Our Overnight Stop in Chios
As you know from our last blog, we decided to leave Seaclusion all safe and sound in Oinoussos Harbour, after all the advice that Chios Harbour was not a place you would want to be in these winds, and to get up very early to take the 7am ferry. Thankfully David’s alarm did go off, mine not, clearly user error and so we made it comfortably with our little overnight bag, and camera of course!
The Approaches to Chios Town
Within 30mins of getting off the boat, grabbing a coffee and meeting our nice lady with our hire car, we were all set to go exploring!
Chios, AKA Khios is a somewhat craggy island, with much, particularly in the north, of it being lunar landscape of parched and pitted rock. It sustained a huge earthquake in 1881 which killed 3500 of it inhabitants, but we are pleased to say it has fully recovered and now bustles with activity and life, we would worry if it hadn’t two centuries later! Aside from tourism, it’s main source of income is the production of mastic, a resin obtained from the punctured stems of the plant with the same name, what a surprise. Mastic is used in medicine, varnish making, and chewing gum… hmmm, nowadays even used by the cosmetic industry, not that we particularly fancy putting something that is used in varnish on even our windbeaten faces!
So all set, our first stop was the UNESCO Nea Moni Monastery. The outside, given the others we have seen, left us a bit bemused as to why it would be a UNESCO site, but managing to squeeze inside, (it was Sunday morning, silly us, so there was a full blown mass being held in there), we could see why. I have nicked some images off the internet as I could hardly start snapping away in the middle of the service!
One thing to mention, our route from Chios Town left a lot to be desired… with the last 2 miles proving to be on a very bumpy, exposed and dusty hill climb, (I blame it on google maps), ending with both of us needing a pee… hmmm, we hoped there might be something near the monastery. Sadly not, so by the time we left the monastery, we both had our legs crossed and sincerely hoped the other road out was tarmac!
Much relieved, excuse the pun, we then headed across to the west coast, to the medieval village of Avanatos, set high on a cliff but abandoned since 1822. It is now in the throws of being renovated and one day it will be a amazing place, quite possibly a set in a film!
Avanatos
From there, we drove along the stunning western coast road before it cut up again taking us to yet another medieval village, Vessa.. (At least it is not all white washed, blue shuttered buildings at the moment!) We had a brief wander through its streets before heading to the main attraction, Pyrgi.
Vessa
Pyrgi
This Village is totally unique and is called the ‘painted village’ because of its elaborate geometrical decorations in black and white on the facades of almost all the buildings. A much needed freddo cappuccino stop here was a must before we wandered the streets, snapping away and chatting to the locals, including a wonderful old Greek lady (whose English was perfect as she had lived in New York for many years), but who was very lonely and wanted to chat forever, we caught a lucky break when her son arrived earlier than expected by all accounts, otherwise we were fearing we would time out on the rest of the island! We will let the images do the talking for this very picturesque town.
An hour later saw us on our way, heading to Mesta, via the small village of Olympoi, somewhat played down by google, so its cuteness caught us unaware. It actually has the form of a castle as the external walls of the dwellings form its perimeter, like a high defensive wall. We wandered the narrow alleys until we found the tiny square, passing a taverna with its traditional way of cooking gyros, on a spit, it smelled delicious but was too early for our lunch stop!
Olympoi
Next Stop before lunch, Mesta
Mesta is said to be the best preserved medieval village, protected by the Ministry of Culture as a monument, and is again built in the form of a castle, with an amazing 15th Century church at its heart. We again wandered its streets in the shade against the sun created in its inner sanctum and people watched as all the locals gather for their Sunday lunch!
Finally energy starting to wain, we headed to the east coast, to the fishing and beach village called Emborios, where we relaxed over a nice cool beer and calamari, watching the world go by.
Emborios AKA Ormos Kamari
Over lunch we decided that after such an early start and chasing our tails all over the island that it was just too much to head to the North West of the island in one day and headed back to Chios Town to have a look at the unfinished marina, to see if it would work for us, as it would shave 10 miles of our journey to Tinos, and then find and check into our weeny hotel in the old town, in time to have a power nap and enjoy the evening in town.
The marina, yes was very windy, well everywhere was, but we decided that moored alongside against the wind seemed very safe and there was plenty of room, so we had a plan to move on from our safe haven on Oinoussos. With that we headed onto the old town, after a brief photo shoot of the infamous Chios windmills…
And then the fun started… trying to find the hotel in the old town, still in the car! Between too much faith in google maps, my navigating and David’s dislike of narrow, and even narrower, side streets, all on top of not a lot of sleep the night before and a busy day, the witches caldron was set to boil over! The last straw came when I, looking at google maps on the phone, told David to turn right at the end of this tiny street, to which David, more calmly than you might imagine, said ‘ you have got to be kidding’, to which I, still looking at my phone, said ‘no, bloody well turn right now. By now David had come to a screeching halt and told me in no uncertain words to look up…. I will let the pics do the talking..
Time to get out of dodge… we found our way out back to the mainroad after another few minutes of nerve racking negotiation of narrow streets blocked by cars, lots of reversing and swearing, and returned the car to the rental agency, and walked! Much better idea, why didn’t we do that in the first place!
Our hotel in the old town was lovely, cool, peaceful and fab for our much needed power nap. The evening however on the main strip of Chios Town wasn’t so great, lots of very loud bars, uncomfortable seats full of youngsters hell bent on getting drunk, OMG how old do we sound, so after finally managing to get a nice comfortable seat with a cocktail to take it all in, we were rather reluctant to give them up to go in search for something to eat! But an hour later, view now of the ferry, we braved it, rather unsuccessfully as by now all the restaurants were chocker, so we headed a few streets back and grabbed a gyros before falling into our pit for the next morning of exploring Chios Town!
After a wonderfully peaceful night on a properly unmoving bed and copious amounts of hot water, we were ready to go exploring and catch the 2pm ferry back to Seaclusion, which we really needed to do as the forecasted winds were ranking up to 40+ knots again and we didn’t want to leave her unattended. This was when we got the first message from our Aussie friends still on Oinoussa saying they were planning on following in our footsteps but the ferry didn’t run at 7am.. panic stations.. so we quickly found the ferry office to find out the score, to be told it would be here, but would be leaving at 11:30, not 2pm because of the weather. Action stations, so we raced around to get some much needed provisions and get back to the hotel to collect our bits and pieces then check out. In fact were so quick, we actually found ourselves with 30 mins to spare so I trotted off to find the castle and old baths, camera in tow.
10 mins later I returned having found the castle walls,
but only this evidence of is the castle…
Hmmm, it was only when I got back to our hotel that our lovely lady explained we were in the castle… all the renovated and still being renovated houses were the castle! She then pointed me in the right direction of the baths.
Beautiful, but more importantly I was mightily glad of the distraction as I was not looking forward to the journey back, you know what I am like on ferries…. particularly in these conditions…
Thankfully we made it back to Oinoussos, breakfast still in our tummies, and Seaclusion all safe and sound!
18th July 2022
