Category: Greek Island villages and towns

  • Greece holiday pic of the day

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    Skaros Rock and Imerovigli village on Santorini

    Hotels, houses and churches cling to the cliffside in Imerovigli village above Skaros Rock, left, on Santorini. Click on the photo to view a larger image.

     

     

  • Getting a wider perspective of Chora on Ios

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    Chora on Ios

    Chora, the scenic main village on Ios, is viewed in this panoramic photo shot from a hilltop on the south side of town. Click on the photo to view a larger-size image.

     

    No more squinting: The narrow display column on my blog limits the size of photos I can publish — and that simply doesn’t do justice to panoramic or widescreen pictures that must be scrunched to fit the tight space. But the new app I mentioned in my previous post (the one below, featuring photos from our hike in the valley above Aegiali on Amorgos) now lets me publish pictures that will literally pop out of the page into a larger, easier-on-the-eyes format when you click on them.

    This gives me the chance to share some shots of what is not only one of the most picturesque towns in the Cyclades, but also one of my favourite Greek Island villages — Chora, on Ios (often called Ios Town by many).

    A typical Cycladic village of whitewashed buildings and blue-domed churches, Chora straddles the top of a wide hill roughly midway between the Gialos port and beautiful Mylopotas beach.  The village actually is wedged between three other hills, including one to the south, one to the east, and an even bigger rocky peak to the north.

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  • At this cozy cafe in Chora on Folegandros, customers can read more than just the menu

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    a cafe in Folegandros

    With its wide variety of reading material (as well as food and beverages), this café on Folegandros gives a whole new meaning to the expression “book a table”

     

    Chora village on Folegandros

    The café tables and books are in shade while a lush canopy of bougainvillea vines catches the brilliant morning sunshine above a row of whitewashed  houses

     

    Chora village on Folegandros

    The café is situated in one of the three charming town squares in Chora village. Filled with taverna tables, the squares are all shaded by plane trees.

     

    Chora village on Folegandros

    A customer writes in her journal while enjoying a coffee in the quiet square

     

  • Greece holiday pic of the day

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    Santorini church belltower

    A rugged rock cliff provides a backdrop to a colourful church belltower at the beach resort area of Perissa on Santorini

     

     

  • Greece holiday pic of the day

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    ornate railings on a building in Vathi on Samos

    Decorative cast iron railings on a building in the town of Vathi on Samos

     

  • 2012 Greek holiday trip report: Mykonos Part 1

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    Air Transat logo

    Air Transat logo on a winglet of the Airbus jet that flew me from Toronto to Athens

     

    My Mykonos, Paros and Attica/Glyfada trip report

     

    What follows is an edited and significantly expanded version of a trip report I posted on TripAdvisor.com shortly after returning from my holiday in Greece this past spring. I have added more extensive details to the text, and have included dozens of photographs to illustrate the report.

     

    Sunday May 13: Flight from Toronto to Athens

    I flew Air Transat, the Canadian charter airline I have flown on all of my trips to Greece. The flight was about two-thirds full when it left Toronto just past lunchtime on Sunday May 13. It stopped in Montreal for 90 minutes to collect more passengers and load the food and beverage carts for our 9-hour overnight flight to Athens. During the stopover, a flight attendant told a passenger sitting behind me that, with the additional passengers from Montreal, the flight was nearly full. (On all of my previous flights to Greece, except one, we flew direct to Athens; this year, Air Transat’s May flights stopped in Montreal because fewer people were travelling to Greece at the time and there wasn’t enough passenger demand to justify direct flights from both cities.)

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  • Greece holiday pic of the day

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    Skala village Patmos island

    A hillside view of Skala, the port town on Patmos island

     

     

  • Greece holiday pic of the day

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    Oia Santorini

    Oia from above: The world-famous village at the northwest tip of Santorini comes into view from the clifftop hiking path that leads all the way to Oia from the island’s capital, Fira.