Moving up the Greek Islands
Kos and Kalymnos to Thessaloniki (8-11th July)
We spent the morning looking around Kos, it's various Roman ruins and a castle built by Knights of the Crusades. It's starting to get very hot during the day now, well into the mid 30s. We took the hydrofoil across to Kalymnos which takes about 30 mins, we're staying here for 1 night and catching the late(10pm) ferry to Thessalonaki on Thursday. Sonia from Pension Alexis organised the accommodation for us at Greek House, we have a small studio which looks out across Kalymnos' capital of Porthia. Spent the afternoon relaxing before heading out for a swim at the beach where all the locals cool off in the evening at about 6pm.
The monastary above Porthia, Kalymnos
Thursday - it's hot, 29 degrees by mid morning, in the evening the locals at the bar said it reached 39 during the day. Spent the morning looking around town and visiting the museum, lunch down by the harbour. In the afternoon we took a bus up to the monastery that sits above Porthia, the view from there is fantastic, walked back down into to town afterwards and headed straight for the beach. The sunburn from Rhodes is starting to dissipate, still very pale compared to the locals.
Boarded the ferry at 10pm, we had a 4 berth cabin for just the 2 of us, very comfortable and the 20 hours flew by with the help of a few cans of local lager, leftover pizza, and a movie and some TV episodes on the netbook. Arriving into Thessaloniki at 6pm on Friday, no surprise it's hot, we wandered around looking for our hotel for far too long. The city is mainly boring/ugly concrete apartments, but has lots of lovely old churches dotted everywhere and the main bar/restaurant area is really cosmopolitan and relaxing.
Our cabin on the Ferry
Saturday was spent visiting museums and so forth, have now seen enough broken pots and reconstructed graves to sink a very large ship. A short but violent thunderstorm hit late afternoon so got a bit wet, was quite welcome though as the shower at the hotel leaves a lot to be desired, water for example. R in a bit of a flap when she realised she'd thrown out a crucial bit of our InterRail passes, so a speedy trip to the Train station and some rather confused people at the ticket office, and managed to get replacements, so we dont get fined 50 Euros each for messing up the tickets! Note to self, even if it looks uninportant, don't throw anything away!
Agia Sofia, Thessaloniki, Greece
Our train to Sofia in Bulgaria leaves at 7am Sunday morning, another late night (most people seem to start eating around 10pm in Greece) and early start on the cards.
More photos to follow! Yes, there will be some of us, and no, there are no '18-30' type photos, we're much too old for that kind of carry on haha. The whole collection is on flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rachaelr/collections/72157620533221612/
We spent the morning looking around Kos, it's various Roman ruins and a castle built by Knights of the Crusades. It's starting to get very hot during the day now, well into the mid 30s. We took the hydrofoil across to Kalymnos which takes about 30 mins, we're staying here for 1 night and catching the late(10pm) ferry to Thessalonaki on Thursday. Sonia from Pension Alexis organised the accommodation for us at Greek House, we have a small studio which looks out across Kalymnos' capital of Porthia. Spent the afternoon relaxing before heading out for a swim at the beach where all the locals cool off in the evening at about 6pm.
The monastary above Porthia, Kalymnos
Thursday - it's hot, 29 degrees by mid morning, in the evening the locals at the bar said it reached 39 during the day. Spent the morning looking around town and visiting the museum, lunch down by the harbour. In the afternoon we took a bus up to the monastery that sits above Porthia, the view from there is fantastic, walked back down into to town afterwards and headed straight for the beach. The sunburn from Rhodes is starting to dissipate, still very pale compared to the locals.
Boarded the ferry at 10pm, we had a 4 berth cabin for just the 2 of us, very comfortable and the 20 hours flew by with the help of a few cans of local lager, leftover pizza, and a movie and some TV episodes on the netbook. Arriving into Thessaloniki at 6pm on Friday, no surprise it's hot, we wandered around looking for our hotel for far too long. The city is mainly boring/ugly concrete apartments, but has lots of lovely old churches dotted everywhere and the main bar/restaurant area is really cosmopolitan and relaxing.
Our cabin on the Ferry
Saturday was spent visiting museums and so forth, have now seen enough broken pots and reconstructed graves to sink a very large ship. A short but violent thunderstorm hit late afternoon so got a bit wet, was quite welcome though as the shower at the hotel leaves a lot to be desired, water for example. R in a bit of a flap when she realised she'd thrown out a crucial bit of our InterRail passes, so a speedy trip to the Train station and some rather confused people at the ticket office, and managed to get replacements, so we dont get fined 50 Euros each for messing up the tickets! Note to self, even if it looks uninportant, don't throw anything away!
Agia Sofia, Thessaloniki, Greece
Our train to Sofia in Bulgaria leaves at 7am Sunday morning, another late night (most people seem to start eating around 10pm in Greece) and early start on the cards.
More photos to follow! Yes, there will be some of us, and no, there are no '18-30' type photos, we're much too old for that kind of carry on haha. The whole collection is on flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rachaelr/collections/72157620533221612/
Comments
Post a Comment