Kite surfing at Schinias beach

By Gabriela, on November 20th, 2009

(4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Some do take advantage of everything that nature has to offer. While we were somewhat upset of the wind that started to blow quite strongly and disturbed us from taking good photos of flowers and stuff, other people exploited the wind to the maximum, and who was I to say no to such subjects…

So there we were back at Schinias, exploring the “best beach in town”. No I mean seriously, this beach, Schinias is situated in the south-east side of Marathon and it is said to be the best beach in this part of Attica. It is a wonderful long and pine –circled beach. Its popularity and beauty cause it to be often quite crowded, especially during the weekends, where a lot of families bring their children to play and enjoy the small old taverns along side. This great beach is well-known and appreciated among windsurfing lovers, since it is really long and located in a windy area.

While Cosmin explored the wetland close to the beach, I got stuck on the kite surfers performing for me…The best part was seeing them fall with a big big splash…haha…

Incursion into Parnitha National Park

By Gabriela, on November 19th, 2009

(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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As the weather got better, we decided to take half a day and go to Parnitha National Park, which is the closest park to Athens. We stopped more at the base of Parnitha since with a few days before it snowed, and did a little nature exploring.

Parnitha Mountain is the highest in the Attica Peninsula with a height of 1413 meters, and was appointed as a park in 1961. After the fire in 2007 Parnitha has recovered some and the sights were not as upsetting last year.

To get to our stop we passed through Krioneri village and I couldn’t help it to take a photo of the church hidden between the trees.

My findings bellow :

Meteora Monasteries in Greece

By Gabriela, on November 9th, 2009

(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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6 months in Greece definitely gives you plenty of time to try and discover many interesting places. However this was not a new place for me, since I have been here last year as well, but the beauty of this place does make you return as often as you can for another dose of remarkable.

Luckily for us, we caught finally some beautiful weather after waiting for about 2 weeks for some clear sky and sun, thus we went on our way to Thessaly region of Greece to the wonderful Meteora Monasteries. From Athens it took us about 4.5 hours drive to reach Kalambaka, which is the closest town at the foot of the mountains. The road is quite scenic and does give you, finally, some sights of fields besides the mountains.It snowed also these days, thus the peaks of the faraway mountains were white adding to the wonderful views.

As the translation of the name in Greek says it, meteora means “suspended in the air” which is not far at all from the truth. From the 24 monasteries built here in the 14 and 15 century on the peaks of these 100-150 meters high rocks, only 6 are still inhabited, the monks reaching to such extreme in their wish to be left alone with God.

Today some of the monasteries are inhabited by nuns and a strict clothing code is requested…all shoulders to be covered, men have to wear long pants while women long skirts. Not sure how much of this applies really today at the amount of tourists they get each day. We were there on a Wednesday and we still struggled through 3 or 4 buses with tourists from Italy and Poland not to mention this is off-season.

You can get to the monasteries by car or climbing on the steps of the small trails leading from the village bellow. No matter which route you take the monasteries still reveal themselves one by one, making you remain stunned by such views. Some of the monasteries were closed but we did climb to Varlaam Monastery following the aprox. 140 steps to reach it, which gave a beautiful views to Roussanou monastery bellow and to “Great Meteoron” Monastery behind. The interior was quite interesting with a museum and letting you see how they would bring things up in the old days. I will leave you now to enjoy the photographs.

Surrounding Athens, Greece

By Gabriela, on October 29th, 2009

(5 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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As some of my close friends know, me and Cosmin started a new small chapter of our lives and now we are living in Greece for 6 months until Cosmin finishes some studies he has to do for his PhD. As this brings a lot of changes we are looking at the bright side and that is…we will have the chance to explore Greece as much as can in this period of time.

We have been here for about 2 weeks now and even if the weather was not so nice last weekend and this start of the week we still managed to get some nice weather, thus we did some exploring. No…we did not explore Acropolis again, but more venture out to some natural reserves where needless to mention we caught some dragonflies, but did see some other things as well.

First we explored a wetland at Skinias where dragonflies were thousands…a paradise for Cosmin, than ventured out at Vravrona wetlands. I only managed to photograph one dragonfly and some flowers here but I got very busy as I reach a few destinations of my interest.

After these two places I decided we should take a detour on our way to Athens so we followed the coast until we reached Kato Sounio (Cape Sounio), the southernmost point of Attiki region, where the Temple of Poseidon is located. Cosmin was rather busy photographing some wonderful birds that you will have to wait and read about in his blog while I was up and down and left and right trying to capture all that I could.

The temple was built in the middle of 5th B.C and its beautiful white columns of marble from Agrileza still stands even today. Surrounding the temple you can still see remains of walls and other buildings, and if you are like Cosmin, more nature oriented you have a wild area that you can explore and of course some beautiful views of the surrounding areas.

From here we followed the coast towards Pireas harbor hoping the traffic will be lighter so we can get home without traffic jams and a lot of stress. Obviously I had to stop at a small bay we discovered last year and take some photos of the surroundings. If you are ever close to Anavyssos, south of Athens, you should really stop in this beautiful place.

But these are not the only places we stopped to explore since we arrived in Greece. On our way to Athens we stopped in a small fishermen’s harbour at Kokkino Nero (The red waters….in my poor greek translations).

Another place we stopped was Rafina Harbor to watch some ferries go by, fishermen heading out to sea and Marathon Lake, which I am sad to say that after the fires this year almost made me cry.

Today if we are lucky and I mean to have a good weather maybe we head out to Parnitha National Park and do some more exploring there…but I guess you will just have to check out this blog and see if I did just that