My Hovercraft is Full of Eels

To Greece by train - and other journeys of the mind, body and soul

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Kimolos

August 1st, 2009 by jane · 1 Comment · Greece

I almost burst into tears when I arrived here — out of sheer delight!  It is a beau­ti­ful, quite and undeveloped island with a few Greek hol­i­day makers (and the French couple with the young child we chat­ted to on the first day).  It feels so much ‚ore relaxed and gentle this way, with just loc­al vis­it­ors, and the com­par­is­on with the Scottish islands comes to mind again.  Arriving here felt quite like arriv­ing st Eigg — a few loc­als chat­ting and hanging out at the har­bour cafe, in no hurry to do any­thing oth­er than drink strong Greek cof­fee and watch and natter.

There’s very little English spoken here so we’te hav­ing to brush up on our Greek.

Two won­der­ful old baker­ies in the stun­ning Chorio (main town on the hill).  The first we went to had all old wooden cup­boards and a huge bread oven, and the second had the best spinoko­pita this side of Thessaloniki (we’ve not been to Thessaloniki yet, but there’s sup­posed to be good cafes there!) and a selc­tion of pastries to oggle at.

We vis­ited a won­der­ful folk museum in the kastro (old castle) and were treated to a per­son­al­ised tour in English by the gently enthu­si­ast­ic eld­erly cur­at­or for 1 euro each.

Now back in Athens and catch­ing the train to Thessaloniki this after­noon.  A bit annoy­ingly we’ve had to pay yet anoth­er sup­ple­ment on a train that was marked in Thomas Cook as sup­ple­ment free, and still can­’t make the reser­va­tion on the overnight train!  The same very friendly woman told us she only had 3 beds left and she had to sell them (ie not to cheap-skate interail­ers) but that Romanian rail­ways would have more to sell in Thessaloniki and it would be very easy…

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One Comment so far ↓

  • Craig

    I remem­ber going reg­u­larly to Kimolos in the early 90’s and it was very quiet and tra­di­tion­al. Sometimes the only way to get there was with a small fish­ing boat that car­ried miners from neigh­bour­ing Milos every evening.

    Goof to see that the place has­n’t been spoiled.

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