Day 6, Monastery Evangelistrias visit

Well for once that was a good nights sleep, and for both of us too for a change, so we're happy to be up a bit later today. As a subsequence of this we go down to breakfast much later today and soon find out why so few people have been eating with us on the previous mornings... most of the guests seem to be late risers and now the little pool bar is heaving by comparison to our first few mornings; in fact so much so that there's only one free table inside for us to use! Strange thing is that all of these guests disappear off somewhere else and not one of them stays here to sunbathe around the pool,

which is still deserted after we finish our breakfasts.

Even we're not going to be around the pool either today as we're getting the bus into Skiathos town and then going four kilometres up into the hills to visit the religiously important Monastery of the Annunciation, dedicated to the annunciation of the Virgin Mary, and more commonly known as Monastery Evangelistrias. It was founded in 1794 by a group of Kollyvades monks, who had left the monastery of Mount Athos after disagreements over Christian ritual. Our local bus stop is at the end of the road where it joins the main coast road so takes us only a few minutes to get there, and minutes later the bus arrives right on time! It's a fifteen minute journey to the bus terminal in town and the minibus we need to get to the monastery is literally across the road. It's not long before our ride turns up, a ten seater minibus that I think may struggle up these steep hills! It did wheeze a bit but got us to the monastery safe and sound.

It'll come as no surprise that it is mighty warm by now and it was nice to find the buildings were all nice and cool inside. This is a typical Greek monastery, and architecturally very pleasing on the eye. It consist of a

rectangle of outer buildings with the church itself in the centre of the internal quadrangle. The building is stunning, especially the shaping of the stones and slates of the domed roof. Inside is unsurprisingly very serene and I think we both felt quite emotional on entering this beautiful church.

The left wing of the outer buildings is now a museum full of ecclesiastical artefacts, though one of the most important items housed here is actually of huge historic interest. It's the actual loom upon which the first Greek national flag was woven in 1807 after a group of Greek freedom fighters met here and swore the Oath of Freedom on this newly designed flag that is unchanged to this day. There is also a photographic record of the subsequent Greek War of Independence, which lasted from 1821 until 1829. The

opposite wing of the outer buildings was originally used for wine making, where a couple of original grape presses can be seen in what is now the Monastery shop.

By the time we'd looked around the museum and shop we were getting a little thirsty and we noticed on arrival that there was a cafe up the hill to the left of the entrance. It wasn't that far, but seemed like it was in the blazing sunshine, then when we got there it was closed... nooooo, that's cruel...!!! We dejectedly walked back down to the front gates only to find that we now had a forty-five minute wait for our return minibus ride. Not good, but five minutes later the little red bus appears around the bend to drop off two young ladies, I'm sure this had nothing to do with the driver making an early unscheduled trip! We rush over and Elaine

goes right up to the door as the girls climb out, to which the cheeky driver says "I suppose you expect me to take you back now", but he was only messing with us and was happy to take us back down to the town.

It wasn't a long wait for the next bus to take us back along the coast, and we choose to stay on and check out Koukounares Beach, supposedly the best on the island. When we get there we're not impressed, people are packed in like sardines with no gaps between the ranks of fixed canopies, there was no way you'd see any sun even if you could get one. Regardless of this the place was heaving... beggars the question... "Why?"

So we hot foot it out of there and wander back along the road a bit to a nice looking hotel/restaurant with a large swimming

pool to the front that we'd noticed from the bus. It was a good call and we enjoyed a very nice lunch of souvlaki for Elaine and grilled swordfish for me. After our pleasant little luncheon we continued walking back along the coast road to the next bus stop, as we knew there was a large shop opposite and it would have been rude to ignore the fact that it was there...!!! Got ourselves a naughty little ice cream and caught the next bus back to Kanapitsa.

As we'd had a largish lunch we thought we'd have a snack type dinner again, and bought some goodies from the shop on the way up to the hotel. There was still some sunbathing time left so we quickly got changed into our appropriate minimalist poolside attire and settled ourselves down by the pool... in our favourite position, and here we stayed until the sun drops behind the horizon.

After freshening up a bit we set up our evening picnic out on the private little terrace and nibbled away at our leisure until we could nibble away no more! It had actually been quite a tiring day in this intense Greek heat, so we were more than happy when we finally laid our heads down on our pillows and gently drifted off to dream land again!