Skiathos, Greece – No Improvement, Getting Worse

“It takes a lifetime for someone to discover Greece, but it only takes an instant to fall in love with her” – Henry Miller

Next morning without essentials we took a walk to the nearest supermarket which was rather like climbing Mount Everest, to purchase tea bags.  Back at the room – no electricity so no cup of tea.

At least the sun was shining.

After climbing Mount Everest for a second time we took the local bus into the town to purchase more essentials.  Tee shirts, swimming gear and a dress for Kim, luckily all over in thirty minutes or so.

As we stopped for breakfast, a cup of tea and a Greek cheese pie I read about some of the legends of the island of Skiathos.

Before I get to that however, I return to the matter of tea.  Based on official statistics one third of all visitors to the island are from the UK where we drink lots of tea so, you would think wouldn’t you, that the island cafés and restaurants would be aware of this and have it on their menus.  Not so, you can get all sorts of rubbish teas – camomile, green, mint and then almost every variety of fruit in the World but black tea is curiously missing.  We had the foresight to bring our own tea bags so we just paid for a cup of hot water each.

Back to the legends now…

Every Greek Island has its own ancient Diety, they are shared out among them in a sort of, appropriate for Greece, democratic process  Skiathos has Dionysus, the god of wine and pleasure, which once again is quite appropriate for what is mostly a Summer party island for young people.

These folk don’t seem to be having a lot of fun.  Maybe they have lost their luggage as well, they don’t look happy…

But now I come to Saints and as some of you will know I do like an unlikely Saint story.

According to legend, one night in 1650 a monk called Symeon, who led a disciplined and  ascetic life was intrigued to see a twinkling light in the forest.  Upon approaching it, the light receded, only to reappear and disappear again several times so that he was unable to see exactly what it was.

Intrigued by this he stuck around to investigate and after fasting and meditating for several days (fasting always helps it seems) he finally saw that it was a small icon of the Virgin Mary swaying away in the top of a tall pine tree.  As they do.

Convinced that he had witnessed a miracle he rushed back to report the incident to the priest in his village.   The next day, the excited villagers followed Symeon back to where the mysterious light had been shining. Legend has it that the light grew brighter and brighter, the closer the people got.

When they all saw the icon hanging from the tree a young priest climbed up to retrieve it, placing it in the chapel where Symeon served.  It would later be placed in the Three Hierarches church of Skiathos town for safe keeping.

Here it is…

The Holy Monastery of Evangelistria was built in honour of this miraculous event, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary as the island’s patron Saint and protector.

Once every year the icon is removed from the Cathedral in Skiathos and paraded through the streets and taken on a ten mile pilgrimage to the monastery.

It was possible to take a bus to visit the monastery but with the sun shining, the temperature rising and without suitable holiday attire we chose instead to return to the hotel for lunch.

There is another legend/story about the The Holy Monastery of Evangelistria which concerns the flag of Greece.   Leading Greek fighters of the 1821 Revolution against Ottoman rule in the Greek War of Independence met at the monastery in Skiathos to discuss tactics and over a glass of ouzo or two designed, adopted and raised the flag as a symbol of Greek nationalism.

Originally it was blue with a white diagonal cross which was symbolic of the Christian faith but the cross has now been moved to the upper left corner to make way for the horizontal stripes.  Being a seafaring nation, the blue of the flag represents the colour of the sea.  White is the colour of freedom, which is something that is very important to the Greeks after years of enslavement under foreign domination.  The nine stripes of the flag each symbolise a syllable in the Greek motto of freedom – E-LEY-THE-RI-A-I-THA-NA-TOS, which translates literally into ‘Freedom or Death’.

After lunch we simply let the day slip away as we sat on the terrace in our underwear.  The electricity supply was restored late afternoon and we occasionally checked our phones for any updates on the missing luggage.  It came through late in the evening.  The bags would be arriving in Skiathos the following day but it would take the airport another day to sort it all out and deliver them to us but as recompense compensation was now increased to £250 per suitcase.

“There is always a flip side to a dud penny” – John Corden

Kim made plans for a second day of shopping and I wasn’t going to get away with just thirty minutes this time that was for certain..  Oh Joy.

Other Unlikely Saint Stories…

St Edmund, the Patron Saint of Pandemics

Saint James and Santiago de Compostella

Saint Patrick and Ireland

Saint Spiridon and Corfu

The Feast of Saint Paul’s Shipwreck

Saint John of Bridlington

Santa Eulalia and the Thirteen Tortures

Saint Lucy of Syracuse

 

 

Portugal and the Algarve – Blue Flag Beaches

 

After two years of pandemic hibernation we were ready for a vacation.  Due to continuing uncertainty we agreed to book the sort of holiday that we wouldn’t normally consider and booked a beach hotel holiday with Tui holidays.  Part of our logic was that if things did go wrong then Tui are reliable at giving refunds.

Also, we had been to the Algarve in 2019 and had liked it there.

We chose a hotel in the Alarve in the village of Olhos de Agua  near Albufeira at the western end of the six kilometre long blue flag beach of Praia da Falésia which according to TripAdvisor is considered the number one beach in Portugal, the third best beach in Europe and the twelfth best beach in the World.

Maybe, maybe not, these things are always subjective.  No one ever agrees about these matters.  My favourite beach in Portugal is Bordeira on the west coast south of Lisbon.  Oh I did so like it there…

The Blue Flag beach award was originally conceived in France in 1985 where the first coastal municipalities were awarded the Blue Flag on the basis of criteria covering standards relating to sewage treatment and bathing water quality.

Two years later, 1987 was the ‘European Year of the Environment’ and the concept of the Blue Flag was developed as a European initiative by the Foundation for Environmental Education in Europe to include other areas of environmental management, such as waste disposal and coastal planning and protection and in that first year two hundred and forty four beaches from ten countries were awarded the new Blue Flag status.  Thirty-five  years later in 2022 when the updated list was published there are over four thousand.

Spain has more blue flag beaches than any other participating country with six hundred and fifteen along almost five thousand kilometres of coastline.  The United Kingdom by comparison, has only one hundred and twenty-nine in nearly twelve thousand,  five hundred kilometres.  Greece has the second most blue flags at five hundred and forty-four  and the most in the Mediterranean Sea.  Italy has four hundred and sixteen and France has four hundred and ten.

Portugal completes the top five list with three hundred and seventy two.

This one is in the north at Furadouro…

What is interesting however is to put this into context by relating success in terms of numbers to the total length of coastline because that reveals that Portugal has a blue flag beach every seven kilometres  and Spain and France only every ten.  Lust my opinion but beaches in Portugal are way better than Spain and France because they are all on the Atlantic coast.

In the United Kingdom you have to travel almost one hundred kilometres between each blue flag beach and that puts us twenty fifth out of the top twenty-five.  That is even worse than our annual performance in the Eurovision song contest.  Mind you would have to travel a lot further in Norway because it has only three blue flag beaches in eighty-three thousand kilometres of coast.

The journey was spoilt by a flight delay and chaos at Faro airport passport control and then a lot of faffing about on the coach transfer but eventually we reached our destination, the monstrous three hundred and fifty room Tui Blue Falésia hotel with its seven or so hundred guests.  We normally like something like a maximum ten room place.

We approved the accommodation and ignoring the pool, the gardens and the cocktail bar made directly for the village and something more our style – a beachfront bar/restaurant and sat for an hour or so, had a pleasant lunch and admired the beach and the never ending view out over the Atlantic Ocean to the horizon.

Kim worked on her tan…

I would have been happier staying in the village rather than the hotel but we had a half board arrangement so returned now to the dining room buffet.

Inevitably I made the first mistake about buffet spreads.

I did no forward planning, made no menu preferences  in advance, had no idea what I wanted to eat so just blundered in and ended up with a selection of bizarre food combinations which if I had been a contestant on Masterchef would have led to an instant elimination.  You know the sort of thing, fish, beef, chicken goujons  and a slice of pizza all on the same plate.  A real gourmet mess.

It was all rather disappointing, rather like a school dinners experience and we were happy when it came to an end.  Never mind, we had a lovely room on the top floor, a large balcony and a good sea view.  We agreed that in future we would do some planning ahead and be more tactical and selective.

Tomorrow we planned to walk the Praia da Falésia.