Holidays 2010 Part 1 - Tinos

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.