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.