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Central and East Naxos

Right everyone, let’s get straight into since this was a very long day.

We got up, ate and got ready. We walked into town to a rental shop we’d been in yesterday. Quads are are between €5-15 cheaper than a car so it’s personal preference what you choose to drive. We like the quad because it’s easy enough to zip about on and the main attraction is you can park it almost anywhere. After being on a 50cc quad on the other islands we knew we wanted something with more power. Our options were 150 or 300 and the price difference was negligible so we opted for the 300 considering Naxos is the biggest island and has a lot of hills. Unfortunately they were out of the 300cc so they offered us 400 for the same price! This seemed like a great idea until the woman behind the desk put the fear of god into me about not going too fast in case we tip it or get caught by the police and fined €2000.

So thoroughly quaking in my Birkenstock’s we set off to some of the villages in the center of the island.

Moni

We drove half an hour to get to this village specifically to see Panagia Drosiani Church. It’s the oldest church on Naxos and is a recommended must see while on the island. The church is very old (about 6th century) and still has some of the original artwork. You’re not allowed to take photos inside the church. Outside there was a lady who was selling her textile work that she hand crafts on a loom. She didn’t speak any English so her granddaughter translated for her; we bought some as gifts.

After this we drove onwards towards a village called Chalkio. On the way we passed an open cut mine. We think they’re mining stone or marble judging by the shape.

Chalkio

Chalkio is tiny. Pretty much just restaurants and cafes interspersed with pottery and textile shops. It’s pretty much just for tourists.

We stayed long enough to wander and see Church of Agios Georgios Diasoritis. It takes about 10 minutes to walk on a little stone path that passes hundreds of olive trees and surprisingly eucalyptus trees. The church dates back to the 11th century and still has many of its original frescos intact. Bonus: we were allowed to take pictures.

Filoti

A quick 5 minute drive to Filoti is where we stopped for lunch. It’s another tiny village nestled in the mountains. The views from the drive are spectacular and make up for the lack of things to do in the villages. We had a club sandwich for lunch and Greek bruschetta which is brown bread, olive paste, olive oil, garlic, feta and tomatoes. So tasty, will be on the search for olive paste when I get home.

Although we had been told by the rental agency that there not much point in going to the East of the island. We ignored this and powered on 45 minutes down some very winding roads to reach Psili Ammos beach. Psili ammos translates as “fine sand” so this beach didn’t disappoint. We swam in the warm water to cool off from the bike and it was bliss! The water is crystal clear it doesn’t even look like sea water.

We were sufficiently topped up with our dose of “vitamin sea” so we started the drive back up the mountains towards home. It’s an hour to go from the very east to the very west for those curious. We ended up stopping at Mikri Vigla purely because we spotted lots of kite sails and I was curious.

Mikri Vigla

This is the beach for windsurfing and kite surfing on the island. We were both a bit transfixed watching all the surfers passing each other at amazing speeds and still manage not to collide or get tangled up. I would love to be able to do it but also think I’d be terrified; although there did seem to be a few beginners wearing helmets so who knows. There does seem to be benefits being harnessed into a parachute as you don’t really fall in the water since the parachute (kite) just pulls you straight back up again.

We finished our day with Mexican food at a place called Picasso. It’s down the coast from us where all of the beaches are. The food was really good and came; no word of a lie; 5 minutes after we ordered. The fun part of this evening came when we went to drive back only to realise that our headlights gave us about a foot of light in front of us and the entire drive back to the city has absolutely no streetlight. So Mitch being the passenger had to pull out his iPhone torch and we used that as headlights. We had a few passing cars which helped a lot but once they passed we were back to 10km/h and only iPhone light.

Lesson learned to be back in the city before sundown – Katy xxx

Posted on by Mitch&Katy

Naxos!

According to Greek mythology, Naxos is the place where Zeus, the father of the 12 gods of Olympus, was raised. It is the largest and most imposing of the Cyclades, so when you visit, it is easy to understand this myth.

In Paros our boat was scheduled for 10am this morning so we arrived on time at 09:45 to be herded into gates like cattle on a farm.

The ferry arrived at 10:35 which is technically early running on Greek time (they’re not very reliable). Our speedboat was a little smaller this time but still had all the necessary comforts as the others did.

Katy and I both felt sea sick on the journey which was strange because neither of us were sick or hungover in any way. Maybe it was the smaller sized boat? It was only a 40min boat ride so we survived with our breakfast still in our stomach and minimal fuss. As we came into Naxos port it was obvious that this place is much bigger as a town. The Chora (main town) extended as far as the eye could see along the coast and everyone is greeted by the sight of the famous Apollo’s Temple as the boat pulled in.

We weaved our way through the old town which is deceptively hilly and full of stairs to arrive at our accommodation. We were fully expecting our room to not be ready as we were very early. By some stroke of luck our room was ready and it was only 11:30am. We checked in and unpacked before heading into the town for a walk around and to grab a bite to eat.

Our room is so Greek and quite modern and clean. My favourite of the rooms we have had in the Cyclades. We are staying at Hotel Anixis in the old town. The room is small, all white with a decent sized balcony of blue trimming and an ocean view which we will be utilising for breakfast tomorrow for sure.

We wove down to the waterfront and found a semi-cheap place for lunch. We had the usual salad and a club sandwich and very much enjoyed them.

I was interrupted mid meal by a very burly Greek man at the table beside us. He was smiling at me and saying words I didn’t understand. Eventually I figured out he was asking where I was from, “Innglund??” he muttered several times. To which I replied no I’m from Australia and she’s from Scotland. He gave a confused look but his 12 year old daughter explained to him my response. He then gestured that his daughter was learning English and wanted me to speak to her in English. The daughter wasn’t very forthcoming (probably due to her embarrassing father) but I asked a few questions and her English was excellent. They were from Athens and holidaying on Naxos for a week in the summer.

After lunch we set about to get Katy’s phone screen fixed which she had shattered previously. We found a place on google and went to hand it in to be repaired. €155 and 45min later her phone was as good as new, although Katy was sprouting a new sharp pain extending from the right side of her body- her wallet!!

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering and asked around for a few prices for car/quad bike rentals for tomorrow. We bought a few things at the grocery store and wandered back to our hotel for a rest and to line up a few things for our night time.

After our rest we walked across towards the Temple of Apollo. The sun was setting and we were a little early so we ever so slowly strolled down the 10min walk to wait for the sun to descend further. The Temple of Apollo is more of a door-like ruin rather than a Temple. Apparently it was an unfinished temple originally and now all that’s left is the gate.

The “Portara” or “great door” stands proudly as the jewel of Naxos. It is believed that this temple was built in the honor of Apollo, the Greek God who protected music and poets and other things. Proof of this lies in the fact that the temple faces in the direction of Delos, an island in the near distance, which is believed to be Apollo’s birthplace. It’s worth noting also that Apollo is the son of Zeus, a commonly known Greek God, one of the 12 Olympians. Enough Greek mythology, this place was super cool and we stayed for the most spectacular sunset. Possibly only Pathos sunset could trump this one from all our Greek sunsets.

After the sun had set which took about 20min more we headed back to a decent priced restaurant we saw earlier. We sampled more traditional Greek food surrounded by a lovely garden and accompanied by many stray cats. 😂

We weren’t ready for bed so went for a cocktail on a rooftop bar overlooking the port. I did try to take photos of the view but it was a dimly lit speak-easy bar so the pictures didn’t turn out very well. We headed home after midnight and crashed in our very comfortable bed.

I hope you all still read these occasionally because this blogging does take up a lot of time. At the very worst we will have some great stories to read to ourselves or the grandkids when we are 70 😊

🤜🏼 M

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Paros

Here’s a double day for you!

Sunday 21st July

Sunday was spent how all sundaes should be – lazzzzyyyyy. We woke up in the late morning and didn’t get out of bed straight away. Instead we got hooked on looking up rental properties in a few of the cities we’re hoping to move to while eating breakfast. We haven’t started looking at jobs in Australia yet as it’s still a bit early; but we’re trying to get an idea of how much renting will be as we’re going to save one of our wages entirely to go towards a buying a house.

Once we pulled ourselves together we headed to the nearby beach for some sun. We managed to get ourselves a lounger each.

We lay about here into the late afternoon until we both started to feel a bit cooked and headed back to the air con in our room. We decided on burgers for dinner so set off in search. The harbour area has lots of choices for food; Greek being the most popular. We found a burger joint and enjoyed them while watching the sunset.

Monday 22nd July

This morning Mitch and I spilt off for some alone time. Turns out there is such a thing of spending too much time together. Mitch spent his time shopping, exploring the castle (which he said is the exact castle we saw on our first day – there wasn’t more to it) and getting a crepe. I decided to wander the old town with a coffee and found a sunny spot on a bench in front of the ocean.

We met up later on to visit the old church in the centre of the town. It’s called Panagia Ekatontapiliani or if that’s too long for you; the church of 100 doors will do. The church is still in operation and we saw quite a few people praying or lighting candles while we were there. The church was renovated in the 50’s so parts of the original building from 326 are still intact but the majority is new stone as an earthquake in the 18th century destroyed large parts of the church.

The afternoon was pretty boring to be honest. Since we didn’t get a quad on this island we were a restricted with that we could do. We were a bit stumped to our options as we didn’t want to get too much sun. So we packed and looked at things to do in Naxos. Turns out there’s 9 beaches that are considered must dos so we’ll be looking at getting a car on Naxos.

Dinner rolled around and we decided on Katy & Rudy’s which is a Chinese restaurant on the water. The food was tasty but the most expensive we’ve had so far and we didn’t even order much! We strolled back to our hotel stopping for ice cream and kataffi on the way.

Not the most exciting 2 days for us. Paros is a bigger island but doesn’t have as much going on as you would anticipate; however this could be due to the fact we didn’t rent a quad or car (trying to save) so we didn’t see as much as we have with the previous islands.

Onto the next island! – Katy xxx

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Couple of Quiet days

Our last day in Milos did not really consist of much interesting. We slept in and retuned our quad bike before our alotted time. Since we didn’t have our quad bike anymore we were restricted to wandering our our port of Adamas. It’s a lovely port but is not very big. There are a few beaches that are unorganised which means there’s no sun-beds to hire or places to eat and drink, they’re literally just sandy beaches.

Katy and I set up camp next to a tree for some shade. We spent a few hours here laying in the sun and listening to music and I managed to finish my book I’ve been slowly ready. Can recommend it to everybody it’s called “This is going to Hurt” and it’s basically a series of journal entries by a junior doctor during his training complied into a hilarious yet heartbreaking book.

After a few hours here we walked back through the town and decided to head back to our hotel and relax for the afternoon. We just sat in our little balcony in the sun and ate some food and listened to music on my Bluetooth speaker. Really nothing to report. We had to have an early night because we had to get up early the next morning so we watched another episode of black mirror and went to sleep nice and early.

We woke at 6:20 and packed our stuff to get down to our ferry for a 7am departure. It’s a 7.5 hour ferry ride so we wanted to find somewhere comfy for our day on the ferry. We sat in this lounged area where people seemed to all be laying to nap, so we joined them 😎

The ferry was long but we didn’t mind. We both spent it napping sporadically and I watched some Netflix on my iPad and we played with our phones to kill time. With the napping it made the time go a lot faster so the 7 + hours on the ferry weren’t too bad. Before we knew it we had arrived in Paros!!! Our next destination on our month long tour of the Cyclades islands.

We checked in and went for a walk around the town. First thoughts are that it’s got more to the town than Milos but it would seem the beaches around the island aren’t as famous. There’s an old town which is just as magnificent as Mykonos and all the other postcard famous villages.

We sussed out some places we want to go and visit the next two days and had dinner at a cheapish grill restaurant. We had seen online there was a cocktail bar nearby with good reviews so decided to go for a cocktail after dinner. The place was called “Pirate Bar” and we would highly recommend anyone in Paros to visit here, especially if you love a cocktail made the right way.

We had an amaretto sour (as we have throughout the world as it’s our personal fav) and a local cocktail and both were amazing. I’ve had a lot of amaretto sours in my time and this is definitely top 3 which is a big call because I have had lots!

After dinner we grabbed an obligatory ice cream on our stroll home through the old town. We got home and ferociously googled the various beaches and locations we plan on visiting tomorrow, hoping for some guidance on the do’s and don’t’s. Weather is meant to be crackin’ so we’re hoping for another belter.

Until then

🤘🏼M🏊🏻‍♂️

Posted on by Mitch&Katy

Beach hopping in Milos

Today started as every morning should; with coffee and croissants. We headed to the cafe on the corner of our street to fill us up for the morning so we could get going as we were heading south. There were 3 beaches on our list today; and with the weather acting much nicer today than yesterday; we wanted to see them all.

First stop was a beach called Fyriplaka beach. It’s a typical Greek postcard beach – white sand and pale blue water. What they don’t show you is that to get to the sandy bit you have to get into the water (ankle height) and traverse the rocks. When we arrived just before 11 it was still fairly quiet. This isn’t a fully manned beach so there were a few sun loungers with parasols but mostly people brought their own umbrellas or we saw a few with pop up tents. This brings me to my next point about the lack of shade. There are no trees or businesses on this beach; the beach comes out of the massive rock wall so there’s very minimal shady spots and they’re taken early. The beach gets a lot of sun and – thankfully today – not much wind. We managed to find a hole in the wall (this is a legitimate description) where I tucked my towel into so I could keep my top half covered. Mitch hopped on a free sun lounger. We chilled on the beach for a bit and headed into the water when we got too hot. The water is perfect, not as clear as some of the other beaches we’ve visited but the dreamiest colour. A must see if you’ve got some sturdy shoes to go over the rocks with.

We left after a few hours so we could hit up our next stop – Tsigrado beach.

Word to the wise. Don’t bother going to this beach if you are scared of heights, not particularly agile or don’t have a baseline level of fitness. There’s a warning at the top that says “do this at your own risk”.

The views from the top of the hill are STUNNING. It’s another beach that kind of emerges from the rock wall again. However to get down to the beach is a semi workout in itself. It involves a version of unassisted abseiling over the side of the cliff, climbing down 2 wooden ladders and squeezing yourself between the rough rock face (I have the scratches to prove this). Plus all the sand makes even the flattish bits slippy. The girl in front of us was so scared I thought she was never going to get to the bottom – I assume all the shouting she was doing in Greek was blaming her boyfriend for bringing her there. She caused a bit of a traffic jam on the way down so it definitely can get busy.

Once at the bottom, I’ll be honest there’s very little room. The actual sand isn’t all that spectacular either. However the water, again, is amazing. We kept our water shoes on from the climb down and spent our time in the water jumping from rock to rock. There’s lots of big and small rocks that are submerged which if you have your handy dandy water shoes; you can climb on top with ease and jump straight back off. This beach gets deeper much quicker than the last. One of the bigger rocks I jumped off of, I was surprised I don’t touch the bottom since the water is still that pale blue colour.

We didn’t stay long here since the space was cramped and the ladder back up was free.

Our last beach of the day was Agia Kiriaki beach. There’s one restaurant on the beach and sun loungers available to hire. We opted to get some food first though. The food is nice (maybe a little pricey) and don’t assume that burger automatically means it comes with a bun! By the time we had eaten lunch I thought it would be a waste of money to hire a lounger for a couple hours so we found a shadyish spot under a tree, read our books and enjoyed the afternoon sun. Mitch went for a walk and said the water was warm and the rocks are completely white there.

After a long day in the sun we hopped back on the bike and picked up some snacks and water for the room before showering and heading for dinner. Still doing food on the cheap as we’re tying to be conscious of our money and Greece is turning out to be more expensive than expected.

Until tomorrow! – Katy xxx

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Milos- Sarakiniko and Papafragas

Today and tomorrow are the two days we had allocated to scooting about the mountain and visiting all the parts we had heard are great. We woke mid morning and had some food in our hotel we bought from the shop yesterday. My giant peach was delicious and Katy had a turkey and cheese sandwich as well.

We walked down to the car rental and hired a quad bike for the next two days. We hired the cheapest which is a 50cc engine, has about as much torque as your nearest lawn mower engine although I’m convinced mums hair dryer could power us up the mountain faster than these things. They wouldn’t accept an Australian drivers license so Katy was my chauffeur for the day.

Our first stop was the ancient Christian catacombs from the 1st-5th century AD. The drive there was uneventful albeit slow through the windy mountains. After complaining about our quad it did seem to be working better than the one we had in santorini so who are we to complain 🤨 We parked up and walked down the steep staircase to the museum, quite a view on the way down.

The Catacombs were €4 entry or free with your valid UK student card (thanks Edinburgh) so I just split the total with Katy, €2 each was a bargain we thought. You were only allowed in the area with a tour guide 12 people at a time. Here is us in the shaded area waiting for group of people to be put through the attraction.

The attraction was very informative and quite interesting although all the bones had previous been moved by archaeologists so all there was to look at were the graves. Approximately 2000 Christians were buried here between the 1st and 5th century AD. Most graves had about 5 or so people, wrapped in cloth sealed over by rock with plaster. Our 5min tour was sufficient and interesting, there were two rooms to see and you were able to take photos without flash.

From here we headed to the nearby tiny town of Plaka. It’s built into a hill and is very small but very quaint. We found a nice authentic restaurant to eat some lunch. I had an omelette and Katy had a toastie which both aren’t very Greek although the main event was our dessert. This place had loads of yummy baked goods. I opted for a milk/custard pastry and Katy opted for the shredded filo pastry style baclava. Both were delicious but I think Katy’s was the best pick of the two.

On our way back to the car Katy purchased a souvenir, a small shallow ceramic plate used for things like dips and oils or even to keep your car keys in.

Next up we had two stops planned along the north coast of the island. We boarded our 4 wheeled orange friend and drove to Sarakiniko. This place is an absolute postcard perfect area. Unfortunately we didn’t have the best weather as we have read that these places can be ruined by the north winds. We still got awesome phots and went for a swim but it was quite windy.

Milos is known for being a very windy island and is frequently used for wind surfing championships etc

Note our amazon purchase; rock shoes. They’re wetsuit material with a hard rubber sole on the bottom, perfect for places like this where in the water the floor is rocky and can hurt your feet. We decided after Croatia we needed these and it’s the best idea we’ve ever had. We don’t care if they’re ugly, they’re practical so that’s all that matters. 🕺🏼

This was actually quite high and I was legitimately frightened 😎

Many people refer to this place as lunar landscape for obvious reasons. The volcanic white rock has been eroded by the harsh winds down to a smooth surface. It’s crazy as it’s only about 100m stretch along the coast, everywhere else has normal rock. Photos don’t do it justice, it’s so picturesque and when the sun came out from behind the clouds the water turned an emerald blue. It was pretty busy with people getting that perfect Instagram shot. We even saw what looked like a professional model doing a topless photo shoot right in the crowds, they were very modest but it looked strange in a crowd of tourists.

We spent a good amount of time there at Sarakinikos before we headed across the north coast to Papafragas. I had read previously that to get down to the small secluded beach was a bit of a walk down a cliff, made difficult by strong northerly winds. So heading there I was thinking we may not get to see much. As we arrived there were people down there and lots on the top of the cliffs taking photos. After seeing the warning signs you know I ignored them and headed straight down (sorry mum). I weighed it up and it didn’t look too difficult and I was right. This was another place that would’ve benefited from better weather. The choppy waves were churning up the volcanic sand making the water look murky. The ocean water outside the cave was clear and blue but the water in these caves didn’t look as appealing.

So both of these postcard places were tainted a little by the windy weather but we enjoyed visiting them nonetheless. I had read multiple blogs and posts about the north coast of Milos island so there was nothing that could stop me.

From here we headed to a nearby town called Pollonia, it’s on the far north-east coast of Milos island. We didn’t stay too long, had an ice cream and walked around to check it out but there wasn’t much happening.

We had some food in our fridge at our hotel from our grocery shop. By this time we were getting peckish so agreed to make the 11km ride home for a feed. It’s not a big island so all of these places were no longer than 15min drive apart. The ride home was spectacular and I managed to get some photos while Katy was driving.

We were pretty sun soaked so after eating our food and showering the salt off us, so we crashed soon after. We planned on going out after dinner for a walk and a look around but we were too tired.

Until next time 😎🇬🇷🤘🏼

M

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Beautiful Milos in the Cyclades

Milos is one of the less touristy islands I had heard was a gem from a few of my friends who have visited. I love the fact that I haven’t ran into any Australians and I love that fact that it feels so far from anywhere. It is also a lot more rich in history than I ever knew. There will be more on this to follow as we visit all the sites. As Katy stated in our previous post it is most famous for being the location of the Venus de Milo statue which is now housed in Le Louvre.

Anywhoo, today we finally managed a sleep in and walked the short trip down to the harbour to meet our boat. It was an old style wooden boat, rather large with seating all on the upper deck, and what seemed to be a fairly spacious lower deck (we weren’t allowed down there). This boat was nice but certainly wasn’t built for pace, nothing like our speed boat tour in Ios. But hey, slow and steady wins the race eh? Our tour would’ve been approximately 50 people and we set off into the sunshine at 11am. We visited a few sites along the way to our first stop, this was the first highlight we passed.

Aptly named “Bear Rock” because if you look closely it looks a lot like yogi bear.

Alot of the scenery almost looked like Mars. Weird Martian looking rock with jagged cliffs and vastly uninhabited land. All this west part of the island is inaccessible, there’s no roads and many mountains with rugged landscape. Lots of nothing apart from the occasional fishing villages sprawled sporadically along the coast.

We slowly pushed forward through the calm ocean breeze to our first swim stop. It had a very Greek name which I cannot remember but it was a quiet bay with a depth of about 3m and the clarity of your local swimming pool. We took some snorkels and busted out the GoPro to get some cool pics in the crystal clear water.

We had half an hour here to swim and snorkel and float about. The water temp was lovely too so we did some jumping off the boat.

Second stop was a naturally formed cave similar to Benagil Cave we visited in southern Portugal. We parked our large boat at the mouth of the entrance and jumped in armed with our flippers and GoPros. Need I tell you the colour of the water? It was kind of eerie swimming through the deep part because it was so clear but I couldn’t see the bottom so it must have been very very deep which was a terrifying thought.

As we swam through it was a large cave where the roof had fallen in. Perfect photo opportunities as usual. We spent an hour here waddling around with our flippers and laying in the sun like a beached mermaid (mer-man 🧜🏻‍♀️🧜🏻‍♂️).

Our next stop was the main event. Kleftiko!! It’s further around the coast on the south of the island and is the most famous/photographed part of these boat tours.

We dropped anchor right in the middle and boarded a little dingy so we could fit into the tiny caves. They weren’t joking. We had to duck our heads multiple times in these caves, the skipper of our dingy was a little too overconfident that a wave wasn’t going to roll in and crush us against the roof of the cave. We survived anyway so I guess he knew what he was doing.

All of the caves in these photos we passed through, they look so low. Crazy I know!!

We ate some traditional Greek food provided by the tour and had some water before reeling our anchor back up. We then had a long slow boat ride back towards our port with one last swim stop along the way. The last swim stop wasn’t the greatest as we could see lots of plastic pollution in the water which was sad, honestly the first we had seen of this. Maybe it was something to do with the currents. We swam for a bit and had some watermelon before embarking for our main port of Adamas.

After our 8 hours on the boat we dropped our stuff home, had a shower and walked back to town for a small dinner. We both agreed we didn’t need anything fancy so we decided to save money and get some easy food and eat it along the water. We got a Gyro (Greek kebab) and a tuna salad and shared the both.

After eating our food we agreed that it was just as/if not more enjoyable than our sit down €28 meal from last night. Can’t beat €9 for dinner for the both of us. Bargain!!

After we headed home to lather ourselves in aloe Vera after a sun soaked day.

NB: none of these photos have filters on them. Truth!

Pleasure writing for all you followers

🕶 M

Posted on by Mitch&Katy

Ios to Milos

Hallooooo everybody!

We have reached the island where Venus de Milo was unearthed. Unfortunately if you want to see her in the flesh, you’ll have to make a trip to the Louvre in Paris.

Our trip started at 6:45 this morning and we arrived on the island at 11am. It passed fairly quickly for us because we both conked out on the reclining seats for a couple of hours.

Top tip if you’re getting on a Greek ferry in the future is to wear something warm because the air con is no joke! I’ve been freezing on every single one.

Thankfully in contrast to our never ending walk yesterday; our hotel today is only 75m from the port. We were a bit early for check in so we dropped our backpacks and headed out for a bite to eat and to ask around about boat trips and cars.

We stopped in this little cafe near the port for a drink and some waffles. Breakfast of champions I know 🙄.

The boat trips here range from a couple of hours to a full day of sailing. We opted to for a full day in order to see the entire west side of the island (which is in accessible by land as it’s formed almost completely by rocky peaks); however we wanted either a car or quad bike to see the many beaches that cover the east side of the island. Most places gave us a similar price per day but on the condition that only I could drive as Mitch doesn’t have an “EU international licence”. Guess this is karma for the 9 hour drive he did to and from glastonbury.

We headed back to the hotel to check into our room and to catch up on our online accounts. We haven’t had decent WiFi at all during this trip; and desperately needed to clear our emails and check our bank accounts. Our hotel is cute, not as fancy as Ios but perfect for our needs.

We headed back out in the afternoon for a walk and to pick up some basics for our fridge. After looking at my accounts, I’ll be eating in for few more meals.

We finished the day with dinner at a restaurant on the water. The food was pretty good, doesn’t come close to Quebec City though, and enjoyed some baclava in the room that we bought earlier on.

Tomorrow should be more exciting on our boat trip. I’ll try and get some pictures that show just how blue the water is here ☺️

-Katy xxx

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Greece – Ios Day 3

Today has been a very relaxing day. We woke up late after my late night and went and enjoyed the breakfast again. This is where our tour ended. Midday the squad hopped on a bus to the port, bound for Athens. Midday we checked out and started the trek to our next hotel. We hadn’t had any exercise apart from swimming for a good while so I thought it was a grand idea to walk. Katy wanted to take the bus but it was only 2km and reluctantly agreed to walk through the 31 degree heat.

Safe to say we were both unhappy campers when we got halfway and had to stop for an iced tea and cool down. I was sweating on 100% of my body it was gross. Our packs both weigh in around 15kg so it makes it a decent workout in the heat.

Anyway, lucky this entire country is beautiful and our pit stop overlooked the beach.

After generously tipping our waiter man 30c we pushed on for the last leg of our “hike” 😂 it wasn’t too far and thankfully down hill so before we knew it we were greeted by the lovely owner. He had a smile from ear to ear and knew us by name. I later found out this was because we were his only check-in for the day.

Katy and I agreed that a pool day was calling so we checked in and went to the pool for the day. We spent a good few hours by the pool reading books and listening to music. I wrote some of this blog and spoke to mum for over an hour which was lovely to catch-up. We shared a chicken/bacon club sandwich by the pool and I made friends with an older couple from Bristol, England who are here for 2 weeks and come to Ios once a year, minimum.

The married couple from Bristol stay at this same hotel every time and travel to one other island each visit, always different. Since they were basically local I asked them for a dinner recommendation down at the nearby port.

After a shower we headed to watch the sunset somewhere and pickup our ferry tickets for tomorrow. Our hotel owner gave us two bikes and pointed us in the direction of a good sunset (as if that wasn’t already obvious 😂). We got to a good spot but it was too cloudy so we turned around to go and get our ferry tickets printed. Even the rubbish sunset looked cool over the beach at the port.

Printing our ferry tickets was easy so we returned the bikes and walked back to our recommended dinner spot. It’s called “The Octopus Tree” and is very popular with the locals, obviously specialising in seafood. I ordered a calamari dish and Katy a tuna salad. I was told the calamari didn’t come with any sides so proceeded to order a “beetroot salad”. That sounds delicious right? … wrong!! It wasn’t a salad at all it was literally just pickled beetroot and nothing else 😂 maybe they struggle with anything that isn’t a Greek salad here haha. All was well I took some of Katy’s greens so my meal turned out to be delicious.

We grabbed an ice cream for the walk home and packed our bags ready for an early departure tomorrow for Milos.

🦑🐟 M

Posted on by Mitch&Katy

Speed Boat Tour of Ios

Hotel managers in Ios know how to work to their audience. Breakfast starting at 10am consisting of toast, fried eggs, bacon, orange juice and water was a great choice. After catching up over breaky and recovering we headed down to the beach for our speed boat tour we had booked previously. Almost our whole group booked it and we were all put on the same boat which was awesome. After purchasing a few things to quench our thirst ( 🍺 ) for the trip we boarded our speedboat and set off into the aqua blue sea.

First stop was some caves that intertwine through a cliff face. We were able to swim through them all fairly easily. Really the main obstacle was to get back to the boat with all of your skin. The rocks were very sharp but the ocean was still so we all managed to successfully navigate the tunnels.

This lighting was obviously too much for my GoPro to deal with so sorry bout the crap photos but you can imagine what it looked like from our eyes.

I’d like to take time to note that pretty much all of the photos we post of Greece don’t do justice to what these places actually exude. It kinda goes without saying but just know if it looked great in the photos I can guarantee you it was 1000 times better in real life.

We boarded the boat and set off for destination 2, snorkelling over a small shipwreck. With the speed of our boat it didn’t take Aussie Matt long to navigate us there and before we know it we were back in the water looking down on the part shipwreck 6m below.

Lots if people swam down to touch the boat but it was a long way down so many also failed. Me, having ear problems, decided against it because I know the pressure on my eardrums would have been too much… oh well. Typically, these sorts of things present great opportunities for cool pictures with the GoPro. Best photo we got was of our friend Amy. She managed to sink down and stay calm for a nice photo. Our attempts weren’t so graceful 😂

Stop 3 was a secluded beach around the bottom part of this magnificent island. We anchored up and sat on the shore to eat a pre packed lunch. The sand was too hot for me so I took a snorkel and jumped in the ocean. Wasn’t long before others joined me for the same reason. Our group of people were the only people on this beach, actually as far as the eye could see, it was super cool and peaceful. The water was almost swimming pool clear so the snorkelling was great apart from the fact they don’t have colourful coral like Australia. (Aren’t we spoilt?)

Here’s a pic of me on the boat home soaking up the view trying not to get sunburnt 😂

Stefanos has been bragging all day about how great the night was going to be for us and now was the time. “Infinity pool with the best sunset in the world” was what we were promised. The short story is that there’s a bazillionaire NY stock broker who is from Ios and he has moved back here and built a mansion but also invested a lot of money in his home island. One such investment is this sunset lounge bar called “pathos”

“Pathos” in Greek means an element in experience or artistic representation evoking Pity or compassion. I have to be honest and say I have no idea why he would name his bar this. The bar was beautiful and modern, maybe there’s something I’m missing here. If you’re reading this and know more on this please let me know.

Stefanos… you’ve don’t it again. Recommendation of the year. This place was magnificent. Our whole group decided to pay for a few bottles of vodka and VIP table overlooking the pool. This was a great decision. The bar had world class DJs playing all afternoon and we had 2.5 hours till sunset.

We danced and drank and headed into the infinity pool as sunset approached. It was golden hour and we took advantage to get some breathtaking photos.

Before we knew it the sun was down and we were off to get a quick bite to eat and shower before heading out for the second pub crawl in two nights. Katy wasn’t feeling it so decided to stay home but the group headed into town about 11pm. We started out nice and chill, it was one of the girls 30th birthday so Stefanos organised some cake for her and we moved on. We went to various bars and as with the same as last night, there was always free shots waiting for us with some sort of special drinks menu. We went to a silent disco which was good fun. For those who don’t know what a silent disco is it’s where everyone in the club has headphones on and there’s no music playing- only through the headphones. It’s funny because everyone’s singing but unless you wear the headphones you hear no music 😂 The last bar we went to had 2 Aussies and their guitars playing lots of singable hits. They were really great and we wanted to stay but it was 3:30am and the group decided bed time was probably best. On our way home we passed a courtyard with all the locals sitting playing traditional music and singing along. It was so nice to see them all out, great cultural experience 🙂🇬🇷

All in all it was a very big day but possibly one of our best days.

Our group tour ends tomorrow so we added everybody on social media and promised we’d see them at breaky in the morning before everyone headed off.

🤘🏼🕺🏼 M