Greece

Greek islands

Beaches, gyros, 4wd bikes, blue domes and Greek wine!

28.04.2008 - 09.05.2008 25 °C
View Canada Europe Asia 08 on hutchie's travel map.

We have just emerged to athens after a week or so in the greek islands

Samos
we arrived from turkey by ferry to Samos town where we had planned to catch a bus to our accomdation 20km's away. but unfortunately we found everything closed down due to easter monday. all the greeks were eating and drinkning and smashing colored eggs while we pondered our options. luckily Dougie came to our rescue and fetched us from the port. crisis averted! We stayed with Dougie and Sue in their wonderful apartment in a little town on the north side of the island - Agios Konstantinos. from there we did a few walks to neighbouring mountaintop villages - Manolates was awesome, a labyrinth of white washed walls and red roofs with no cars. walking room only. Stavrinides was similar, here we had lunch in the remoteness of greece. no english and we ordered a salad, everyone else was getting greek salads, and we were surprised when we received a bowl of lettuce. Doh!. who would have thought you would have to specify you wanted a greek salad in greece!

On our last day there, there was a festival that the whole town attended. souvlaki (meat on sticks), pommerades (fried honey dumplings) and as much free wine as you could drink. this lead to a cute old greek, maybe senile man dancing on his own to the live band.

The beach of kokkari (walk from where we stayed)

The foreshore of agios konstantinos

The streets of manolates

Naxos
Here we stayed with a recommendation of Dougie and Sue's In Agia Anna. Glorious beach only 400m away. but still a little cold to go in the water, but we went in anyway. its our beach holiday right... we hired a 4wd bike and toured the island, this was awesome! the best part of the day was clambering up to the cave of Zas on the highest point of the island mt zeus. we finally had a real greek salad and perfected the ordering of greek wine. meso kilo kokkino crasse parokalo.... did we mention the greek feta and olives and olive oil are amazing! the other side of the island was freaking windy and cold but we saw the beautifull town of apollonos and the unfinished statue of dionysis lying in a quarry. pretty cool!

the view from Mt Zeus

Standing on the statue of Dionysis with Apollonos in the background

Santorini
Santorini is everything you imagine a greek island to be. as you come into port on the ferry you see high cliffs, dusted on the tops with white washed walls of the towns. they look like icing sugar. we stayed in the old port town of Fira, where we discovered the best gyros ever! (except for the richmond kebab house, they are still number 1) Fi fell in love with the town of Oia (ee - ya) which is exaclty the town seen on the postcards, paintings etc. we crawled all over the town trying to find all of the postcard spots! we went there both night to see the famous sunset of santorini looking out over the caldera. did i mention that santorini is a live volcano and our guide said it will probably erupt in the next 5 years?! we took a boat tour of all the islands that make up santorini and swam in volcano heated hot springs. considered taking a donkey up the very very steep climb into the villages but saved our money and hauled our own asses up instead - gotta work off those delicious gyros and greek wine. on our 4wd adventures to see the closed archaeological site of the ancient akritori (like pompei) and the black and red sand beaches, we got distracted by the oldest winery on santorini. Here we were given a tour and tasted the wine. our favourite was the local speciality of sweet wine called vinsanto, its a bit like a port. given the option of purchasing a 500ml bottle for 22 euro or a 1.5 water bottle filled diretly from the barrel for 23 euro, you can imagine the outcome of that transaction!

View from the middle of the caldera. you can see the villages of Fira dotted on the horizon

Waiting for the sunset in Oia, amazing view of the caldera

The sunset in Oia

Athens
today we are in athens - arrived this morning by ferry and leaving this evening by bus to albania. we concluded that this was plenty of time and we could have seen everything here in about 4 hours. thus the blog. we did see the acropolis, the parthenon and the ancient agora (market). all massive and impressive but all except the market were under total renovation and covered in scaffold or even removed for restoration!

The next few days will see us working our way towards dubrovnik in croatia and catching up with our friends jane and kate in montenagro. then it's cruise time.....

Us at the Parthenon