2019 - Alonissos

Well another summer is nearly over for our 4th year on Alonissos. It has been busy some months, quiet-ish others but a great time all in all.  A brief summary of the year would be as follows:
Yet another funeral to attend in June so not a good start, then the dance festival followed by a wedding and a baptism in July

Pavlin, baby Konstantinos and Maria

Then a summer filled with days at the beach and eating and drinking far too much as usual. With another birthday at the end of August which was a mad, Mamma Mia themed do and we have a 70th party at the end of Sept. We need to come home now for a rest and to go on a major detox! So, bye bye Alonissos until next year when we'll do it all over again 😎😀

Leftos Gialos beach

Drinks with friends

Secluded bay on our boat trip

Just another quiet night out!

Bouganvilla

flowers of the old village

Bowie eyed cat

Dance festival

Our atmospheric platia in the Old Village

Konstantinos and proud Grandad, Kostas

Whew!

Old Village house

Kalamakia

Leftos Gialos

The biggest dog I have ever seen!

Zoe in her Doggles

2019 - Chios - Katarraktis

Well this our final destination on Chios and we are staying in a lovely little hotel in Katarraktis.  It has a pool and we have views over the sea.  Unfortunately it's rather cool so we are still in jeans!  On the up side we have found a taverna that serves bottles of Mastic at the end of the meal, although I'm not sure you are supposed to drink the whole thing (which Paul did the first time we went!!!). Unsurprisingly, on our next visit we were only given half a bottle 😍.

We went for a walk along the coast one day which got warmer as it went on. We found a lovely taverna on the beach and had the best prawn saganaki we have ever had. Decided to have a bit of a sprawl on the beach before walking back. This was some of the clearest water we had ever seen.

All in all we had a lovely time on this beautiful island and will definitely return one day. Hopefully there will be more tourists for them after the recent refugee crisis but it was nice having the place almost to ourselves!

2019 Chios - Vessa & Volissos

And so we leave the south of the island and head for the middle and the north!  Vessa turned out to be a lot closer than we thought and so we arrived earlier than anticipated or expected so parked up and had a stroll through the village to find the accommodation.  5 mins later we had done that and found the house that would be our home for the next 3 days. Vessa is tiny and consists of a fair number of houses and 2 tavernas...that's it. The house itself was lovely, as was our room but the advertised breakfast was somewhat lacking!!!

Bedroom ceiling

Bedroom

Kitchen

Breakfast!

While we were in Vessa we visited the monastery of Nea Moni.  This is is possibly the most prominent medieval monument in Chios. It was established in the mid 11th century with a grant from a Byzantine emperor. During the massacre of Chios it was a refuge to several hundred women and children. Unfortunately the invaders did not take any notice of this and slaughtered them anyway.

Massacre of Chios

Victims of the Chios massacre

Nea Moni

We also visited the village of Anavatos where the villagers gathered and threw themselves from the highest point rather than getting slaughtered by the Turks or taken to be slaves.

Church at Anavatos

We also visited the village of Avganyma but it appeared to be shut!

We enjoyed our time in Vessa and managed to adopt a couple of cats, surprise surprise, then it was on to our next stop, Volissos,

 Our next village is the largest in the north of the island, Volissos.  First impressions are good.  It has a few tavernas, a bar and a cafe, whoop whoop!!  Everyone is very friendly and the apartment is lovely.  We took a stroll down to a couple of the beaches and there is a small harbour with 2 more tavernas and a couple of bars.  It also has a castle on the hill and apparently a bakery...which try as we might, we cannot find!

Sophia from Fabrikas taverna, Volissos

These are the pictures from the doors of the taverna

Broom as far as the eye can see

One evening we went down to the small harbour and had a lovely dinner on the waterfront.  Sea bream for me and mackerel for Paul.  We have also taken the opportunity to go across to the other side of the island to visit Langkada and Kardamila.  Langkada was lovely with a beautiful harbour front with cafes and tavernas.  We got chatting to a lovely couple, Tony and Victoria.  She is Greek Australian and he is from Chios.  When we started chatting about Alonissos it turned out that he has friends living there but they have never been.

Langkada














On our last night, we went to the taverna and they had cooked a couple of specials.  Goat in red sauce and Tigania (pork casserole). We made the mistake of ordering one of each and could have fed the village!! We ended up bringing most of it back to the apartment and fed numerous cats on the way to our next stop.

When we got back to the apartment we were invited up to the owners balcony where she had home made cake and Souma which is a local drink made from figs but is basically Raki!!

2019 Chios - Mesta & Olympoi

These two villages are both medieval walled villages that are very picturesque with small alleyways and central squares.  Of the two, Mesta is the more famous for it's mastic production but Olympi was the prettier of them for us.  We decided to be energetic and took the hour long trail between the two villages. It was extremely rocky and not terribly well marked but it gave fabulous views across the valley to each place.  We stopped for a coffee in Mesta and Paul tried the local brew, Souma. It is made each October from figs and we were expecting a dark liquer. It is not!  It is clear and basically like Raki or Tsipouro but with more fire :)
We then carried on our explorations of the village and walked back to Olympi.  We thought we would have a light lunch so found the local taverna, Amethystos.  We ordered some baked feta and some giant beans and they brought the usual bread and a bottle of water. This was followed by Hummus on the house, then when the food came a large plate of vegetables with carrots, potatoes and artichokes, on the house!  We were stuffed after all this but when the table was cleared a plate of galaktoboreko and ice cream followed....lovely gesture and I'm very glad we'd already completed our walking for the day!
A local artist has been painting some of the doors around the village so it was lovely to come across them to add a splash of colour to the alleyways.

We ended our time in this part of the island with a follow up trip to Chios town and enjoyed a wander around the back streets and a visit to the Maritime Museum.  Tomorrow we are off to Vessa in the middle of the island to explore that region and to visit the 12th century monastary of Neo Moni.

2019 Chios - Pyrgi, Mastic museum and Mavro Volia beach

Well we are throwing ourselves into exploring the area and have now picked up our hire car, I say picked up, it was delivered to our accommodation and will be collected when we have finished our tour of the island in 12 days time. The car is from Vassilikis Car Hire and they are very nice people. Non of this credit card stuff, we paid cash with 'pay when we deliver it or when we collect, up to you'!! It's bright green so at least I won't lose it when I park it somewhere.
Monday we headed for Pyrgi and the Mastic Museum.  Pyrgi is unique on the island for being a town of 'painted' houses.  These are actually designs scratched out of the coating they put on the houses and are all black and white.  It is an art that has almost died out as it is incredibly costly and time consuming and apparently the prettier your house, the more tax you will pay...crazy!  These towns rely on the tourists coming to see the different aspects of the villages and if their identity is removed, the tourists won't come....useless Greek bureaucracy (a shop keepers words, not mine). We bought a carved plaque that was hand made by his brother and he has written his name (Manos) and address on it and has demanded a photo of our house with his plaque.  He was very proud of his heritage and was especially pleased that we were interested in the history rather than just the ouzo/mastic.

The designs underneath are 'stars' for luck

We had a coffee in the main square overlooked by their beautiful church and look what found us :)

After visiting the town we headed for the Mastic museum.  This is a fairly new initiative built by the Cultural Foundation funded by Piraeus Bank.  We were lucky as that day, they were letting people in for free! It tells you all about the history of mastic and of the island itself having been under various rulers including the Genoese and the Ottaman empire.  It was effectively annexed from the rest of Greece until it liberated and became part of the country again. The trees are 'bled' every autumn by cutting the bark of the tree. They then produce a resin to heal their wounds. This resin forms blobs which are collected by hand and then processed which grades the purity. It is then used to make everything from Mastic liquer to face cream.

Where's Wally....sorry, I mean Paul :)

It was a beautiful day so we head to the coast and to the famous Mavro Volia beach which is made entirely of black stones created by a volcanic explosion.  I had intended to go for a dip but only made it as far as my ankles.....blimey that water was cold!!!

Mavro Volia beach

Me on a rock at the beach