Blogs from Amorgos, South Aegean, Greece, Europe

Today I’ll be joining the Rembrandts for a bus ride twenty or so kilometres south to the town of Chora. It seems that Chora just means "town" in Greek, and if you use Google Maps to try to find out where it is, well let’s just say that you’ll need to be prepared to spend quite a while sorting through a multitude of options until you find “your” Chora. But it could be worse. Fortunately not every town in Greece is called Chora, which must be a relief to Greek postmen; the name’s usually reserved just for the main town on each island. As we learned a couple of days ago there’s only six odd thousand of those. I guess a few of them might be uninhabited, so that might narrow down the list a bit…. ... read more

Today we head two hours east across the water to our next destination, the smaller island of Amorgos. The only two wheels on one of our two suitcases have now both stopped fulfilling their only function in life, that is to rotate. We’ve been dragging that lump of lead of a suitcase around through airports and up and down narrow cobbled alleyways for a couple of weeks now, which hasn’t been doing a lot for our collective senses of humour, or our shoulder sockets. I’m now left wondering a bit how travellers managed back in the days before wheels on suitcases were a thing. I tried picking the whole dead weight up a few times and carrying it, and always gave that up as a bad joke very quickly. Maybe people just packed less back then ... read more

We’ve flown to Greece to spend a few days sailing with our friends from Melbourne who live on a yacht here. They have spent most of this summer in Turkey but we join them just as they start their sail back across the Aegean to Greece. We fly into Kos and meet them there. We have some good days sailing, first north to Leros and then a long day sail across to Amorgos. Although we originally planned to sail further, either to Naxos or Paros, but the weather forecast isn’t great so we decide to sail north from Amorgos anchor for the night and then sail back to Amorgos from where there is a regular ferry we can take to Pireaus. Amorgos isn’t one of the better known Cyclades islands but is a lovely spot. The ... read more

Astyapalea was delightful and Amorgos was as beautiful as ever. We are continuing our travels through the islands and these two stops were especially nice. Both islands are a bit off the beaten path and exhibit a more traditional Greek life style. Astyapalea is shaped like a butterfly and has a fabulous castle ruin above the town of Pera Yialos, where we stayed. We hiked up to the Chora and walked through the ruins several times. The upper area of the Chora is like a ghost town, with doors slamming and hinges creaking as the wind howls through the deserted pathways. The houses surrounding the castle were abandoned in 1953 due to a major earthquake and now are padlocked and slowly decaying. The government is attempting to restore the castle and the surrounding village, but is ... read more