The waterfront boulevard of Vathi, the main town on Samos island
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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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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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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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