Kefalonia and Lefkas

---

Sorry for not having written for so long, we've been busy! We arrived in Kefalonia last week at the charming harbour town of Sami. A real change from the Cyclades as it was very quiet, almost spookily so! After a bit of trouble finding accommodation we found some nice apartments just off the seafront. Sami was a great place to start as close by there was one of Kefalonia's most famous landmarks, the Melissani Cave. Basically this is an underwater lake in a cave whose roof has fallen in. You get rowed across the 100 ft deep lake and it's simply stunning! Really amazing colours on the water and so clear you can see all the way down!

We moved to Lassi after a few days, which is where Sam stayed as a kid. To be honest it was a bit of a disappointment. We expected another pretty town, but it's really more of a purpose built resort, and lots of English - the likes of which we haven't seen in about a month!! The plus side was that it was right next door to some really nice beaches including Makris Gialos and Platis Gialos.

We hired a car one of the days we were here so we could explore a bit more of the island. We went up the West Coast to the amazing view of Myrtos Beach (which apparently looks a lot nicer from up on the cliff than it does when you're down there!) We also went through some traditionally Greek towns including Agia Efimia and Sami (again). We did also read about a lake in a guidebook that we had. It looked amazing, so we decided to go somewhat off the beaten track to find it. Unfortunately, it turned out that no one has been there for a long long time, and so the lake is so overgrown, you couldn't see the water. Gutted! That will teach us to trust out of date guidebooks!

We finished off the day going around the south coast and finishing up in Platis Gialos about 2km outside of Lassi. A really amazing beach, with massive waves which turned Sam and I into big kids for an hour or two!

We moved up to the fishing village of Fiskardo for one night as that's where we had to catch the boat to Lefkas. This is one of the only villages that escaped the 1953 earthquake intact and is very Venitian in style, with a very pretty harbour.

We moved to Lefkas a few days ago, and arrived in Vassiliki (another place Sam stayed in years gone by) and set up camp there for a while. It's again, a pretty harbour town, with unfortunately a crap beach, but it is home to the best windsurfing in Europe. It was pretty cool to see the windsurfers go up and down the coast, there must have been close to 100 of them at any one point!

Lefkas is also home - in our opinion - to one of the most amazing beaches EVER! It's called Porto Katsiki and is best reached by boat from Vassiliki. It's a cliff backed beach with the most amazing coloured water you'll ever see. It was also home to some HUGE waves, much bigger than those in Kefalonia, which really battered you and knocked you down if you try to stand up! We also saw the amazing sight of dolphins! They were off the coast, about 3 or 4 of them jumping and playing in the water. Neither of us have ever seen any so we both were pretty excited!

We are now in Lefkada, the capital of the island. A bit unfortunately, we can't get a boat to Corfu direct from Lefkas. So we're at the capital and getting a bus to the mainland today (the island is linked to the mainland by a causeway) and then onto Corfu from there. Lefkada is pretty different in feel to the rest of Lefkas, it feels very much like it's part of the mainland. Very cosmopolitan indeed.

So off to Corfu in about an hour so must be off! xxx

---