As usual, our excitement mounted as the ferry door lowered at a new island. We had arrived at Patmos! First impressions were good - the main town, Skala, was bustling with activity, a rare thing at this time of year on the islands. We soon found out why. This is the first island on this trip that we've been to that cruise ships pull in at! The port is right in the centre of town so you can't miss them. Luckily these ones generally weren't very large as far as cruise ships go.
Our accommodation was in a wonderful apartment with friendly owners. We were about 1km out of town so a couple of trips in and out of town a day added about 4kms onto my daily walks! The good thing was though that I passed one of favourite things on this island each time. These higgledy-piggledy jetties were perched precariously on wonky supports. They were like something from a Dr Seuss book.
We soon learned that the food was generally excellent on Patmos. The cruise ships crowd probably help keep better restaurants going here. We had wonderful seafood meals and amazing pasta as well as good versions of the standard Greek meals like bougatsa, (custard pie).
As usual, there were hordes of cats. This one kept following us around. John patted the seat of a nearby motorbike and it jumped up for a pat. I love the look of bliss on its face! John was wearing the appropriate t-shirt too.
The island is famous for being the place where St John the Theologian had his vision of the apocalypse at the end of the 1st century AD. He was living as a hermit in a cave at the time and people can now visit the cave and the chapel that's constructed next to it.
Parts of the walk up the hill to the chapel were on very well-maintained stone tracks many hundreds of years old.
The entrance to the chapel was as close as I was allowed to photograph.
Further up the hill, a fortified monastery perched commandingly on the summit while the stunning whitewashed town of Chora surrounded it. It was a really beautiful place.
The monastery had a beautifully decorated church inside. There was also a museum containing things like parchments from the 10th century and even one from Suleiman the Magnificent. An enormous kneading trough in the old kitchen was from the 11th century. Everything was so old!
Chora became the focus of a few of my walks. It was a good slog to the top but the incredibly pretty town was worth it. Narrow laneways seemed to wind randomly through the 17th-century town of brilliant white walls that dazzled me in the sunshine.
Gorgeous arched walkways under buildings provided some shade.
Almost every building in the town was freshly painted and seemed to be seriously well-maintained. Coloured doors were decorated with unique door knockers, something we haven't seen in other villages.
John wanted me to put this photo in here for you Troy!
Due to its association with St John, Patmos supposedly has one of the highest ratios of monasteries per square kilometre. Certainly there were plenty of pretty churches in Chora.
This one had what looked like freshly painted frescoes on the arched ceiling inside.
Just in case beautiful Chora needed something else, three gorgeous old windmills stood nearby.
One day John and I met at Chora for lunch. He rode his bike there and I walked. The weather for the entire five days that we at Patmos was exactly the same - a maximum of 24 degrees and a minimum of 21. The temperatures are certainly getting lower. The wind had really picked up this day though and, for the first time this trip, I got cold eating lunch with the sweat drying on me.
The views from our cafe were amazing though.
John rode from one end of the island almost to the other and explored most roads. I did a number of walks, some better than others. One took me to a ruined castle but the track was pretty rough and a new farm blocked the trail entirely at one point. I stood at the gate for five minutes wondering if I could walk through the farm, as this is often okay, but there was no indication that I could and I didn't know if there were dogs inside. I decide to backtrack and approach from the other end so my shortish walk ended up taking much longer. There wasn't much left of the castle when I finally made it to the top but the views were great. The wind nearly blew me off the hill though!
I found out later that there was a sign on the farm gate if you approached from other side saying that it was okay to walk through. Arrgghh!
Another walk took me around the boundaries of yet another monastery. This striking building was perched on a rocky outcrop and was surrounded by beautifully tended gardens containing fruit trees and vegetable gardens. The whole complex ran from the top of a hill down to the sea. It was a steep but wonderful walk.
From the top of the hill at Chora, where I could see over most of the north of the island, I had noticed a peninsula jutting out not far from our apartment. A lighthouse sat at the tip so I made it my mission to see if I could walk there. Getting to the peninsula was easy and, much to my delight, I found a closed-down restaurant with a concrete deck right on the water's edge that looked like a great place to swim from. I could see how to get to the lighthouse but it was through a goat farm with a rough gate across the entrance. There was a sign that was really faded but I could just make out enough words to make me realise that I could go through this gate. There was no farmhouse on this one, and therefore no dogs, so I was okay.
The walk took me past tiny secluded beaches, some only a few metres wide, hidden between rocky outcrops. How wonderful! I had the headland to myself and scrambled around until I found the lighthouse. Being an island of so many inlets, peninsulas and mountains, the views are amazing everywhere on Patmos, even from a goat paddock!
I returned back through the farm gate then detoured to check out a nice-looking beach I had seen from higher up the track. Meloi Beach was gorgeous, even on a windy day like this.
The next day we rented a car (because, unlike the previous two islands, we weren't allowed to rent a scooter without a licence! How dare they!) and explored further afield, looking for a beach to swim at. It was going to have to be a well-protected one because it was still only a maximum of 24 degrees and was still windy. We found lots of lovely beaches but settled on trying out Meloi Beach. Firstly we swam at the closed down restaurant at nearby Asti beach. It was the first swim we'd had in over a week and it took a bit of courage to get in the water but we did it. It was a lovely spot to swim.
We dried off in the sun then drove the short distance to Meloi Beach. One restaurant was open and it was fantastic! As it was nearly the end of the season (they would close in a week) the only had food they had was pre-prepared in trays that we looked at then chose from. Everything was so delicious that we came back again the next day, which was our last day on Patmos. We sat under the vine-covered roof on a glorious day and overlooked the gorgeous bay and beach. The wind had finally dropped but it was too late for us to have another swim as we had packed up and were on our way to the ferry. Hmm, we would love to come back here again and stay here one day!
From Patmos we could see Ikaria, Fourni and Samos, our next three destinations and the last ones for this trip. It was a bit of a shock to realise that we could see our final destination. Suddenly the end of our travels seemed that little bit closer.
Patmos was the last of the Dodekanese islands that we'd be visiting on this trip. The next three are all in the north-east Aegean group. We don't know how they divide these regions up as the three others seemed so close but we will soon find out I guess!
Be good!
Heather and John
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