Panagía

Today is the day Thanos is determined that the weather is ok to let us sail, so we had breakfast in the hotel, Katie and I got a few supplies from the supermarket and brought our bags down to board the boat.

We set sail and was introduced to M/S Isidoros II, which is a traditional Woden Caique. We had a 4 hour sail if all went well, though they had plans to stop the boat and let us have a swim off the boat!
We stopped just off Pontikonisi island, all the islands around this part of Evia are privately owned (Bill Gates now owns part of one) but you are allowed to Moore your boat, swim & use the beach. Just have to make sure your boat is out of the view of there batches.

We sailed onto our first port of call Panagia Stira via the Fjord of Almyropotamos. As we sailed in and docked, we looked over and saw a cat in another fishing boat looking for any left over fish he might get!

Thanos explained the importance this bay was to the Nazis during WWII, they had a lot of their submarines stationed here thanks to the deep Fjord. A village nearby wanted to revolt against the Nazis and walked a boat down from their village, rowed with their hands to the submarines attaching explosives to them. They blew up 35 submarines, a lot of Nazis and themselves. The explosion could be heard in Athens. The Nazis retaliated and surrounded the village they came from once they worked out who was responsible, and burnt the village down and the people in the village - roughly 1100 people. This was meant to stop revolts against the Nazis but there were 83 more incidents like this throughout WWII against the Nazis.
This area is also home to 26 discoveries of full dinosaur skeletons and they were all different types of dinosaurs. Which is amazing that the different types were able to live on one island together. These are now housed in Germany mainly from the Nazis stealing the skeletons.

Thanos let us go for a wander as he had to find the priest so we could see the church later. Katie and I walked along the water, then walked back to a cafe to get a coffee & beer.

Thanos took us at 7pm to see Holy Church of the Dormition of the Virgin, this has a painting that was out from under the floor by an unknown person when the muslims were taking over Greece, this essentially saved the painting but was weathered from being under the floor for all that time. The painting is of Mary’s death and is insured for quite a large sum of money now! We saw the original and a copy of the painting done of what it originally would have looked like.

Out side of the church we looked at two olive trees that are 2500 years old.

After learning about the olive trees and fines relating cutting any olive trees down in Greece, we walked further out the back to see turtles in the local creek. Thanos had some bread and fed the turtles.

Then he took us to get fed at a local tavern. We tried the local moussaka while a lot of cats walked under our table hoping for any droppings!Read more