Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Back in Liege


Finally, we are back in Liege. The holidays were long and great but it's good to be home. Of course, there's that little annoying detail of the weather. After all the sunny pics I posted while in Greece, here's my first post from Autumn Liege: The cathedral spire and the dark gray clouds. Our jealous and bitter friends told us that there's been a total of 6 sunny days in the 6 weeks we've been away.


DSCF4935

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Partial eclipse of the moon


On the night of August 16 there was a lunar eclipse, partially visible from the north of Greece. We were on the beach with a camera and a tripod (and a fire and beers and souvlaki). Here's the resulting photos:


DSCF4803


DSCF4805


DSCF4811


DSCF4812

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

More photos of Thasos


Here's some photos of beaches. This is Paradeisos beach,


DSCF4668


and this is Alyki beach,


DSC01313


which was also the site of an ancient marble quarry, remains of which are still visible on the beach.


DSC01325


This is a rather cliche view of life on a Greek island. Old men sat on a park bench in Limenas doing nothing.


DSC01256


But Thasos isn't all see and sand; it's also got a forrest,


DSC01289


cute little villages on the mountain


DSCF4703


and many sites of archeological interest. Here's a mosaic in the courtyard of the archeological museum:


DSCF4689

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Photos of Thassos

This was the first thing we saw when we finally checked in to our hotel.


DSCF4594


The next day was quite stormy though...


DSCF4624


DSCF4634


We drove around a bit but it wasn't beach weather. We did see some interesting stuff though, like this little church built on top of an ancient temple.


DSCF4644


By sunset though, the clear skies had returned and we saw another breathtaking sunset.


DSC01244

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Ferry to Thasos


We took the ferry to Thasos from the port of Kavala. You can see Kavala's fort and old Town in the following picture.


DSCF4538


This is the rest of Kavala retreating in the distance. We were followed by seagulls throughout the entire journey. Obviously seagulls also like to use the ferry to visit their family in Thasos.


DSCF4560


Here's some more gratuitous seagull pics:


DSCF4552


DSCF4573


A division of firefighters was also on the ferry because there was a small forrest fire on Thasos. They were the centre of attention for most of the female passengers. Funnily enough, their t-shirts claimed that they were an airborne division...


DSCF4559


We crossed another ferry along the way:


DSCF4579


Finally, we got our first close-up view of Thasos.


DSCF4584

Friday, August 15, 2008

Trip to Thassos


Hi again after a rather long spell of absence. We went to the island of Thassos for a while. I could have blogged but the hotel asked for the rather princely sum of 20 euros per hour to give me the privilege of connecting my laptop to their wifi at the reception area. Considering that 20 euros was almost the price of an evening meal for two at a simple but nice taverna, we declined their generous offer.


Over the next few days I will post pictures from this trip. Thassos is a highly bloggable island. Today, I start at the beginning, i.e. the coach trip from Thessaloniki to Kavala. As we were nearing Kavala we saw this:


DSCF4534


Forrest fires are very common in the Mediterranean in the summer, almost as common as delayed ferry boats and rude taxi drivers. Thankfully, this one was small in scale and the cavalry wasn't late.


DSCF4533


That's one of the russian made helicopters that arrived in Greece during last year's catastrophic forrest fires and, apparently, is still around. Here's another photo of it in action:


DSCF4540


The fire was soon brought under control but, as this last picture shows, many trees will have to be planted.


DSCF4532


In tomorrow's episode: The ferry trip to Thasos.