Andros Town, Stenies village and more!

Thursday

I discovered last night that the lady whose animal rescue home which featured on a program with Ben Fogle  that I watched, is in fact on Andros. She and the home are situated in Arni not a million miles from here. I may make contact and drop in. The web site she has had created about it is  here. Before I set off I used to mini sized washing machine in my room, it’s a very unusual device, I have seen nothing like it before, it looks even stranger as it’s painted red! The washing is now hanging on the washing lines that I am sure we have all seen around Greece. It’s a nice sunny day with gentle breezes.

So on my way to Andros town I made two stops. The first was the ancient city of Hypsili. This is even older than the tower I saw the other day, and really all that is left are the foundation stones. But the guide they give you is very informative and one of the ladies who were in the booth came out and we had an interesting chat. The photo on the front of the guide, gives a very good impression of what the general layout was. I noticed these huge bees on the outside of one building, that appeared to be munching the cement, we do get bees in the UK which eat masonry too. I then went to some caves, the pictures looked spectacular, but they are not open until much later in the year. By the caves there was a very pretty stone bridge, which I walked over.

I then headed to Andros, which is the capital, but it is not the main port on the island. The actual port area which is where I parked the car is quite run down, there is a ruin of a concrete building, it looks like it’s going to fall down one day! But it did not take long to walk up to the area where there is a wonderful long pedestrian road with all sorts of shops. 

As I was taking one photo, this nun, must have thought I had taken a photo of her, she made the sign of the cross on her chest. She need not have worried!( she was not in the photo) The building I was taking a photo of , had a hand a sundial and a hand knocker like I saw on Syros.

Going along the road, if you head out to sea, the land gets narrower and narrower to a fine point. The last building was a maritime museum, right by it was a giant statue of what looks like a soviet style statue of a working class person, with a bag on his bag. There are some lovely views of the beach and back towards the town. 

There was also a very small building, which said Digital museum. I guess in contrast with history of mankind and the world, digital history is not very long! There was even a small cinema, this town has it all. There were a couple of shops, if you went in, you could touch both walls, they were that narrow. All in all, I really liked the town.

As it was quite early I headed out to a few other places on my wish list. The first was very close to Andros, called Stenies. It’s described as having Neo Classical architecture. That does it an injustice. I walked up to it from its beach and realised it’s all built, so there are no roads. It’s gorgeous and most of the time a little gully of water runs by your side. I heard a really loud buzzing of bees and looked over the wall, there were loads of hives and you could see a cloud of busy bees in front of every hive. 

On the way back, I met this guy, he had a handful of beetroot and some arum lilies. I then drove off to the village called Apikia, which is famed as the source of bottled water on the island. The village has the bottling plant, which is a bit ugly, there is a marble lions head which spouts out the water. But the best bit are water falls named Pyatha that you walk to. It was a shaded walk, which was good as it was getting hot. You could then start to hear the water, and eventually they were revealed. I went a bit further in case there was a better view, but the water was levelling off.

I should say that roses and geraniums are flowering profusely over here, they may well do so all year round. The geranium plants can grow to large shrubs and don’t need protecting like ours do. They did have snow here, and a nasty winter last year , and they also had wild fires in the summer. Back home my washing was dry, and ready to wear.