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.

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:

More photos of Thasos

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

and this is Alyki beach,

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

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

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

cute little villages on the mountain

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

Photos of Thassos

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

The next day was quite stormy though...

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.

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

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.

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.

Here's some more gratuitous seagull pics:

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...

We crossed another ferry along the way:

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

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:

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.

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:

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

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