For Part 1 - Tinos go here.
The second week of my summer holidays I went to Pelion. Going there was my friend Angela's idea, who was willing to drive us. We took the late boat back to Athens slept for a couple of hours and early next morning my sister and I went to the train station to meet Charles (Angela's boyfriend) who had just flown in from London. We got the train to Lianokladi, piled into Angela's car (not the mini, fortunately, but the car they have given her from work) and drove all the way up to Volos and then Pelion.
I mentioned visiting Pelion earlier this year. But this time we saw much more.
As you understood, Pelion is not an island, it's a peninsula in central Greece, just next to Volos. It's a lovely green mountainous peninsula well know for it's picturesque mountain villages and beautiful beaches. I had only visited the villages high in the mountains during winter (and had on one memorable occasion got snowed in), so this was a great chance to see the talked about beaches for myself. Pelion is big and has many beaches. We only visited the northern part on the Aegean sea side, but the beaches where gorgeous. The one thing that certainly differentiates Pelion from the islands of the Cyclades are the trees. Pelion is so amazingly green!
We rented a house near Damouchari beach and spent most of our time walking to visit beaches, swimming and eating. Typical holidays in other words.
A nearly hidden beach near Damouchari
Damouchari beach
Fakistra beach
Horeuro beach
Mylopotamos beach
Papa Nero beach (check out how pasty Charles looks compared with my sister and Angela!)
Pelion is beautiful, but like most of Greece crowded in August. Unfortunately you need a car to get around unless you plan on staying in just one place. Also it's rather family and couples orientated and there's only one camping that is packed. If we were a larger group of people and booked enough in advance to find a big cheap house to rent it would be fun to go again. To the southern part this time.
Coming next my final week.
The first week of my summer holidays I went to Tinos. Why did I chose this island? No idea. We were too lazy to think about it much, it's an easy island to get to, we hadn't been before and we found a cheap room. An island is an island anyway.
So I got on the boat with my friend Nikoletta and my sister (who is paranoid and likes remaining nameless) and went to TInos!
Why hadn't we been to Tinos before? Because it isn't exactly a young person's island. Tinos is most famous for it's churches, in particular the Panagia Euaggelistria Church in the Chora dedicated to the Virgin Mary. There is famous a big religious festival held on the Dormition of the Virgin (15th of August) and tons of faithful make pilgrimages to the church.
Tinos is also famous for it's venetian dovecotes.
Of course Tinos does remain an island in the Cyclades. Which means it's typically arid, the sun is scorching hot, has beautiful beaches (not as good as some other island though), blue blue seas and little white villages. Normally during August it's also very very windy. Tinos is especially famous for being one of the windiest islands. This August however was a very hot windless August. Even in the islands.
So we found no nightlife in Tinos and not too many people in our age-group. But we found beaches:
Agios Fokas beach
Rocky beach near Panormos
And we rented a car and explored some of it's villages. Tinos is one of the bigger islands in the Cyclades and has many villages.
Pyrgos
Dyo Choria
Ormos Ysternion
Panormos
We also visited one of the cutest monasteries I have ever seen. It was a women's monastery it looked just like an adorable little village where everything was women-sized!
And of course we ate! (I'm sure I put on a lot of weight this August.) The food in Tinos is rather good (even by high greek standards), the prices ok and the portions big. Tinos seems to be rather famous for it's artichokes and capers. The artichoke salad with vinegar was good enough to make me actually consider buying fresh artichokes rather than ready cleaned frozen ones like I usually do.
All in all, Tinos was fun, but I wouldn't go again.
Coming up next, week two and week three.
