Tue 2 Jul to Thu 4 Jul – Hotel hopping and beach exploring

Tuesday

The morning started rather slowly after our darts frenzy the night before. We might have had a little bit too much of the local wine, but oh well. “When in Greece”, or how does the saying go? The whole of last season we were surprised to realise that we didn’t spend a single day on the beach, despite being on some of the finest beaches the Med has to offer. Thus one of our “new season resolutions” was to spend at least one lazy day at the beach, basically doing nothing. Today was the perfect day for that so we packed a few things and went down to the beach. It turns out that lounging around on sun beds, listening to summer music, sipping a cool drink and occasionally going for a little swim is a fantastic way to spend the day. Feeling deeply relaxed we headed back to our little room to cook a minimalist dinner in our tiny kitchenette.

Wednesday

We managed to get up reasonably early the next morning and made use of the opportunity to go for a run. So off we went for a run to Finikas and back, much to the bemusement of the few locals that we met. They must have all thought we were a bit mad running around in the building heat of the day.

The mission for the day was to go back to Ermoupoli to extend the scooter rental and see how Bini’s repairs were progressing. Now in Germany, if you rent a car or a scooter for a few days and you want to extend it, you would expect a process that involves forms being filled and credit cards being swiped. Not so much here though. We went into the scooter shop and were surprised to find the owner with his family sitting around the table having lunch. He and his family were at least equally surprised, staring at us, cutlery in their hands and slowly chewing, while we were trying to explain that we had rented a scooter and wanted to extend it. He just looked at us in utter amazement, how could we think that something as small as not bringing back a scooter on the designated day would warrant a disruption of his family lunch? He casually told us just to bring it back whenever we wanted. How he knew who we were and which scooter we had remains a mystery. Anyway, we left him and his family to it and continued our trip to the boat yard.

There we found Bini’s repairs progressing nicely. To be honest, I was expecting the fibreglass work to be a bit of a quick fix. To the contrary, the guy who was doing the repairs clearly knew what he was doing and did an excellent job. Relieved and happy we skipped along the town quay to take a look at an old friend that we had met least year – the Maltese Falcon was in town! It is a crazy contraption of a sail boat, but always an interesting sight.

We rewarded ourselves with a nice lunch in our local Gyros shop, with a double Gyros for me. Meat coma! It was funny how we felt like we were becoming locals in this city after only spending a bit over a week here. I think the lovely atmosphere with amazingly friendly people definitely helped. After lunch it was time to pack it all up again and move into a new room that we would call home for the next two days. We went down to Megas Gialos, another gorgeous bay with stunning views and crystal clear water. The room itself was a bit meh, so we decided to spend the afternoon hanging out on the beach and exploring the beautiful bay. I think the lady running the sun beds did not expect us to hang around for too long, and she kept coming with a little brush to dust off our beds every two minutes. Bit awkward. We persevered though and enjoyed a nice, quiet evening on the beach.

Thursday

Slightly north of Megas Gialos is another lovely bay called Vari, a bay where our friends on Polaris spent a night. We thought it would be worth checking out and hopped on the scooter for a 10 minutes ride to the beach.

We were met by crystal clear water and the fanciest sun beds you have ever seen. Before grabbing ours we thought we’d stop in the taverna for an early lunch. As we sat down the waiter explained pitifully that the kitchen had not opened yet. Just as we were getting up, what must have been his mother came rushing out and told us that they were happy to serve us food. Bit confused? Anyway, we had nice lunch and went for the sun beds. Not much happened that afternoon besides lounging around with the local cats, swimming, and more lounging around. What a fantastic place!