This is our last full day in Alonissos, and I have to admit I wished we had a little more time here. Although the villages were not as beautiful as some on other islands we have visited, the waters, the beaches, and the people by far exceeded my expectations. The one thing about this place was the fact that English was widely spoken here, basically because this place is very popular with Italians, and Germans. Not having a language barrier makes any trip a little more relaxing.
In all my years of coming to this country we have never rented a boat, so there is no time like the present. No matter where you are in Greece, on an island, or even the mainland, there are so many little coves, beaches, and uninhabited islands only accessible by boat. So when my husband booked the boat the night before, I couldn't think of a better way to spend our last day. Our morning routine was still the same, after waking up we headed to the bakery, but we also stopped by the local market to stock up on water, and snacks.
Our first stop was the island right across from Alonissos, which we thought was uninhabited, but were wrong. The island did have a few permanent residents, they just happened to be goats. As we drove up and down the coast, they were everywhere, and seeing them just walking up and down the beaches was priceless.
We found our first stop, dropped anchor, and jumped right in. The waters were crystal clear, and refreshing (especially with the sun beating down on us). It felt as if we had not just the beach but the entire island to ourselves. But as the saying goes" all good things must come to an end, "and before we knew it here comes another boat, and our signal it was time to move on.
We drove around the coast for about 30 minutes before coming upon an old boat wreck. I knew my husband was dying to get in and do some exploring, but we didn't bring our snorkel equipment, so we just explored a little from the boat, then moved on to our next stop.
We headed back to Alonissos and to the "Blue Caves." Because the island has a rocky coast it has many caves, but the "Blue Caves" is by far the most popular. If you don't want to rent your own boat, but still wish to experience the cave, not problem, there are plenty of excursion companies offering tourists trips to the cave. When you pull up it looks like any other cave, but as we drove the boat into the actual cave, I understood what the attraction is. The color of the water once inside the cave is a shade of blue so beautiful and indescribable. Also you really don't know how deep and large the actual cave is until inside. If you wanted you could easily anchor your boat and swim around. This was definitely one of the highlights of the day.
After leaving the cave we found an awesome little beach not far from it, where we spent the next hour or so before heading to our final beach.
As we were following the coast, taking in the beauty and scenery, and putting our camera through an intense workout, we ended up at a beach that we came to on the scooter the day before. We were hot, and famished, so we anchored the boat, cooled off in the water, and ate at the little beach bar again.
The time finally came to head back to the port as we had to have the boat back by sunset. Exhilarated yet exhausted we headed straight to our room, showered, and packed our bags. We took our last walk through the port, bought our ferry tickets for the next morning, and called it a night. This was not only one of the best days of this trip, but one of the best in all the times I've been here.
Back to Athens tomorrow for a night before heading to Paros.
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