Category: Cyclades islands (Page 41 of 66)

Amorgos is a hiker’s paradise

February 25, 2013 / / 0 Comments
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Amorgos hiking path

You will feel like you’re on top of the world while hiking on Amorgos. This particular trail leads from Egali to Chora along what’s called “the spine of Amorgos”

 

 

Amorgos hiking path sign

Start points for many of the hiking routes on Amorgos are well-marked by signs. This one even shows the approximate walking times to the destinations indicated.

 

 

Wonderful walks: If you like to see vacation destinations on foot rather than through the windows of a rental car or tour bus, you can’t beat the Greek Islands. Most islands, especially those in the Cyclades, are ideal for walking and hiking. Some, like Sifnos and Amorgos, boast extensive networks of footpaths and donkey trails that take visitors to scenic parts of the island that can’t be reached by vehicles.

Amorgos is one of our favourite destinations for hiking.

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Greek holiday pic of the day

November 15, 2012 / / 1 Comment
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Greek salad

A yummy Greek salad and an ice-cold bottle of Mythos beer

 

Favourite snack: When I was grocery shopping one day last week, I got a sudden craving for a crisp Greek salad — our favourite lunchtime “snack” and dinnertime starter when we’re in Greece. So I picked up some feta, cucumber, olives, green peppers, tomatoes and a red onion.  The salad I assembled back home looked appetizing enough, but was a huge disappointment to eat. The vegetables were crunchy but bitter (the onion actually gave me severe heartburn), while the tomatoes were tasteless and had the texture of soggy cardboard. The feta felt almost spongy, and had a sharp, slightly sour flavour, while the olives also seemed spongy, and tasted bitter and salty. Major letdown!

I should have known better — the taste and texture of our vegetables, even at the best of times, is never even remotely comparable to their flavour-packed counterparts in Greece. And now that we’re heading into winter, our vegetables will be even more dreadful. So no more Greek salads until next spring. With luck, we’ll make it back to Greece at that time … and if we do, you can be certain we’ll enjoy an authentic, tasty Greek salad with nearly every meal.

Until then, I’ll try to satisfy my cravings by pretending I’m back at Taverna Glafkos in Naoussa, on Paros, enjoying the delicious Greek salad pictured above that I enjoyed for lunch one day last May.

 

Cool pools: Santa Maria Village hotel on Milos

November 12, 2012 / / 0 Comments
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Santa Maria village hotel

A quiet moment at the Santa Maria Village hotel swimming pool

 

September swims: For our fourth trip to Greece, in 2007, we decided to travel during the second half of September instead of taking our holiday in late May or early June as we usually do. We figured that, after a long hot summer, the sea would be comfortably warm and so would hotel swimming pools. At least, that’s what seasoned travellers had told us to expect, and that’s what I kept reading in the TripAdvisor.com forums.

But when we got to the first hotel of our island-hopping trip that September — the Santa Maria Village at the port town of Adamas, on Milos — we were shocked to discover that the swimming pool water was ice cold. Other guests who said they had been expecting to do a lot of swimming were also taken aback by the water temperature.

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Warming up with some Naxos beach memories

November 6, 2012 / / 1 Comment
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Agios Prokopios beach Naxos

Looking across the brilliant turquoise sea as waves softly break against the sand at Agios Prokopios beach on Naxos

 

Feeling the chill: Clouds. Wind. Rain. That pretty much sums up the dreary, depressing weather we’ve been experiencing here in Toronto since late October, when Hurricane Sandy started moving out of the Caribbean on its way to wallop the USA’s eastern seaboard. We were supposed to see a mix of sun and clouds on Sunday, Monday and again today, but the sunshine didn’t last for more than a few minutes. So you can imagine how envious I felt this morning when a friend in Athens bragged about being on her way to the beach because it was a balmy 29 degrees (Celsius).

At the time, I was sorting through photos from our visits to Naxos in 2005 and 2006, looking at pictures of some of the island’s beautiful beaches. Just out of curiosity, I checked the weather for Naxos. The island wasn’t getting the same blast of heat as Athens, but the temperature was still a summery 24 C.  Meanwhile, we were shivering with a high of only 2 C.

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Getting a wider perspective of Chora on Ios

October 23, 2012 / / 0 Comments
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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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The valley above Aegiali

October 6, 2012 / / 0 Comments
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Aegiali valley on Amorgos

Looking toward the whitewashed houses of Langada village from the opposite side of the vast valley above Aegiali Bay on Amorgos. Click on the photo to view a larger-size image.

 

Ahhh-morgos! A friend planning a short trip to Amorgos contacted me last week, asking for some travel advice and links to my photos so she could take a sneak peak at the scenery she and her travel companion would soon be enjoying first-hand.

While I was scouring my computer for information and photos from our visit to Amorgos in 2009, I discovered a series of panoramic pictures I haven’t posted either here on the blog, or in any of my online albums, because the images are simply too large. When re-sized to fit in the narrow column on the blog, the photos would be almost too small to view. Some would be so tiny, I thought it would be a waste of time to publish them. But then another friend familiar with the technical workings of WordPress blogs showed me a handy-dandy trick for displaying larger images.

 

Photos from our half-day hike around Aegiali valley

I decided to give it a try, so below is a series of photos that we shot during a half-day hike around the valley above Aegiali Bay. (Amorgos is a hiker’s paradise, and the valley walk is just one of many incredibly scenic routes on the island.)

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