Samos by car

So we hired a car to do what we thought would be a full tour of Samos, we were mistaken the roads were very winding and in some places scary narrow so journeys took a lot longer than expected. We were lucky we were out of season so never met anything coming the other way! We hired the car 17:00 Friday eve and drove along the main road towards Samos Town, the same one we had ridden, but stopped at the Lidl and did a fairly major shop stocking up on essentials like toilet roll and beer? On Saturday morning we west headed along the coast past the airport and to Ireon, famous mostly for Hera’s Temple and its sandy beach but as overcast and nearly desserted it was a bit depressing. From here we traveled inland past Sarakinis Tower. Then we started uphill first to Pagondas then around and around the headland to Spatharei. We picked up a local lady just after the tower and took her to Pagondas she was very grateful we think, lots of ‘Efaresto’s’ it would have been a serious walk. Just before Spatharei is where the road went from 2lanes with central line to just about 1 car wide it stayed like that till Pyrgos where we had a walk around a nearly deserted town, we scrumpped some grapes outside the shell of an old church, walls but no roof, that had a little chapel in it, and saw lots of cats. From here we headed inland and road got narrow again and across towards Karlovassi but we stopped off in Platanos, in the middle of the wine district, for coffee and to admire the amazing view we also saw the ancient laundry here before winding our way down to the port at Karlovassi for, by then a late lunch. Service was a little slow so over 1 1/4 later but having eaten a lovely meal and fed some cats, we were on our way again, east this time back towards Samos town we had hoped to stop for ice cream in Kokkari but no time, then across the island back to Pythagorio. We had hired the car for the day which means 24hours, and managed to return it with 10 mins to spare. Samos is one of the greenest Greek islands we have seen it’s water is from springs that originate in Turkey, but the reservoir levels are low for this time of year so the locals are hoping for rain soon.Read more