain is the size of a small cruise ship and has many of the same amenities: two restaurants. three cafes, one full bar,  two decks of private cabins, children's play area, cinema, pet kennel, escalators, elevators, reception desk and promenade deck. It also has a few features not standard to a cruise ship such as three floors of garage space holding vehicles of all sizes include semi trailer trucks. 

On a video message to his grandparents, Sennen added, "I think it has a basketball court. I don't know. But I think so." It doesn't. But it is impressive for a ferry.

When the kids saw our private four bedded cabin with private bath and shower (Matheus had his own, separate cabin), they didn't want to leave the room. However, talk of the play area and dinner eventually convinced them to go out. Of course, they also needed to see every inch of the boat – which consumed a fair amount of time on a large and busy ship. The entire time, Sennen was whipped into a frenzy – his eyes popping out of his head and his mouth generating questions faster than a supercomputer. It took until dinner for him to calm down.

While the Blue Star 1 and many of its compatriots at the Piraeus Port in Athens are gigantic and impressive vessels, they make a lot of sense when you consider that Greece has 6000 islands, of which 227 are inhabited. Some of the larger and most popular ones such as Crete, Rhodes, Santorini, Mykonos, and Corfu have sizable airports. But you can't supply and sustain life from air cargo and the majority of these 227 islands have no airport. So, ferries are the lifeline of Greece – bringing everything from passengers to gasoline to toilet paper to the vast Greek archipelago.

Sennen and Ailyn happily jumped into their beds in our cabin and fell fast asleep after an exciting and exhausting day. Emily and I went to sleep a couple of hours later. At 1:50 am, our phone rang with a wake-up call telling us we were approaching Patmos. Another five minutes later, a crew member knocked open our door and told us to "prepare yourselves and proceed downstairs". So we did. And around the exit doors we gathered, joined by a growing crowd of Patmos-bound passengers. When the crew opened the doors, a sea of people descended the staircases into the belly of the ship – the garage where our bags were held. There chaos ensued. People with bags, grabbing bags, locating loved ones, trampling over strangers, running to cars, moving the cab of a semi to allow other vehicles to pass (?!)… Then the ringing of what sounded like a fire bell as the ferry docked, the doors opened and the ramp became available. And like ET's friends boarding the spaceship before people found them, leaving poor ET behind – the crowd scurried forth from the boat carrying and dragging their belongings into the Patmos night.

Ailyn was still half asleep, not liking any of it. But we gathered her, our belongings and with the adults each carrying and pulling kids and bags, we made it past the ferry dock and regrouped at the nearby sidewalk. We didn't see Viktor, our Airbnb host with a sign as expected. So I called and luckily, he was a minute away. Viktor couldn't have been nicer. He pulled up to where we stood with our bags, helped us load everything and then took me and the bags to the house – leaving Emily, Matheus, Sennen and Ailyn for a second run as the bags filled his little jeep.

Surprisingly, the bakery closest to the dock is open 24-hours and Emily smartly bought some cheese and spinach pies for the group to snack on while waiting.

Meanwhile, I was whisked through dark, narrow "streets" going up a steep hill until we were eventually driving into a pedestrian only section of "road". "Here, you sometimes find someone parked who shouldn't. But not a problem this time of night," said Viktor, who sounds remarkably like Boris Karloff. Then, Count Dracula cut right through a turn the seemed improbably for his vehicle to successfully clear – and there he stopped with a giant pull on his parking brake. There we quickly unloaded 9 large suitcases and backpacks and left them at the corner of what should have been two pedestrian streets. From the way he piled the bags outside the corner house, I assumed we had reached our destination. But it turned out the actual house – a duplex actually – was down the road, a little uphill then down a steeper decline until we reached a large, blue iron gate. We ran back and forth shuttling the bags to the gate.

There I dragged the bags into the courtyard where Viktor told me to leave them. He took me to the upper unit – our unit – to show me around. The tour was very friendly, verbose and animated. Our unit is a quirky multi-level three-bedroom, two bath with a very traditional Patmosian feel. I was made aware to pull the curtains across the front door to keep bugs out while going in and out. Then, Viktor left me to schlep the heavy bags not just up the fairly steep stairs, but up the interior multi-level steps to their appropriate bedrooms. At 2:45 am I was sweating profusely, working like a pack mule. 

Just as I placed the last bag, I heard my kids' chirpy voices – refreshed by water and spanakopita. They excitedly came up the stairs to see their new summer home with the intention of seeing and then getting to sleep. But Sennen could rest until we climbed the steer ladder-staircase to the rooftop terrace to see the view. Viktor let us know how he could never sleep at night if he thought the kids would ever go up there alone. We gave thousands of assurances we would never let our children wander the rooftops themselves before he assented to showing us the terrace. Up on the roof, the stars shone brightly, the bay below twinkled and Hora – the town up on the hills across from us – could be seen clearly. 

When we came back down, I had expected a few quick words and for everyone – including Viktor – to get to sleep. But Viktor gave a very thorough tour of the house that included everything from what each light switch did,  to how the refrigerator opened, to how the window shades worked to the history of how he built the house. When it was done, no inch of the house was left unaccounted for and everyone was drop-dead tired. Viktor lives in the unit below us and eventually he returned there.

We quickly stripped the kids, got them to the bathroom (Ailyn needed help she was so sleepy) and we got them into the twin beds in their room. Then while Emily turned her attention to rapidly unpacking (a deep, almost obsessive need of hers) and I tried to gather my things to go take a shower, the kids decided they were scared. We spent time assuring and reassuring until they fell asleep, which they so desperately needed to.

At about 4 am, Emily had unpacked, finished outlining her planned modifications to our room, written down her list of questions and concerns for Viktor, showered and we were both ready for bed.

While Emily fell asleep, I couldn't –  and as the sun began to rise at 5 am, I got up and did some work and ate some cheese pie until 7:30, when I was tired enough to fall back to sleep.

Everyone slept until 10 am when we began our first day in Patmos.

For Emily and me, this is our third sojourn in Patmos – the first for a month in 2010 and the second for three weeks in 2014 with a 15-month-old Sennen. This time we looked out from our hilltop house over the sunny, warm island just as we remembered it – only with two months in front of us and accompanied by two kids and an au pair. My how Patmos marks the seasons of our life together.

We spent the day doing things mundane and sublime: picking up the rental car, dropping off our laundry, having several more unplanned and lengthy encounters with Viktor who wanted to show us everything about the property and who fixed a few minor things in our unit, driving all around the island so the kids and Matheus could get a good look, having lunch at a small taverna overlooking a favorite, beautiful beach cove, looking at goats, grocery shopping, chasing after an escaped watermelon down the hill only for it to eventually explode, walking around town, having a seafood dinner and enjoying gelato.

It was a very full day at the end of which everyone was exhausted – especially given the night before. But it was a great day.

And what now? We rest, have an easy morning, and Emily and I pilot our new Patmos work life. The goal is to go to the beach in the late morning, swim, work online at the restaurant/cafe there while Matheus and the kids continue to enjoy their beach time. If we can pull this off, we may have cracked a code on life.