Nederlandse Versie

NEWSLETTER THE GREEK ISLANDS - NIEUWSBRIEF DE GRIEKSE EILANDEN
Finally leaving for the Cyclades next week....
Hello lovers of the Greek islands, here is the update of my website The Greek Islands. If you have received this newsletter by mistake or if you want to unsubscribe please reply to this email and write "unsubscribe" in the subjectmatter.

Just a couple of days before we fly to Mykonos Hello everybody, I hope you are okay. Who knows you've already made plans for a trip to Greece yourself. Finally the winter is over, spring has arrived and after 7 months we can go on holiday again. After visiting Crete and the Dodecanese islands the last couple of years we are now flying back to the Cyclades to see old friends and hopefully make some new ones. We are leaving on an early morning flight from Amsterdam the 21st of May and if all goes well we will land on the island of Mykonos a couple of minutes past 10 o'clock in the morning. We than plan to rush to the port to catch the 11 o'clock ferry to Paros. If we can't catch that one than there is another ferry at half past 2 pm. Why the rush? There is a short student break the first 5 days of our holidays and the island of Mykonos especially is expecting a lot of Greek students. We want to start our holiday quiet, boring as we always are, and so we opted for a very fast departure and we will end the last three days of our holiday on Mykonos instead. We think it will be more quiet than. So the first two days we stay in Aliki in the Ikia Studios with our friend, the lovely Anna. She runs the place together with her dog, Princess Tina. We plan to do things really slow these first days, just relax and maybe jump into the sea a couple of times. Nearby are some really nice and (mostly) deserted beaches and we will be spending our time there or, with a book, somewhere in a shady spot, since we have to be careful not to get sunburned the first couple of days. I asked Anna for heart shaped ice cubes and for apple pie. She will probably make ice cubes (what shape remains to be seen), but she is no good with apple pie unfortunately, so I gues we will have to visit the bakery instead, ahah. Anna and Tina are good with the BBQ in the garden (which supposedly looks like a small jungle now) though, and her boyfriend is a cook in a local restaurant, so don't worry: we won't starve :P. After our two days in Paros we take the Blue Star Paros ferry to Santorini. It is one of our favorite ships: a large one with a sort of a McDonalds on board, where we always have cheeseburgers and other healthy food. I have arranged a car to be delivered at the port of Santorini by Emver Car Rentals. If all goes well I will see a sign with my name on it when I get of the boat and we will be mobile from the start. We are going to stay in a cavehouse in Oia for three days, in a place called Leandros Suites. We plan to explore the island of Santorini, make plenty of pictures on the way to update my website, and we hope to find some quiet beaches. One of the things on the wishlist is a visit to the ancient town of Akrotiri, which dates from Minoan times (so really, really old). Leandros Suites consists of only three cavehouses and it is run by a Dutch woman and her Greek man. She is also a tour guide, so we are garanteed to get good tips on what to visit.

Where we go to after Santorini
After Santorini we are still unsure of where to go. We have 6 nights to spend somewhere. We might hop over to Naxos, stay there for one day and than visit one of the Small Cyclades: Iraklia (new page!), Schinoussa (new page!) or Donoussa. The other plan was to go from Santorini to the island of Ios, rent a car there and drive to some far away hamlet, see if there was something for rent, and than after that go from Ios to Antiparos. There were so many options in my mind that I am just going to take telephone numbers with me and we will see it when we are there. I have printed out 36 ferry schedules (yeah, I am overdoing it a bit...) including one for Naxos to Samos and one from Santorini to Mykonos, and we've concidered Milos and Sifnos as well. Somehow my plans and the ferry schedules struggle with eachother and they don't work out the way I wanted it to. Whatever happens we are for sure going to spend at least two days of these 6 days in the south of the island of Antiparos. We are going to stay at the Dolphin Apartments in Agios Geogios where they have just installed a new and beautiful pool. It's a place of peace and quiet that hasn't been discovered by the tourist crowds yet. In the village there is a great beach and the nearby small private sandy coves are one of our favorite destinations when we are on Antiparos. We also want to visit the opposite island of Despotiko to take a look at the excavations of an ancient sanctuary that has been found here. Despotiko is an uninhabited island and there is a small excursion-boat going from Agios Georgios if you want to take a look at it. In Agios Georgios there are a handful of tavernas (or less) and there is hardly any traffic, so a really good spot to prepare ourselves for the final destination before we have to fly back home. The last three days of our holiday we will stay on the island of Mykonos where we have booked at Villa Konstantin in Mykonos Town. We have chosen this accommodation because of its great reviews and it looked really nice. I will let you know how it has been! We plan to rent a car and spend the days on our secret beach (it's called Mersini, so now no longer a secret) and maybe some time at the swimming pool as well. In the evenings we can be spotted with an ouzo in our hands, either at home or in a bar. What else is new on the website?
Besides the earlier mentioned pages of Iraklia and Schinoussa I have also added a couple of small pages about the islands of Folegandros, Kastellorizo and Serifos. The last one is not completely finished yet.

Okay, this is is for now. I wish everybody all the best and lots of Greek islands for this year. I am always interested in your info, experiences and pictures to brighten up my website. I will talk to you again when I get back with my new pictures and stories.
Hugs, Hans the Greek Islands.