We have been pottering around Khios and adjacent islands for the last few days. Mostly the places have been lovely, with the exception of Khios town itself. Marmaro and Emborios on Khios were both pretty places where we spent comfortable nights. Mandraki on the island of Oinoussa was slightly odd, as it had a yacht club with private pier, floodlit clay tennis court and basketball courts, full size athletics stadium, separate football stadium, outside cinema but no bakery. It was a place that did not exploit its water front and so you had to look for things, but however hard you looked no bakery, apparently they ship all their fresh bread over from Khios. However a very lovely, pretty and quiet place.
The meltemi has been blowing on and off and we did have one disturbed night at anchor in a bay on Oinoussa. The bay was sheltered from the swell but not from the wind which blew up to 28 knots in the night. Anchor watch was required for a couple of hours to ensure that all was well and Phil fell on his sword and did the watch, rejecting my offers to relieve him. The anchor held all night.
Khios town has been the only place we did not like. The key reasons are that it smelled of sewage in the main town, was very shabby, was very shut, and was really really noisy. There were about 6 weddings happening on the day we were there and the Greek tradition seems to be, that each one has to proceed through the streets in their cars, with their hand permanently jammed on their car horns. So we tried to have a relaxed, over priced beer, in a bar that smelled less of poo than the others, and had to constantly stop our conversation for weddings or mopeds with silencers removed. We did search the streets further back from the harbour for about and hour but found nothing so we gave up on the idea of eating out and went back to the comfort of the boat moored in the marina several miles north of the main harbour.
The meltemi has been blowing on and off and we did have one disturbed night at anchor in a bay on Oinoussa. The bay was sheltered from the swell but not from the wind which blew up to 28 knots in the night. Anchor watch was required for a couple of hours to ensure that all was well and Phil fell on his sword and did the watch, rejecting my offers to relieve him. The anchor held all night.
Khios town has been the only place we did not like. The key reasons are that it smelled of sewage in the main town, was very shabby, was very shut, and was really really noisy. There were about 6 weddings happening on the day we were there and the Greek tradition seems to be, that each one has to proceed through the streets in their cars, with their hand permanently jammed on their car horns. So we tried to have a relaxed, over priced beer, in a bar that smelled less of poo than the others, and had to constantly stop our conversation for weddings or mopeds with silencers removed. We did search the streets further back from the harbour for about and hour but found nothing so we gave up on the idea of eating out and went back to the comfort of the boat moored in the marina several miles north of the main harbour.
Comments
Post a Comment