LESVOS

LESVOS ISLAND, Northern Aegean
GREECE

Talk about a journey!

We boarded the High Speed 4 from Mykonos to get to Lesvos, via Pireaus at 11.15am and arrived at 2.50pm and then had to wait around before we headed off to Lesvos at 7pm...and arriving the next morning at 7am~!

The ferry to Pireaus was business class. They were the only seats we could get. We were originally next to 2 American girls, in chairs that all face each other..but there was heaps of room..so we had a dream journey there...

The ferry to Lesvos was very different...in chairs, upright, overnight, for 12 hours..arrgh. We did pass through some other fascinating islands too...

Now that's commitment isn't it? To see George's birthplace? And of course, it's next to Lemnos, where i'm itching to get to, because that's where Grandpop was during World War 1. Lesvos and Lemnos are very close to each other...

We woke up from sleeping on the floor and all over the seats...to see an island that was GREEN! Amazing, because the other greek islands we'd seen were all ROCK. Just white rock. Gorgeous..because they just are..but no vegetation to be seen.

So it was just amazing to see so much green....we later found out the GREEN was all OLIVE TREES. No kidding..the island has something like 16 - 17 million olive trees growning on all the mountainous and undulating hills. Olive groves and pine trees.

We arrived in Mitalini Port and straight away saw the statue of sapphos, the lesbian poet..and took pics..then headed to the tourist office..not that there was one, it was a ferry office, and sorted out how we could get to Lemnos (Limnos to the locals) and also to Istanbul. We were told the ferries to Lemnos went that night only...and the ferries to Istanbul went only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

After thinking about it, and wondering if we could get a ferry to Istanbul we decided to inquire once we got to Lemnos so we booked our journey over there for midnight that night.

We hired a car to see Lesvos...and spent the next 18 hours exploring.

What a beautiful island...we got to Skopelos, which was George's village until he left for Australia when he was 17..and shhhh don't tell the car hire guy but...we actually locked the keys in the car!!! And..a guy broke in for us with wire and pliers! Crikey....what a laugh. He was hilarious...we were a bit worried, as you can imagine, at first, wondering what to do..but it all worked out! The part where Greg had gone looknig for help and i was left with all these greek guys trying to break into the car..then driving off to find Greg, with me in the car, was for a while, very traumatic!!!!!

But later, was cause for Greg and i to have hysterics!

The whole place was funny..in a comical sense. The car hire guy who had this LONG Greek name...lived in Kings Cross he said, and was a bouncer there..and had bullet holes in his tummy, which he proudly showed us (we thought he was going to take his pants down at first!!! And almost did...gawd!~) Before we hired the car, he also told us Aussies were the worst, with a woman having to pay $7,000 damages because she ran into an Audi and it wasn't insured...nor was she...as he doesn't insure!!

We took the chance with him..and it was all ok. No damage from breaking in either!

We went to the beach..Agioss Issidorou beach in Plomari which was beautiful...

We passed very steep side cliff streets, with Greg driving, on the 'wrong side of the road'....

We saw the Roman Aqueduct..and noticed all the houses had red tiled roofs that looked more british than anything. No white buildings like Mykonos and Santorini. It looked like WA really...

We saw the castle, and ate in cute happy little cafes that had lounges and people all playing games like cards and backgammon. So warm and friendly and relaxed, like the hours would just go on and on and there would be no problems in the world.

It was great there....

We waited for our ferry to Lemnos drinking oyzo (as they spell it) after smelling it at a little ouzo place very near Mitilini Port :-)

We did wonder why George left??? it's such a beautiful island!!! No doubt he has his story and later, we'd like to find out more about it..

We later found out a lot of Greek people left Lesvos and Lemnos to go to Autralia post first and second world war as they created so many good relations with each other during these wars and they could get more work there..

We also found out...Greek people, are among the most honest we've come across...and so helpful. Something we saw over and over again. We thought maybe it has something to do with being Greek Orthodox, which is a religion that we found out more about, and seems to be very ingtrigingly real. And encompasses a will to have a good honest way of living..