My name is Marion Vermazen. I am a traveler, hiker, reader, Sun alumnus, computer geek, YouTuber, Spanish and French language student, knitter, weaver and genealogist.
In September and October 2022 Duke and I are travelling through Italy, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania and Greece.
Today Duke and I did the Rick Steves Athens City walking tour. It was excellent. He explained the history of Athens from 500 BC. He started with when Athens was a city state, through control by the Persians, Romans, Macedonians, Byzantines, Ottomans, and Nazis. It’s a long and confusing history but he makes it clear.
For dinner we went looking for gyros. We ended up having a wonderful grilled meat platter for two.
After dinner we went up to the roof of our hotel to check out the acropolis.
Today we flew from Skiathos to Athens. It was about a 45 minute flight. The tickets cost us about $76 each. Hotel Rene where we stayed on Skiathos was wonderful. They are closing for the season today. We were their last customers of the year. Three nights with breakfast cost $259.
We recorded Dukes review of our rental car, the VW Polo, and then turned it in.
In Athens we took the Metro from the airport to central Athens and then walked to our hotel. We read for a while at the rooftop bar of our hotel. What a view!
For dinner we found a nearby pizzeria.
Skiathos is just under 20 square miles in size. it rained all day today. As I mentioned in my post yesterday we are definitely here in the off season. One web site I read today said that in summer the population can be 70,000 but in the off season it is about 4,000. It didn’t take us long to explore the west end of the island this afternoon. We saw a couple of beautiful beaches and almost no people.
We also went to a high point and visited Kounistra monastery.
We have only seen 4 or 5 restaurants open. When we checked in here the owner of Hotel Rene recommended 3. We are eating at one each night we are here. Tonight we ate at Akrogiali.
We started with a Greek salad to share. All our food was wonderful but my squid and onion in a special sauce was fantastic.
We took an 8:30 ferry this morning to the island of Skiathos. The ferry terminal was right across from our hotel in Volos.
The ferry ride was about two and a half hours.
In Skiathos we took a taxi to the airport and rented a car. Since it was a bit early to check into our hotel we went for a drive out to a point overlooking the town.
The runway at the airport in Skiathos goes from coast to coast.
This video that I found on YouTube shows how close to the end of the runway the airplanes can be when they land. When we drove around the end of the runway there was a stop light to stop traffic when planes land.
There seem to be very few people on the island right now. We are staying at Hotel Rene. It’s a wonderful place with a great view. They can hold about 70 people but the owner told us that only four rooms will be occupied tonight. He told us that once flight stops coming from the rest of Europe there are almost no tourists on Skiathos. The hotel will close after this weekend. Most other hotels are already closed.
For dinner we had a mixed seafood platter at Bakaliko Restaurant. It’s one of the few restaurants that is still open.
What we couldn’t eat the waiter scraped onto a plate and led the cats outside to eat.
This morning we took a taxi to the bus station in Thessaloniki and then took a bus south for 2 hours and 20 minutes to Valos. We are in Volos because tomorrow morning we will take a ferry to the island of Skiathos.
In Volos it was raining and there didn’t seem to be any taxis available so we walked to our hotel. We got a bit wet but it was a relatively short walk.
Later when the rain had stopped we went for a walk.
For dinner we went to a small Greek restaurant. The service was wonderful as was the food. I think our favorite dish was the prawns in a tomato, feta and basil sauce. The octopus was excellent too.
After dinner we went for walk before heading back to the hotel.
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