Wednesday, November 15 – Our Kind of Town

We love Katakolon.  Period.  As we have written before, it is the Brigadoon of the Mediterranean.  In the 1954 Broadway musical, Brigadoon is a Scottish town which appears once every 100 years.  Katakalon, as seen by tourists, appears only when there is a cruise ship in port. We were here on Greek Easter in 2015 and everything was open for the passengers.

The town is only four blocks long, two parallel streets.  The lower one is almost at water level; the “street side” is home to clothing stores, souvenirs stands and jewelry stores.   There is a pharmacy, too, and a small grocery.  Behind these stores, on the water side, are cafes and ice cream shops although some of the retails businesses go all the way through from street to water.  Obviously, the stores on the other side do not have a “back” except for the hill where the other street is.  We have never walked the upper street and only rarely the landside of the lower.  Yet, we are content.

What do we do in Katakolon?  Help the local economy, of course.  The town is only 200 yards or so from the ship, so even MA can walk it. It was a longer walk for the Costa passengers because they were docked another 200 yards away [We have never been here with another ship; the town was packed.]  As usual, we meandered down the street dodging tourists and shop owners promoting their stores.  We bought some presents to bring home and our annual piece of jewelry,  and then went to our usual café for lunch.  Someone asked us which one we went to and all we could say was, “The last one at the end of the block.”  Although it promotes itself as a seafood restaurant, we enjoyed the moussaka [and Cokes].

Missions accomplished, we returned to the ship in a light rain.


TOMORROW – Piraeus, Gateway to Athens

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