Saronic Gulf

Our first three days on Spetses have been largely spent catching up with family. Jonathan's uncles (his mother's first cousins), Kyriakos and Yianni, operate the Faros Hotel, which is located just a few steps from the waterfront, and they are hosting our family as well as Jonathan's sister Dyan and daughter Alexandra.

Alas, the two of them are leaving on the noontime hydrofoil for Athens and flying back to Philadelphia tomorrow.

Yesterday the seven of us rented mountain bikes and rode to our family's former property in Kouzono, a glorious spit of rock and pasture that curves out to the sea.

We languished on the pebble beach until Manny had the bright idea that he and Jonathan ought to pedal around the island (an 18-mile loop) during the heat of the day. With temperatures soaring to the mid-90s (without a lick of humidity) there were mandatory side trips to the shore for refreshing swims. At the beaches of Agia Anagiri and Agia Paraskevi we stopped for refreshments and to refill our water bottles.

We climbed some predigious hills and then sailed down the side, pulled by gravity through a series of hairpin turns. Each turn included some fantastic vistas of the ocean and steep mountains of the distant Peloponnesian shore.

In several isolated coves that we visited we found multi-million-dollar yachts, swinging gently on their anchors in the translucent aquamarine. Despite our best efforts, no one invited us for as much as a kafedaki.