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Greece: Samos Patmos

Tuesday May 13, 2003: Departure and initial exploration of Samos

We get up at 03:30: this is very, very, yes very early, but the cause is good. We prepare the hand luggage and at 04:15 Patrik comes to pick us up and to bring us to Zaventem. We arrive on time at 04:45 and immediately check in. there is not a long queue, so that’s nice. We walk around at the airport and at 06:00 we take off. There is a lot of free space on the plane, because the season only started recently. After a normal 3.5 hour-long flight we arrive on Samos. The pilot needs to brake that hard (due to the short runway), that one of our tourist books is dragged away and we can’t find it. The stewardess apologized, but it was our own fault; shit happens. We’re lucky with the luggage and with the transfer bus. We are dropped off as the first people in a long row at Hotel paradise. It’s a nice hotel with a garden and swimming pool, a good room with a very small balcony. We unpack everything and give it its own place in the room and then we immediately start our first exploration. We book a boat trip to Patmos and we’ve scheduled it on Monday. We look harder for a boat to Ikaria. Then it seems we better had taken the boat to Ikaria on Monday and to Patmos on Saturday, but we’ve paid it already, so we don’t mind and go to eat. On our way to a restaurant we check what a rental car costs. A Nissan Micra costs 70 Euro with a limitation to 200 kilometer. We think this is a bit too much and have lunch at O Alekos: a Greek salad, tzatziki and retsina. Then we walk a while in the city of Samos and then go to rest and swim at the hotel, before we start to look for a car. We enjoy the sun (it’s 28 ° C) and the water is also perfect. After an hour we’ve been sitting down enough and we go for a walk to the other side of the bay. We return within the hour. It’s already 19:00 and we still need to find a rental car for Thursday and Friday. To our own surprise this goes very fast. In the first office we enter, we can immediately rent a Seat Marbella for 20 Euro per day. Then we eat in the same restaurant as we had lunch earlier today: a bottle of water, retsina, Greek salad, stifado and moussakas. Then we go back to the hotel, because along the waterside it becomes a bit cold. Timo goes to the supermarket to get water, ouzo and retsina. Then we make plans for tomorrow and for the two days with the rental car. We will manage it all. Another retsina and watch Champion’s League and go to sleep at 22:30.

Wednesday May 14, 2003: Vathi and Karlovassi

We don’t get up too early, because we had a busy day yesterday. Plans for today: Visit Vathi and then take the bus to Karlovassi to hike. We have breakfast on the sunny terrace with cornflakes, muesli, bread with cheese, ham, marmalade and an egg. With a juice and coffee it tastes very well. We already had prepared our bag pack, so we can leave immediately. We use a lot of sun oil, because the sun is burning hard already. Did I already mention it: It’s 29° C already. Then up the mountain to Vathi, the village that is located a bit higher on the hill. There it still is really Greek and authentic. No noisy tourists and no buses, only Greek people. We stroll through the streets and have a beautiful view on the bay of Samos. We visit some churches and return to the bus station using a different route. The station is 20 meters from our hotel, great. We check out a bookstore near the bus stop and buy a guide with hiking and car routes and with some general info. We lost the other guide on the airplane yesterday. At 13:00 we’re ready to take the bus to Karlovassi. Important when we arrive there: buy some food for lunch: bread, bananas, nectarines and apples. Then we can start the hiking. The walk starts at the stadium, but we need to find it and get there first. It takes us about 30 minutes to reach the bridge close to the stadium. Then the walk actually starts. We understand that the writers of the guide try to explain as good as possible, but they are not very successful at it. So Timo takes the map and tries to check everything out and after a while we arrive at the centre of Paleo-Karlovassi. Once we leave the centre it’s OK, calm roads, not asphalted, very steep and narrow and that at the hottest moment of the day. We started at 12:30 and now it’s already 13:30, so we start sweating. Then we go upward and we arrive at the highest point of the walk. On this hill there are a lot of orchids. We see two different species clearly. On the top is a sanctuary and next to it the path leads to the cave of Saint-Antonius, not really special, but it’s cool inside and we enjoy the coolness for a moment. Then we start the descent. The path gets steeper and narrower, it almost disappears; there is not path anymore it more looks like a climb. We constantly ask ourselves, if we’re on the right track, sometimes there is no path and on other moments there are three we need to choose from. We suddenly see blue dots on the rocks and on the trees and decide to follow the dots, because we think we will arrive somewhere. And is correct. On the two-hour spot of the walk we’re on the road for already two hours. There is a taverna, Byzantine church, a castle and waterfalls. At the church we have our well-earned lunch: bread with bananas and nectarines. This is really a nice place for a pick nick. Then we go to the waterfalls and the gorge: it’s a really cool thing to enjoy nature around us. We walk a bit further than normal tourists, but it’s not worth the extra miles. After a steep climb and descent we arrive on the other side of the rock and that’s it. So we need to take the same way back. In the meantime we have decided we will not follow the rest of the walk. From this point we take the normal road to Karlovassi and there we take the bus to Samos-city. We have 1.5 hour for the remaining 6 kilometer, so that is feasible. We’re a bit tired already, but we keep a firm pace and then via a dull long boulevard we arrive in the centre of Karlovassi. We arrive 20 minutes early there, so we did well! Take the bus, rest and back to the hotel. We relax for half an hour at the pool and then take a shower. It still is divine at the pool, even at 19:00. We then prepare for dinner. Timo now wants to eat something along the sea in Samos. We sit down at a typical Greek restaurant and have a dish of mixed grilled meat. This is: chicken filet, steak, sate, souvlaki and lamb chops, very good. We drink a bottle of retsina. Tomorrow we will try to find something where we can have fish. We look at the setting sun and buy some more things in the supermarket. We directly go to bed; we had a tiring day, but a very nice one. Timo tries to watch Champion’s League, but he doesn’t manage it zzzzzzzz.

Thursday May 15, 2003: Car trip North-Samos

Rise early (07:45), prepare the bag pack, have breakfast on the sunny terrace (just great). We pick up the mega-Marbella and leave immediately. The car is really great: creak and crack, but we have no problem with it. The first stop is Mytilini, a small village and museum with paleontologic info: minerals, shells and birds. It’s nice and quiet as already the whole week. From here we drive to Chora and Mavratzei. We stop at the monastery ‘Timiou Stavrou”, Eef needs to wear a cloth around her legs, because she is not properly dressed. And he had even made the effort to wear a scarf. It’s very beautiful inside and off course we can’t take any pictures. The next part, all the way to Ireon, we only drive through for the views and the beautiful landscapes. We drive trough mini-villages like Koudarmerai, Pyrgos (with a lot of remains from forest-fires), Spatharei, Pagondas and Mili and without knowing it we arrive in Ireon. It is very nice here, calm and located by the sea. We sit at the sea and see an old Greek clean squid and octopuses. It looks great and now we also know how it’s done. We drink a cola in the shade and think Ireon is a nice place, but a bit expensive. A bit later we leave to the temple of Hera, it is hot here. Off course there is a lot to see here on the site, but now we really notice the loss of the guide we had. Great, huge, very impressive, but in the past even better. We drive on to Pythagorion over a big road; stop a while near a bridge, because a white heron is wading through the river. At the beginning of the village Pythagorion we stop and park the car, because we see indications to the Tunnel of Euphalinus. We need to return because the road ends. We follow the indication of ‘early castle and Christian Basilica’. There is a small church with a cemetery with a lot of flowers. Next to the cemetery is a fortress, at least the remains. We eat the apples with bread and the nectarines. We have enough rest and leave to visit the next site. We take the road back to Samos and turn into the direction of the Tunnel of Euphalinus, the theatre and the monastery. At this point there are seven direction arrows. We first go to the tunnel, but we can’t enter anymore; we have only arrived 5 minutes late. There is nothing else in that area apart from some beautiful black flowers. We need to return tomorrow to see the tunnel then. We then head on to the theatre. Eef says: “there are as many rocks here as in the garden of my parents”. And that was the theatre. Then up to Moni Spilianis, a beautiful monastery with a beautiful view. We should then be able to go into the direction of Paleokastro and then to Agios Zoni and Zoödochos Pigis. We follow the good direction, but at a certain moment we don’t know what direction to follow anymore, so we just drive on. Finally we arrive in the reserve Psili Amos: peewit, common shelducks, and a lot of flamingos. This is great for Timo. We then drive on to Agios Zoni, but can’t find it, so then to Zoödochos Pigi as we wanted. It’s a beautiful monastery with beautiful views on the road leading to it. The Marbella has problems driving up the steep roads, but we manage to drive up. Then we drive in one trip to Samos city to the hotel. When we arrive there we first rest an hour at the pool, buy postal cards and eat at Zen restaurant. We have shrimps specialty, Zen salad and grilled octopus. Everything tastes very good with a bottle of retsina and we only pay 25 Euro. We return to the hotel with a bouquet of jasmine. We enjoy the good weather and the tasty retsina and by ten we go to bed.

Friday May 16, 2005: Trip in the south of Samos

We get up around 07:45, about the time we normally get up, not too early and not to late, so we still can do a lot of stuff. We again have breakfast outdoors, but this time not directly in the sun, because that is too hot, even that early in the day. The bag pack is ready, so we can depart immediately by car. Now Eef takes the wheel to get her arm browner and Timo loves it, because he did not feel like driving today. We first go to the Tunnel of Euphalinus, because the tunnel was closed yesterday; Eef races to it in only 15 minutes. It really is worth the visit, especially when you know this tunnel was created year before Christ. It is nice and cool inside and on some places stalactites and stalagmites start to grow. We can enter the tunnel for about 150 meters and we only go that far and return up. Eef doesn’t feel like driving anymore, so Timo takes over. We drive along Samos city to get to the road to Karlovassi. On the way to Kokkari we need to see two little churches, but alas … just past Avlakia we take the road up to Vourliotes and Moni Vronda. We decide to not proceed towards Vourliotes. Typical here are the vineyards. The village is pretty and has a cozy town square. We’ve had it with the mountains today (always the curves and the altitude), so we don’t drive on up to the moni. We descend to the coastal road and there follow direction Manolates. This is the Valley of the nightingales, an oasis of peace with a small river, a forest and singing birds. We want to come back her on Saturday or Sunday for a walk. We then return to the direction of Karlovassi and stop near the church of Agios Dimitrios. At Karlovassi we need to search a bit, but we do find the road to Leka. A road with a lot of ups and downs and many curves, but we have the time so we do it all very calmly. We have beautiful views over the coast, the city and the sea. Via Leka we arrive in Kastania; this reaches a dead end and we need to take a small and narrow road to get to Marathokampos. Then the road broadens a bit. Suddenly Timo stops, because he saw a dead snake. We get out and walk around to encounter a living snake, but we’re not that lucky. A bit further we see again a snake, flattened by a car, but this time we don’t stop. Just before Marathokampos we notice and indication to the ‘Cave of Pythagoras’. We follow that direction, but then the road comes to an end (this is becoming predictable) and we only see rocks. This is not good. Eef gets out of the car; she has had enough. Timo drives a bit on, but then needs to turn back, because the road is in a very bad condition. No cave today. We drive back and see an old Greek; he looks like he’s about 100 years old. He makes us stop and wants to drive with us to Marathokampos. He can come with us and we drop him off at the town square. He does not want to get our here; he is pointing to drive up and we need to take the road down. A bit against his will he’s getting out. He could drive with us for 3 kilometers, so he needs to be happy. We’re no taxi. So we take the road down to the sea, to Ormos Marathokampos and arrive in a very pretty and typical fisherman’s village with a small harbor. We’re hungry and sit down on a beautiful terrace and we were tired of the mountains and the curves. There are a lot of birdcages here with goldfinches in there. The two waitresses are also great: 2 sisters of about 60 years old with mustache and everything on it. We have a Greek salad, tzatziki, bread and drink cola with it. We chat a bit with 2 people from Brussels about the Greek islands and Samos specifically. After lunch we drive back to the hotel. We pass via Pyrgos and the same way we took yesterday. The drive takes about an hour. We relax by the pool, have a refreshing dive, enjoy the sun and then explore the world of Samos. We go to restaurant Zen and have swordfish en souvlaki and then enjoy the sunset in the harbor at 20:50 already. We buy a cigar; we allow ourselves to smoke when we’re on vacation. We really enjoy the quietness and the peace here and also the relaxing sound of the water. We drink a lot of retsina at the hotel and fall asleep like roses.

Saturday May 17, 2003: Walk and then have a rest

We get up at about the same hour as always and do the same as we do every morning: wash, make bag ready, brush teeth, have breakfast and leave. We take the bus to Karlovassi and we’re planning on getting of in Platanakia. There are a lot of guided walks and we want to follow one and then take the bus back: either at 12:50 or at 15:20. In Platanakia a lot of walkers get off. We leave as last people, but we walk that fast so we leave everyone behind soon. Everything goes well as long as we’re walking under the trees. Once we get higher there are no more trees and the temperature is very high then. The trail goes 4 kilometer up; the first two are OK in the shadow of the trees, but the last two are very hard and hot. In about an hour we walked the 4 kilometers and are now 400 meters higher. Up the hill there is nothing to see, so we need to take an alternative route down. We try to follow the guide, but again this is not leading us to the correct place. A part that should only take 5 minutes, we walk for ten minutes and a part from three we walk in only 1 minute. Try to understand that. We put the guide away and just follow the red, green and blue dots on the rocks. We think we will arrive somewhere (again). We follow a trail down between trees, vineyards, very cozy and not too hot. After about 45 minutes we arrive again on the main road. We stop a few times, because we want to spot a snake, but no luck. We walk around and return to the ‘highway’, where we need to take the bus back to Samos. We see a small street that leads to the sea; Timo swims and Eef lies down. Then it’s time to take the bus. After our arrival in Samos we have a spinach pie and a pizza. We’re then ready to walk again to the ‘Port of Commerce’. It quiet and we enjoy it. We come to rest and return to the hotel after two hours and there swim in the pool. Both of us have sunburns, so we need to stay out of the sun for a moment. We go to eat again at Zen, as always very high quality for little money. We have lamb cutlets swordfish, Greek salad and retsina. Then we go back to the hotel, drink another bottle (small one) of retsina and go to bed, because we’re dead.

Sunday May 18, 2003: Archeological Museum and Samos city

Today is a day of rest for us, se we sleep longer as a start before we go to have breakfast. We make sure that we’re awake by nine, so we don’t miss too much of the day. First tasks are as usual and then something we do every day: enjoy every second, minute, hour as much as we can. We walk through the alleys of Samos and we visit the Archeological Museum. This is great. It’s Sunday, so the entrance is free. We stroll around in the different buildings and see a lot of impressive things. The most striking is the statue of a kouros of almost 5 meters high. It’s a marble statue of a young man, really well carved out of the stone. In the other halls there are the statues of the Geneleos and others. We also see many beautiful potteries and ornaments. The visit to the museum does not take very long, but it really is worth the time. We go and sit in the city park and rest a bit. It is about 10:30 and we want to explore the streets a bit more. Eef tries to avoid the sun, because her body hurts. We buy a cookbook with Greek specialties and sit down on a bench at the side of the city with a view on the sea. We go to O Alekos and eat spaghetti and a Greek salad with water. During our walk through town we already sat down and drank a bottle of retsina – we really enjoyed it – so now we need to take it calm. The food is very good. We walk on a while and at 14:30 we return to the hotel to go for a swim and to enjoy the good weather, because in two days we will be back in the cold Belgium. We rest, sleep a bit and at 17:00 we start to move again. We go up to Ano Vathi. It is warmer here then down close to the sea. It is 31 °; we’re almost glued to the asphalt. We come across a garage from Fiat that we also saw from our hotel up in the mountains. After a walk from about one hour we go to the hotel and prepare to go for dinner. We go to Zen and it tastes very good: retsina, water, swordfish and lamb chops, magnificent. We’re tired of doing nothing the whole day and go to be early because we need to get out of bed early tomorrow. We’re going to Patmos; we’ll finally make it and we’ll enjoy it.

Monday May 19, 2003: Patmos

We need to get up early, because at 07:00 we need to take the bus at the police station and we can’t miss that one. So no breakfast for us today. At 06:50 we’re ready; the bus is early so we can leave immediately. We drive for about 20 minutes to Pythagorion to take the boat that will bring us in 2.5 hours to Patmos. We arrive in Pythagorion and get on the ‘Patmos Sky’, which is a very nice boat and luckily for Eef not a catamaran. We leave on time at 08:00 to Ormos where we still need to pick up some people. It takes us one hour to get there and from this point it still is 2.5 hours, so in total it will take us 3.5 hours for Patmos – a bit longer than we had thought. Ormos is the nice village where we had lunch the second day we had the car, it’s nice to see this from the sea. At 12:00 and after a nice boat trip we arrive on Patmos. We’re the only ones here without a guide, but we’ll manage. Together with a German guy we take the normal bus up to the monastery. At the monastery we visit first the treasury, nice jewels, ancient books and old clothes for priests. We walk through the halls of the monastery and a papas speaks to us. Apparently we’re in the area where only the priests are allowed. We apologize 100 times and leave. A gate was left open and we came here by accident. We enter the chapel with cloth covering our knees and look at the beautiful mosaics, this is a wealth we’ve never laid our eyes on. After this visit we walk down, in order to have some time available to visit the Apocalypse Cave. Everything goes smoothly but we walk past the cave? We should have followed the normal road, but stayed on the roman road. Well it doesn’t matter, it’s a shame, but not that important. It’s time to eat, so we look for a good restaurant with sea view. We like it here and have a Greek salad, stuffed tomatoes and fried octopus with the very known retsina. Then we rest on a shell beach and swim to avoid the heat. We still enjoy our time here and rest about two hours on the beach. Then it is time to depart from Patmos, so we start to look for our boat. We sit in front, but after half an hour we need to go to the center or the back of the boat. The skipper is expecting high waves and a rough sea. After a while the water even gets thrown till the stern and we really need to sit inside. We get wet and cold. Then we arrive a part in the open sea and encounter a real storm. People are getting seasick, even the captain is running around very nervously. We have chewing gum against travel disease, but when Timo sees for a while and smells all the …, he decides to join them. It is very heavy, now you only see air, then only water. Eef holds it till the end, just at the moment when she is starting to turn green. After half an hour the worst is over and the sea is calmer. Timo could not make it to the end; just before the storm stopped he had to give up. We again stop first in Ormos and actually we would like to get off too, it stinks here. But we need to stay another hour. At 17:30 we’re back in Pythagorion. There we have a private bus to take us to Samos; we’re really alone with the driver, and the rest need to be in a different bus. The reason for this was we did not book with Thomson. We felt like VIP’s, we said that to the driver and we laughed. Back in the hotel we prepare everything to pack, then take a shower and eat at Zen’s restaurant. We have Zen’s Specialty Grill Mix; lamb chops, cutlets, chicken filet, souvlaki and gyros. We drink half a liter retsina with it and water. We only need to pay 23.50 Euro, practically nothing. We even receive another half a liter of retsina and then fruit (apples and pears) with cinnamon. In the hotel we have our luggage ready and then go to bed. The last candle is burning…

Tuesday May 20, 2003: Departure home

07:20. We get up, close luggage and hand luggage. Breakfast and enjoy last Greek sun.

08:25. Departure to the airport

09:15. Arrival in the airport, full with people and with a bad organization.

11:10. Take off.

14:25. Landing in Brussels, 20 minutes early. It was 13:25 Belgian time. Maurits picks us up and drops us off at home.

Samos is a very beautiful, green island with still a Greek atmosphere. It was a good vacation and off course it all was too short.