Fourni The last days!

Well, that’s just about it! Our fantastic Greek Adventure is nearly over for 2011!!

We have spent our last few days relaxing and mentally preparing for our return!!

We hired a scooter for a day and headed along the spine of the island 16k to the working fishing village of Chrysomillia. A beautiful bay with several small fishing cottages right on the water, relatively poor but with a beautiful outlook. Only a few tourists here and only for the day like ourselves.  It's a Greek fishing village that hasn’t changed over the decades... amazing.  We had a wonderful meal on the waterfront, salad, calamari and fries. Nothing could be better. We checked out the other three or four other beautiful beaches along the island and that’s about all there is to Fourni. It’s only about 30k long and about 2k wide.

As we said earlier Fourni town has everything you need in the one place, a great beach, tavernas on the waterfront, a picturesque town square, other beaches including Kampi nearby and the most wonderful, friendly locals. A totally relaxing and fantastic place to spend your days and get into the Greek way of life!

We have had some great food here including one of their specialties, shrimps and spaghetti (they also do lobster and spaghetti) and some of the best souvlaki and charcoal cooked chicken we’ve eaten. We don’t want to go!!!!

So, five trips and some 32 islands later the Greek Odyssey is over for the short term. We are on our way to Athens for a couple of days where we will meet Don and Val Megget and have our first look at their campervan “Lefty”.


We hope you have enjoyed our blog and it has given you some insight into this amazing country and it’s generous, gentle people.


We love it and we will definately be back!


            Yasas!


            Watch this space for more adventures in 2012!

Fourni Island



 Arriving at port of Fourni (Kampos)

Fourni

Leaving Chios we decided it would be nice to find a perfect place and remain there for the last two weeks to unwind after such a hectic holiday haha.  It needed to have a domatia with a nice view, a beach and access to a supermaret and tavernas (we don’t ask for much).  We decided on the Island of Ikaria and took the five hour  ferry to the port of Agios Kirykos.  Arriving at 6pm we had a look around and although it was a pleasant enough port we thought we could do better.   We hired a car and took a 46k drive along the coastline and into the high mountains with striking sea views to the other side of the island and Evdilos, the islands second port.  No joy there either so onward to Kambos and other beaches north.  Nothing grabbed us so we decided to overnight in Evdilos, return to Agios Kirykos and catch the 7am ferry to Fourni Island (twenty minutes away).

What a great decision that turned out to be as we have come to the perfect place!!

Fourni is a small working fishing  village in a calm, secluded bay that has allowed itself to cater to tourists just enough without spoiling it’s charm.  Half the waterfront has the small fishing boats, the tavernas and cafes and the other half is dedicated to the sandy beach.
 

There is a narrow treelined  street heading inland containing supermarkets,  bakeries,  fruitshops and more tavernas.

 It ticks all our boxes and then some! 

 
We have a beautiful room with the brown balcony right above the beach and a view to die for.

We sleep with the sound of the waves lapping,  it’s unbelievable! 

Our view!!

It is still suprisingly quiet for this time of year (as we have found everywhere) and we are only paying 25 euros per night.  

Still no sign of the meltemi winds which normally blow at this time of year,  it is calm and hot.  The beach only gets about a dozen people per day and at night there are enough people around to make it interesting. We wonder if the trouble in Athens is keeping people away or the recession or have we just found quiet islands this year?  We have spent a couple of days reading and swimming so tomorrow we will hire a scooter and explore the island.

      

 

   

        

Chios

Sad goodbyes to Molyvos and Litsa, our ‘Sea Melody’ Pension owner, one and half hour bus ride and three hours on the ferry and we arrived in the port and hub of Chios, Chios Town. 9pm and it was mayhem! We headed for the other end of the Port but were struggling to find accommodation! A German couple approached us and lead us to their accommodation up one of the side streets – evidently they had been through the same accommodation situation.

11pm and we joined the mass of Greeks seated at the waterfront Tavernas and enjoyed a great fish dinner!   The Taverna was situated so close to the water that when the gigantic 'Chios Nissos' ferry arrived it felt like it was going to join us for dinner!



We travelled the 26km by bus to Emborios (thanks Chas and Di), a small fishing village in a sandy Bay with two blacked pebbled beaches situated nearby.   Our place is the yellow building behind the jetty! 

This area, the Southern region, is famous for mastic, a kind of gum extracted from the trees and now used for medicinal purposes; the area is also known for the unique patterns on the houses and buildings achieved by mixing the black volcanic sand with cement and painting in white lime over the top then scraping off parts of the lime to form a grey pattern.
 
We thought it was a lot quieter here for this time of year until we hiked to nearby Komi, a beach town which was crowed with Greeks, mind you it was Sunday!

No scooters here, so we hired a car (30 Euros with no additional mileage fees) and off we went exploring in our little yellow Hyundai!!  Spectacular rugged West Coast with rocky coves and sandy bays dotted with 'look out point' turrets; rugged boulder landscape in the North, towns of grey stone perched on the cliffs like something out of a Peter Jackson movie, fishing villages and the Mastic villages in the South. 


Thank goodness our car was small enough to fit through some of the incredibly narrow village streets - phew!  We also went back to Chios Town and found the famous 'windmills'. 

After 12 hours of exploring we were pleased to get back to our little village.  Chios is an interesting Island with lots to see!!! 

We climbed one of the highest points surrounding Emborios - spectacular views!!
 

Extra shots of Molyvos

Lesvos

We are now on the beautiful Island of Lesvos after completing a 13 hour ferry ride.  We managed to secure some horizontal room and were able to sleep which was good. Our travel companion was a 67 year old German who kept us entertained with his stories of windsurfing around Spain, France ,Morocco, Greece and Turkey.  He travels in his hand made camper, an amazing man, fit, heathy and a free spirit, an inspiration as to the lifestyle you can have at any age.

We arrived at the attractive port of Mytilini at 8am and our first thoughts were of coffee!  We found a cafe overlooking the fortress and planned our next move.  Mytilini seemed an interesting place so we decided to find accomodation and have an explore. Finding accomodation proved quite difficult at this early hour but we happened to find a man who had a friend in Molyvos (one of the towns on our list), who would meet us off the bus and take us to a pension.  One and a half hours later we were established in our beautiful room overlooking the small port. We are only 10m from the water and to our left up a large hill is an 14th century Byzantine-Genoese Castle which is floodlit at night;  to our right is the small working fishing port with it's Tavernas. We are smack bang in the middle overlooking it all.  The sights, smells and sounds of scooters, boats, people, cats, dogs and food.  It's amazing!





We hired a 50cc scooter to explore the western side of the island. First stop was the nearby town of Petra with it's nice beach and well hidden tourist shops.  A good place to stroll around in the evenings.


Through a mountain range of olive groves and small villages to the seaside fishing village of Sigri with its castle, beautiful beach and sleepy village. We had a look around and wondered if we had time to move on to Skala Eresou, only a 45 min trip on a good dirt road (so the book said)!  Off we went, only to find a gravel track through the mountains that took over an hour and a half to navigate with the constant worry of falling off, breakdown or puncture!  Man the stress of holidays!!!  Glad to say the 50cc didn't let us down and we were very happy to get to an asphalt road again.



 Skala Eresou is the must see town for many who come to Lesvos. It has a nice 2k long beach, half of which has a board walk with restaurants and cafes, the other half is devoted to water sports and the usual pay sun loungers and sun umbrellas (8 Euros).  But it is the spirit of the Ancient Poet Sappho, born here and who devoted her work to women that brings many Lesbians here. We found the place  mainstream but apparently it gets wild here in September during the Women Together festival. 

It's a relaxed, arty place with a good vibe and a good beach, well worth the visit (I'm sounding like a travel writer).



The rest of our days have been spent hiking, swimming, enjoying the food and the people and Chas's favourite, the sunsets!

So onward in a few more days to Chios after a days look around Mytilini.  Waving goodbye for the meantime.

 16^th June

Sadly said goodbye to Alonnisos and took a 7 hour ferry to the last of the Sporades Group, Skyros. We arrived at the small port late and took a bus up to the Hora 10k away. No one to meet us off the bus and it took us about an hour and a half to find a place to stay. Prices here , a little more than the other islands, probably as it is home to many Athenians.
The Hora is a group of white
washed homes, clinging to a cliff top, with a church and fortress on the top. The fortress was closed as it was suffering earthquake damage.
 Skyros is famous for it’s little ponies which are slowly dying out, it’s traditional homes and also as the home of the poet Rupert Brooke, " If I should die think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever England".  He has a statue in his honour which caused some controversy when erected in the 1930’s.
 Spent the day exploring the town and surrounding beaches but Skyros failed to live up to the quaintness and charm of the other three islands. We had fun though, due to the amazing kindness and generosity of the locals.  No one locks up their homes, motorbikes or cars here and we even saw two cases of beer left outside the supermarket overnight! How long would they last in NZ!  Everyone asks you for coffee, ouzo or desert  and one guy at the travel agency gave us his car for half a day to go exploring. How amazing!
So after two nights, off again with a 5 hour bus and ferry trip back to Athens, missing the riots by one day, and now on an overnight 12 hour ferry to Lesvos. Hope we can sleep!!