Sometime late last night, we decided that the neighboring island of Skopelos was on our agenda, so we packed up our gear in preparation for a ferry departing today at an unknown time. The way things worked out required us to scramble a little bit if we wanted to cram in another swim, but the effort was well worth it.

The early swim time yielded us quiet beaches, still water, and not-quite-warm-enough sunshine, requiring a mighty bit of willpower to dive in and start moving. Once we got going though, the water was no colder than it ever is, and the swim was perfect. I don’t know how we’ll ever go back to swimming in a lap pool after spending our time taking long laps parallel with the beach every day.

A bit rushed, we headed back to the apartment and loaded up our bikes and rode them onto the big car ferry with even less fanfare than last time. We found a seat at the top of the boat and watched the world go by.

Once we’d settled in on the new island just a short jaunt away from town, we headed into the port town to see what there was to see. Although from the waterfont there wasn’t much to look at, a short walk up into the neighborhoods shared with us view after view of the town which remains largely unchanged over time.

We marvelled at all the darling doors, shutters, windows, and potted plants and dozens of tiny churches tucked between residences.

If you were hoping this blog might ease up on the cat pictures, you can go ahead and click away now- we might eventually get back to adventuring, but right now, our agenda seems more overrun by petting stray animals than anything else.

At one point during our walk, a particularly talkative kitty approached us, rubbing up against Ben’s legs begging for attention. Of course, we stopped to scratch his chin and he meowed loudly in appreciation. All his chattering alerted the old woman that owned him and she came outside proudly telling us all about her cat, although we were no match for her rapid Greek. Once we’d properly bonded over the kitty, we carried on, trying not to look to strange as we photographed the minute details of life in Hora.

Ben:

Shortly before 6 we headed back to our apartment so that I could attend a meeting for work.  By the time the meeting ended we heard the music from a nearby festival picking up and decided to go into town for the evening.

In town, we decided to grab a quick dinner before heading back to the festival.  It turned into a much longer affair than we had expected (we are in Europe, after all), and after some amazing calamari, mousaka, and local plumb dessert we headed back toward the festival.  A very light rain seemed to have rained the festival out, but since it continues into tomorrow we’ll have to try again tomorrow evening.

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