Port of Piraeus

 During winter there are only 2 catamarans daily between Poros and Athens.  One in the morning and one at 5pm. We were finished and at the harbour at 1 and  had a 4 hour wait for the evening boat. The passenger waiting room was padlocked.  Thank goodness there were toilets, sparkling clean too, a canteen and an open air seating area

I bought K a can of beer and a bag of chips and went off to explore the harbour shopping district

Electric Bus was written on it's side. The buses were very quiet and so was the tram gliding along the harbour.  I looked left, right and left again before crossing its tracks.  That's something new too. I have no idea where the tram goes but I'd love to take a trolley ride one day

Itinerant sellers

Most were Greek but this one was Pakistani selling sunglasses and belts

There was an endless stream of them selling more sunglasses, perfume ('genuinely' fallen off the back of a lorry), belts and phone chargers

I bought 3 pairs of socks. 1 euro a pair. They're really good socks. I wish I'd bought more but we'd run out of small notes buying beer and chips

I'd given my last 2 euros to a true beggar. No teeth, filthy and rather smelly.  I wish I hadn't. After his thanks he gave us a long lecture on the decline of Christianity in Greece and the dangerous influx of infidels and heathens. We didn't make any comment and thankfully he wandered off to the next victim. 

There was plenty of opportunity for photos but nothing exciting. Boats coming in from Aegina and Salamina, unloading cars and people, loading, leaving.  These are the closest islands, one hour by slow boat and have a continuous timetable all through the year

We lived in Piraeus for 10 years and I know it well, on foot.  I was looking forward to wandering around the harbour shopping area.  From the taxi it looked bright and busy with a few new shops.  A Lidls and an IKEA store. 

I was sorely disappointed

The Lidls was too far.  And IKEA was a store front only, an advertisement 

Once colourful, bustling with sounds and sights and smells

Now, 50 years on, it's dirty, full of old boarded up shop fronts

This building is seriously dangerous. The top half looks as though it's going to collapse at any minute

One shop that's new. This is a chain called Miran.  It sells all sorts of cured meats, spices, cheeses. I thought I might get K up to come and inspect it but he was happy on his hard harbour seat. 

The last fish shop left at the old fish and meat market. This is a short alley which once had a dozen or more little shops cheek to cheek with open showcase trays of meat, fish, cheese and Greek specialities 

Like many Piraeus housewives I used to come down here to buy a kilo of today's catch or a few pork chops to cook that day. Everything was fresh and cheap. The sellers would be shouting out their wares one competing with the other. I'd wander up and down, trying to avoid being collared and compare prices. It was always crowded, mostly with men, retired and sent off by their wives to bag a bargain and get out of their hair for an hour or so.  There were cafenions in the area where the men gathered to drink coffee, have a cigarette and pass the time with their friends, bags of shopping at their feet

I walked slowly around the harbour streets, seeing what shops were left.  There were still a couple selling underwear, pots and pans and a few with bags of herbs and spices at their doors, a shoe shop and my old wool shop was still there. 

It's a place hard to find, down the end of a closed passageway. You can see the dark tiles and flowers in old oil tins. Very out of date and a strange place for a wool shop. There's a café in the alley and some sort of nightclub upstairs. 

I strolled down to look at the wool but nothing jumped out at me. I lost my shopping mojo after seeing how desolate the whole area had become 

It's no longer an exotic and exciting shopping hub. Once you could buy anything in the streets around the harbour, a Naval uniform for K, a few kilos of cabbages, the old black house frocks my m-in-law lived in, a hairnet or a hamster. There was even a red light district. That might still be there for all I know. 

In days of yore we would come in on the early morning Delfini Express, rush off to a doctors appointment or to organise some official paper and be back for the return journey at 2pm. We'd all be carrying bags with bananas, which were hard to find back then, a large bag with a greasy and aromatic rotisserie chicken from one of the waterfront tavernas and shopping bags overloaded with all the necessities we couldn't get on the island. I can remember hauling plates and glasses, towels, a kilo of fresh ground coffee, a string of garlic, cheap toilet paper, bottles of booze, new shoes for the girls, a side of lamb, a few of those hairnets my m-in-law favoured, crocheted slippers sold by Grannies perched on a crate on the footpath.

On the big car ferries we hauled a chest of drawers, a coat stand, your newly purchased washing machine, mattresses, barrels for wine or oil

Those were the days

Today we finally boarded our catamaran at 4.30 with my 3 pairs of sox and settled back to enjoy a smooth and quiet trip home.  It's only one hour now and non stop to Poros 

Nothing like the return on the Delfini Express or one of the old slow chugging car ferries where we spread out our chicken, ripped up a loaf of bread and bought a few beers to share with all the other locals doing the same and shouting out to each other and comparing the bargains we'd bought .  The air was always thick with cigarette smoke and very noisy, not just conversation, because those old boats made a lot of noise. They really did chug and they shuddered terribly. The trip was usually around 3 hours with stops at Aegina and Methana. An opportunity to get out on deck, watch the people and cars disembarking and take a few lungfuls of fresh air

Sorry that was so long. It grew along the way