Posted on by Mitch&Katy · 1 Comment

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

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

Posted on by Mitch&Katy · 1 Comment

Quad biking around Santorini

Ooh look at us being consistent with our posting! I’m actually impressed we’ve managed to keep it up this long.

As I type this we’re on the boat heading to Ios so I have an hour to explain our entire quad biking adventure. We started early at 9:30 with most of our tour group deciding they wanted to tour the island on quad with Stefanos as our guide. This is a popular way to get about as it’s not too expensive and, if you have the little box on the back, you can carry all your essentials for the day.

The tour started with us leaving our hotel and travelling north to Oia [pronounced Ee-yah]. This is the the where the domes with the blue roofs are that everyone gets a picture of. Very typically Greek. We stopped to let everyone re-group; have a look around and get some lunch. Pre-warning that it’s a bit more pricey for lunch here and anything with a view of the sea pushes the prices up even more. It’s a touristy, quaint little spot and also very busy during the summer months. I’ve heard the sunset here is breathtaking but we had to have our bikes back before 9 so we would be pushing time to see the sunset and return the bike.

I, of course, got my insta pic with the blue domes. I considered getting one on the stairs until I realised it was someone’s house.

From here we travelled to see the red beach. It’s a beach made from the compressed ashes that fell on the ground after a nearby volcanic eruption. It’s a really striking colour and we would have loved to stay and swim but the beach didn’t have any sun loungers or parasols; and my fair Scottish skin can’t take that long in the sun. This was the longest solid stretch of biking we had during the day, made much worse by the fact our bike was defective and slowed to a crawl at the mere sight of an incline.

We hopped back on our bikes and headed to a swimming spot that Stefanos recommended. Thankfully it was mostly downhill. It was another black sand beach with slightly choppier water that the others we’ve been to. It was actually really nice to just float in the waves with our friends and talk rubbish.

That was until one lone giant wave wiped me out. I tried to go side on when I realised it was going to be taller than me and subsequently lost my sunglasses in the water. We had a look for them and even asked a wee boy wearing a snorkel if he could see them in the water. I was resigned to the fact that they were gone. Ocean – 2 Ray-bans – 0. I decided to see if they had gotten swept back in when a man in front of me caught my attention waving my lost sunnies! It’s a Santorini miracle! Also lesson learned to stop wearing sunnies in the ocean.

Mitch and I also got to test out our ugly swim shoes and can confirm that while ugly, they are very comfortable and practical for the stoney beaches of Europe. 100% would recommend they be in everyones suitcase if you’re a big beach bunny.

Look mum I’m in the shade!

We were a quick 15 mins from the hotel at this beach so as it got a bit cooler we all split off to head back to the hotel pool for some drinks and a swim.

We got ready and headed for our last dinner as a full group (some of the people on the tour finished here rather than in Ios). Dinner was ok, we weren’t blown away but Stefanos got us up for a bit of traditional Greek dancing which in a tiny restaurant was a great laugh since everyone got involved. We meandered through other guests tables while they clapped us along, we even got some Greek diners up to teach us as well. Wish I had a video but alas I was dancing.

We ended with a drink overlooking the water. Shout out to Angelo and his google phone for this sick last picture.

See you in the next blog post. – Katy xxx