Well the last 2 days in Samos echoed the rest of the stay - relaxed. We spent a morning exploring the west end of the island finding a couple of really nice beaches. We had heard of a restaurant named The Tavern at the End of the World reached by a 3 km track along the coast from Limnionas Beach so looked for the sign with no luck. We headed down a road that looked like it might go in the right direction, bit decided to turn back when it became u rough unsealed narrow track along the cliff. However, when we got back to the beach we saw the sign clear as day. Anyway that particular taverna will have to wait for our nexr visit.
The road to the west from Lampos is surprisingly good with a good surface and wide emough that you don not have to dive into the olive trees when a truck is coming in the other direction. The road climbs around a massive limestone block Oris Kerkis which rises around 600m with shear cliffs on all sides. We dreached the western end of the island and decied to stop and turn. At the point we stopped a driveway left the road towards a few stone buildings below. I would have been nervous to negotiate it in a landrover as it was narrow and very steep with a surface of ruts and loose gravel, but down below we could see a number of vehicles including light vans and pickups that had obviously made the trip.
That night we all went to a taverna that turned out to be the least good of the ones we visited at Kampos. The food was OK but not up to the standard we had come to expect. The next night we returned to Stella at Balos Beach where we had had the best meal of our stay. This time we told the chef that we wanted meat (the previous time had been fish), and he once again exceeded our expectations with an offering of 4 dishes including fried aubergine, marinated peppers stuffed with ham and cheese, lamb and crispy skin chicken.
followed by an amazing frozen nutty dessert. All this and wine for less than $NZ75.
Our last morning we packed, had breakfast, said a sad farewell to our hosts, the family that run the hotel, and our friends from the UK and headed off for our flight to Athens. Arriving at Athens (a very familiar environment for us) we were directed to a gate where there was a flight boarding for Rome, our next destination. Rolling up to the gate we were told "wrong airline"and checked the departure board to find that the gate was right, but our flight was a bit later. We sat reading until around the nominated boarding time I noticed that the gate screen was showing a different flight. Back to the departure board to find that our gate had changed and we did a quick trip downstairs to find a long queue waiting to board. A pleasant flight with Aegean later and we were in Rome. We had been told by our accommodation to call for a shuttle which would cost 14 Euro, but thought that as the accommodation was on the boundary of the airport a taxi would not be much more - it turned out that even sharing a taxi we were charged 30 Euro for a 5 km trip!
We were booked into a small pleasant B&B near the beach at Fiumincino but found there were few places close by for dinner and had to wait for the local pizzeria to open at 7:00pm. A very different type of pizza here with thin crispy base.
We booked a shuttle back to the airport for the flight to sicily and encountered the wonderful world of Alitalia with excessive baggage fees, unhelpful staff and budget airline seating. As our fare did not allow us to select our seats we were placed seperately in seats 2B and 2E.
Arriving in Palermo we headed for the advertised car rental office area to be told that it was not ready yet and to take a shuttle to the old offices where we joined a mob waiting to be served. Over an hour later we were told that we had been allocated a smart car which would obviously not fit our luggage and we could upgrade to a Renault Clio, a diesel automatic. After our little Hyundai I10 on Samos this was a big heavy and sluggish beast, but at least we could fit. Most of the way to our next accommodation was on the autostrade which is a superb motorway and much better than the ones we had used in southern Italy on our last trip. The scenery was not entirely what I expected with the area around Palermo being spectacular vertical walls of rock which morphed into rolong hills and then extensize plains as we moved south. Arriving at Tre Fontane we struggled to find the accommodation as there were almost no street numbers and the place itself had no identifying features at all. With the help of several locals we finally made contact and moved in.
Tre Fontane is a town of beach houses with narrow alleyways, often one-way, between tham. The centre of town which contains a few bars and pizzeria is blocked to all traffic from 9:30pm to 2:00am, though we haven't ventured in to find out what goes on yet. The area we're in is a straggle of houses across the road from the beach, which reminds me of Foxton with a long, wide flat sandy beach and low dunes aong the road. It is very much a family beach with family groups spread along the length during the day. So far we have found very few here with any English so our sign language is improving.
Enoiugh for today.
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