Syros

We sailed to our last island today…time flies so fast when one is having a good time!

Syros looked very inviting even from the sea with its two high peaks and settlements around them. On the top of the left hill stood the church of St George with its Catholic settlement and on the opposite hill the Church of the Transfiguration with the Orthodox neighborhood! Below these two hills extended the beautiful town of Hermoupolis, named after Hermes – Mercury in Latin, the god who protected commerce and also the thieves!

No wonder they call this island the Lady of the Cycladic; she is a beautiful lady, with all the neoclassical houses, mansions, churches and marble pavement! Syros is the capital of the Cycladic group of islands, though very different from any other! She gives you the feel of a city, but such a charming one that is also untouched from tourism.

Cubic Cycladic houses can only be seen in the oldest settlement around the Catholic neighborhood, though all the rest have this neoclassic style. Syros attracted lots of Greeks who sought a safer place during the time of the revolution against the Ottoman Empire. They brought new crafts with them and soon the lower town of Ermoupolis became a huge commercial center. The first unions were organized here, electricity was brought to this island first and the first strike even took place here! The shipyards that operate till today managed also to adapt to the changes of technology and produced sail boats, steam boats and later ones using oil.

The people who moved to this island lost their original homes during the war. The pain and nostalgia of this loss lead them to create a new type of song named rebetika; that can be compared with the American soul music!

We walked through the vegetable, fruit and fish market which was full of locals and character. We even saw an icon of Dominikos Theotokopoulos – meaning El Greko….it was one of his earliest paintings following the Byzantine style, before he left Crete to paint in Venice and then Spain.

Poseidon blew us strongly through islands we had sailed to in the past week and brought us back to his temple at Cape Sounion….we had to honor him once again…after all he had taken us to so many islands, one more beautiful than the other!

What a journey, what a voyage. Memories, colors, visions and new friendships will be taken with us back home!