Two Wheels move the Soul

Porto Fico at breakfast, you can feel the heat Monday we woke up to another gorgeous morning over Lefkada Island, and our preparations to leave. It’s hard to believe the change in the hotel, and village in 10 days. Jane had said to us when we arrived “ Tell us what time you’d like breakfast, since you are our only customers”, to now being almost full with at least 4-5 families of 2-3 children each, plus a number of couples. The breakfast buffet was now being provided by hired staff, brought on to handle the load. June 15 th seems to be a th reshold for Vassiliki and Porto Fico alike. We left after saying our goodbyes to Valentino as well, though Vicky and Florien, from Human Sport  Surfstation were a little late arriving that day,( part of Greek time and surfing) . Jim, Stasis’ brother arrived and told us again how much he loved and respected Canadian people from his visit to Vancouver for 6 mths. a few years back. Something we will have to live up to. We shook hands and we

S4   S un,  S ail, S urf and S miles Falassarna Beach So where have we been the past while? We decided to enjoy the area around Kissamos while waiting for the ferry that never came, so when booking tickets off the island the travel agent asked if we’d been to Balos beach, or Falassarna beach. They explained that Balos was listed as I think 35 on the top 100 list and that Falassarna was beautiful as well. Seems the only way to get to Balos now is by an all day ferry excursion as the bad road in got washed out with the spring rains, so we headed to Falassarna for a day. As we drove into the area parking the Ford Fiesta in front of us bogged down in the sand and got stuck. Seeing this I swerved to the left, felt a slow sinking feeling and hit the gas, creating quite the rooster-tail but getting enough momentum to not sink in. It is a beautiful stretch of beach listed as #100 on the top 100 list of world beaches (so who cares). On that list, Chestermere Beach or Long Beach is

To all our friends and followers who travel by bike as well, Stefan Knopf has a container shipment planned for late October 2013 to Vancouver  from Heidelberg) arriving 5-6 weeks later. The reason I mention it is two fold. One he is a great guy to deal with and fair pricing, the second is that our bike will be shipped back and by adding more bikes to the container everyone's costs are reduced. So give him a shout and let him know where you hea rd it!

After a number of European trips, specifically covering 7 years of ferry travel I think I can distill some common practices to trip organization with ferries involved. Routes and Schedules There are a number of good resources on the web but one I have used the most extensively now is this one , Ferries.gr. It covers many of the ferries that travel to Greece and within Greece. But one thing you should know, Greek routes and schedules change from season to season, so but less so from year to year. So, if you want to travel in June , July 2014, review schedules now. But it is unlikely that you will be able to see an off-season schedule for later this year. They are ready to schedule likely 6-8 weeks in advance nothing more. Similarly, Marmaris Ferries will do the same for travel to Turkey from Greece. Another great resource for Greece in particular is The Greek Island Hopping travel guide. It’s a very comprehensive guide showing such things as “routes by port”, “frequency b

Lost in Vai, Crete As we circumnavigate Crete we head to the far south (east) to Kato Zakros http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakros , an ancient Minoan settlement. Read the Wiki info for more detail. The roads to get here are difficult and in some cases amount to goat trails, or 1 lane shared paved sections, but the scenery at the end was worth it. Here we stayed at Stella’s Apts. which was very nice. Kato Zakros In the morning we headed off to Vai, a palm grove, Vai the only one on Crete, and it is believed it was brought there by the Minoan’s from Egypt many centuries ago. Apparently it is now made popular by an English commercial with it’s Palm trees, sand beach, and beach bunnies. I’ve tried to re-create the scene as best I could. (Laugh) Beach Bunnies in Vai From here we headed to Sitia, another port town on the eastern side of Crete, one can catch a ferry infrequently to Rhodes from here. As we ate lunch on the quay in Sitia we found an o