A walk to Kastro

Andrew in his wanderings over hill and dale has been exploring the island by bus and on foot.  Next week we plan to hire a car for a day.

The runway at the airport.

Skiathos town.

The Kastro (old town) was founded in the 14th century.  Because of pirates in the area, the people of Skiathos deserted the Byzantine town in the harbour and built the fortress in the hills with houses built close to each other all around it, which was the Kastro.  It could not be approached from the sea.  In 1829 the people deserted the Kastro and moved back down to the harbour where the present town is.  The Kastro was totally abandoned.  It is said that the population had been between 500 and 1500 people and about 400 houses and 20 churches.  Only two of the churches and no houses survive to this day.

The panels inside one of the surviving churches.

These are photos of the lovely wild coast on the island.

Some more photos of this lovely island.

Today we we went to the "one over the eight" lunch.  Mike and Carol provide a lunch each trip for those people who have attended more than 8 Diamond Bridge holidays.  They kindly invited us as Australians as we have four times as far to travel as anyone else.  This lady, Maureen Norman, was presented a special prize as this was her 60th holiday with Diamond Bridge!

We had some very bad weather in the last few days but it is sunny again now thank goodness.

The beach while it was overcast and the sea choppy.  But there was bridge every day while the weather was bad so it was not all bad. 😉

Exploring Skiathos Town

Although the weather has turned rather chilly and very overcast, we went into Skiathos Town on the bus to explore it a bit.  On cold days like this the bus gets very crowded and one is lucky to even get on let alone score a seat.

The harbour is very pretty.

The main street with its nice green foliage.  We shopped and found a couple of nice pieces of art.  There are two shops I would highly recommend.  One is Aquarius: Handmade Jewellery and Interior Designs where I bought a delightful new small bronze statute to add to my collection.  It is on a corner just off the main street in the town.  The other shop is called Eliatoras, in one of the lane ways.  The contents of this shop is more difficult to describe.  There are many nice things: artefacts, scarves, paintings and other nice pieces.  I bought a decorated wooden shoe horn which would not be to everyone's taste, but I liked it very much.

This was the most amazing dessert I saw in a restaurant window.  A chocolate surprise 😄😄😄

A house with vividly painted doors and shutters.  In fact, it was a lilac but it comes out as a blue colour.

We climbed the hill to a church perched at the top and saw the harbour from there.  So pretty that I have to post two photos, one closer up than the other.

A visit to the Skiathos Dog Shelter

Most people do not know about the Skiathos Dog Shelter that was started many years ago by a Scottish lady who married a local and stayed on the island.  She was distressed by the number of stray dogs and she set up this wonderful shelter staffed by volunteers.  The monastery provided a piece of land for the purpose.

Andrew holding an adorable beagle puppy.

Nikki taking Fizz for a walk.  It was a fun visit and we took some of the dogs for a walk.

The five beagle puppies.  They are all going to Denmark to be adopted.

A  photo of the people on the tour to the shelter.  The work of the shelter has been greatly helped by two things.  Firstly social media which allows them to put photos on the internet and people can instantly respond by offering a dog a new home.  Secondly, legislation within the European Union has allowed pets to be transported across borders and quarantine can occur in the home country.  Thus, you can buy a dog from the shelter for 450 British pounds which includes vaccination, etc and transportation to your home country.  150 dogs were sent all over Europe this year.

The next part of this excursion was entitled A Taste of Greece.  It included a visit to a taverna where the owner, Maria, gave a cooking demonstration and then we ate lunch.

Here she is rolling out puff pastry.  Note the thin long rolling pin which she needs for the large thin pastry she ends up with.

This delicious dessert on a bed of yoghurt is thinly sliced carrot which has been cooked into a syrup with an equal quantity of sugar.  You would not believe it is all carrot.






Andrew took a photo of a nice bay on one of his walks.  There are about 60 beaches on this island.  That is one of the main attractions here.

And a photo of the bridge.  The main reason we are all here.

The weather has been lovely until yesterday but it then turned quite nasty and overcast with some rain.  As someone said, very much like British weather.  It is nice to gather for bridge on days like that.  Hopefully the sun will return.

Back to Greece - Skiathos this time

We arrived very late for our latest bridge holiday with all the Brits and Scots in Skiathos.  This is a small island, only 45 kms all around.

The view from our balcony.

And just around the corner.

The swimming pool.  Much smaller than the one at the Rhodes hotel.  This is a much smaller island and a much smaller hotel.  But very enjoyable nevertheless.  And so is the bridge.

Evening in the dining room.

A beautiful drive from Albarracin to Sacedon

For our last full day in Spain we drove to within 100 kms of Madrid so we can do an easy hour and a half to the airport.  The lakeside town of Sacedon seemed a reasonable target.  We had no idea the drive would be as lovely as it turned out.

Sierra de Albarracin is a nice range of mountains.  Then we came to the Serrania de Cuenca which is a more serious mountain range and equally beautiful.

Halfway up what turned out to be a 1584m peak we came across this pair on their tandem bike.  From their friendly "Allo" we think they were a French couple and we hope their brakes were rock solid as after the hike up to the top, they would have had to come down the steepest and longest downhill road we had come across.

Somewhere near the top.  The views were fantastic but as usual, it is very difficult to capture the full beauty on camera - the depth of vision is missing on photos.

This arch was rather captivating.  Gorge after gorge appeared on the journey.  Once again, very difficult to photograph properly.

Along this gorge, there were some hiking planks and surprise, surprise, Andrew had to try it out.  The river is the Rio Escabas.

I, with my heart in my mouth, had to photograph him balancing some 15 or 20m above the sheer drop down to the water.  I talked him out of going for a walk along it further.

More beautiful cliffs.

The town of Priego perched on a clifftop - eye candy for tourists.

Embalse de Buendia seems to be the name of the dam and complex of lakes alongside the town of Sacedon.

This is our last post from Spain.  We are flying out of Madrid this afternoon.  We had our last lunch in Spain at this fabulous little outfit at the airport;

The little tapas buns were only a little over a Euro each and very tasty.







We had clocked up just short of 3,000 kms driving around Spain for our three weeks.  We had a most enjoyable time.  Now for our next adventure.

Albarracin

This very pretty mountain village in Aragon, like many historic villages, sits on a hilltop.  The pink-hued medieval houses sit balanced on the rocky outcrop.  So authentic are its twisting narrow streets with their overhanging wooden balconies that one half expects Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to appear from around a blind corner.

The town square where they had erected a wooden structure for the bull fight for a recent festival.  They were dismantling it when we were there.  We had seen a similar thing in another town.

The original city walls and fortifications with the ruined castle dating from the 9th century when the town was an important Islamic military post.  The town was the seat of a tiny Islamic state ruled by the Berber Banu Razin dynasty with links to Cordoba.

Our hotel, the Meson del Gallo, is the result of an aesthetic reforma (restoration) of three traditional village houses.  It is very nicely situated at the foot of the medieval town.

Andrew standing on our balcony.

Sitting in our lovely room in front of the balcony overlooking greenery on one side and the medieval town on the other with the sun streaming in.  It is one of the nicest places we have stayed at on this trip to Spain and by no means the most expensive.

This is Nikki trying to do a Mary Poppins imitation coming down the steps in the pouring rain last night.  A bracing walk back to our hotel after a greasy meal was just the thing, but we could have done without the rain.

Two night shots of Albarricin.  The defensive wall and the castle lit up.

The cathedral.