Day 9: Is Limnos a Liminal Space?

Black Sea Navigation: BULGARIA: [Nesebar] [Varna] ROMANIA: [Constanţa]
TURKEY: [Sinop] [Bodrum] [Istanbul: Basilica Cistern] [Istanbul: Topkapi] [Istanbul: Haigha Sophia]
GREECE: [Limnos] [Meteora] [Thira] [Athens: Acropolis and Plaka] [Acropolis Museum Highlights]

Our first port of call in Greece was Limnos.  We decided it was a beach day.

"It's a beautiful morning!  Up and at 'em!!!!"

After

Before

Perfect Alignment

I think this is one of the ports where we took a tender to shore, which somewhat limits mobility.  We got a recommendation about which beach to go to, but first we decided to climb every mountain.

See the flag up there?  It marks a summit to conquer before the beach!!

Are we almost there yet?  An interim view of the town.

Fortifications to fortify us for the continued ascent!

Oooh - a cave!

A little more altitude...

Views enough for everyone, 360 degrees.

Hiker in Arch, with Greek Flag

Holding the fort

The descent seemed to take longer than it should have, but of course it was getting steadily hotter as the day wore on.  So we headed on to the beach.  As recommended, we passed by the first two options and went for beach #3.  It was nice - not too crowded, plenty of free beach chairs and beach umbrellas, very pleasant.  My brother set off on a 10-mile run (?!) while my sister-in-law and I settled on to a nice shady beach chairs.   I was reading Dune on my iPad for a free Mythgard Academy class.  I'd actually bought two copies of the book (paper and ebook), but I finished the ebook on the trip, so I never ended up cracking open the paper version.

Hard at Work: Wheelbarrow Edition

In between splashing and building sand castles, the girls found a rocky area with a lot of sea urchins.  At their urging (the girls, not the sea urchins), I swam out to go look at them (the sea urchins, not the girls).  It was pretty cool!  And there were no re-enactments of my experience stepping on a sea urchin in Fiji, so it was all good.

 

After a while, I went on a quest to find a W.C.  There was nothing obvious in the vicinity, so I kept going.  And going.  And going.  (I was sure I'd find something eventually.)  Finally, at the end of yet another beach area, I found a ruined building that had formerly contained toilets - the signs were still on the doors - but it was clear that the building had long since lost any claim to plumbing or other amenities; it would have been an open question whether I could have made my way to the remnants of the door without the structure itself collapsing around me.  So I turned back - and probably not a moment too soon, as my companions were starting to worry that I'd been gone so long.  

We decided to get lunch at one of the cafes on the beach - the food was absolutely delicious.  We got a few different items, including a Greek salad to share.  I was imagining the sort of anemic pre-packaged excuse for a Greek salad that you'd see in an American beach town, but this was Greece.  The salad was freshly made, with huge slabs of feta cheese, perfectly ripe red tomato wedges - everything could have been picked from the garden that morning.  

Back on board, my brother resumed reading The Fellowship of the Ring to the girls.

That night, I quizzed them about Strider: Do you think he is going to turn out to be good, or bad?  (I got one vote each way.)  They were aware that he had a secret of some kind, so I asked them their thoughts about that.  No spoilers from me, though!!

Black Sea Navigation: BULGARIA: [Nesebar] [Varna] ROMANIA: [Constanţa]
TURKEY: [Sinop] [Bodrum] [Istanbul: Basilica Cistern] [Istanbul: Topkapi] [Istanbul: Haigha Sophia]
GREECE: [Limnos] [Meteora] [Thira] [Athens: Acropolis and Plaka] [Acropolis Museum Highlights]