Posted on by Mitch&Katy

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

ðŸĪ˜ðŸžM🏊ðŸŧ‍♂ïļ

Posted on by Mitch&Katy

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 🧜ðŸŧ‍♀ïļðŸ§œðŸŧ‍♂ïļ).

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

ðŸ•ķ M

Posted on by Mitch&Katy

Beginning of the Cyclades-Mykonos

Today we had a pre arranged 5:50am. Yep, my favourite time of the morning… NOT! In classic fashion I packed all my bags last night and set my alarm for 5:40am. 🙃 Although we may have been last aboard the coach for Athens port, we did make it down for 5:52am so I think that’s gotta he record time, even for Katy and I. We were dropped at the port and boarded our ferry heading for Mykonos. The Ferry was massive, I didn’t expect them to be that size. The ferries are actual cruise ships that must hold thousands of people. It was 8 levels high and cut through the ocean with ease.

We had a short stop at an island called Siros which inhabits 20,000 people and looked quite busy… nothing compared for the business we were about to experience.

Upon arrival in Mykonos we hopped on a coach to take us on our massive journey of about 3 minutes. The massive coach seemed excessive but we were grateful we didn’t need to lug our backpacks the 1km it was to our hotel.

We checked in and all headed to the nearest supermarket for some food and drink purchases. Basically our entire tour group congregated at the pool and we spent our entire afternoon swimming and wading in the water sipping our Prosecco and snacking on pesto humus and crackers. At 6:30pm we had a meeting in the foyer as we were meeting another group that was joining our tour. We tried miserably to introduce ourselves and remember everyone’s names but it was nice to meet a few extra people for our tour. As expected most of them were Aussie. (Typical).

After our meeting we headed for Mykonos town and had an orientation walk with Stefanos our TravelTalk tour guide. He took us to some lovely photo opportunities and showed us the general layout of this famous place.

The backdrop is locally known as little Venice for obvious reasons!

We had dinner at a local (expensive) spot and headed out for some drinks afterwards. Some people split up as the we’re tired but most of us powered onto the next bar for a few drinks before heading home!!

Mykonos so far has impressed us in a way we didn’t know it would. Obviously we knew that t was magnificent and beautifully white washed with blue roofs and windows but nothing prepared us for the abundance of community. All the tourists get caught up in the tourist part of Mykonos and forget that when you’re walking through this town there is people doing everyday activities such as washing etc. This place has character and on our return visit in a de weeks we are determined to experience as much of it as we can. 🙂

Posted on by Mitch&Katy

2 weeks – Cottage in Quebec

Hello again! We’ve reached our 2 week/halfway mark in Canada today and had a blast doing it.

We woke up in Ottawa this morning and had breakfast with Colleen, Buck and Kirsten in the garden. It was a beautiful morning today and since they have a covered gazebo, I was all for it! I’m still itchy from last nights bites ðŸĪŽ

After breakfast we quickly packed our bags and drove to Kyrie and Dave’s (Kyrie is my [2nd] cousin and Dave is her husband). Kirsten lived with them from 2012-2014 and they have just about finished building their giant dream house; so we were seeing it for the first time. We’re staying with them for the remainder of our time in Ottawa.

After this we drove the hour with Sheena and Tony to Quebec where the cottage is located. This cottage belongs to Neil and Estelle; it has also been rebuilt recently and is looking amazing. Ashley and her kids joined us again today as well as Colleen and Buck; and Kyrie and Dave later at dinner time.

The weather was a toasty 28 today so after a quick snack we changed into our swimmers and laid in the part with the most sun – the boat!

I’d love to say that we did lots of exciting things but I chose to lay on my towel in the sun reading my book. Mitch did venture into the lake on a kayak (he even said the water wasn’t that cold – he’s lying) and swiftly rolled and fell in.

We enjoyed a barbecue together for dinner before an evening ride on the boat. It’s so beautiful on the lake, and we would consider moving to Canada if only the weather was like this all the time. No 5 months of snow for us!

And a final picture of me avoiding the black flies at all costs and adopting what we’ve affectionately named the “ET method”!

Also here’s another one where I realise this is the best golden hour I’ll ever get and tried to look somewhat like normal human…

Hope you’ve enjoyed 😊 until next time! – Katy xxx