Samos, Greece: The Land Of Wine And Honey

by Dave Seminara on

My introduction to the island of Samos was a trunk infested with thousands of tiny, prowling insects, feasting on an open bag of fertilizer. We had just arrived in Pythagorion, a port city named after Pythagoras, the famous mathematician who was born there, and the owner of the hotel we were to stay in had come to pick us up. But just as I was about to hoist our bags into the trunk of her car, I noticed all the insects and thought better of it.

I ended up putting the suitcases in the back seat and walking to the hotel, an inauspicious start to our visit to say the least. After a glorious week in Patmos, Pythagorion seemed unimpressive, despite its attractive harbor area, so we dropped our original plan to base there for a week and rented a car to explore the island’s wild and beautiful south and west coasts.

As soon as we had our own wheels, we fell in love with Samos. It’s a place worthy of any superlative you can conjure. I found the island’s largest towns to be mostly forgettable, but almost everything in between them was magic, especially on the west side.The name Samos means “high” in the ancient Ionian dialect of Greek, and historians assume the island was thus named after its mountainous interior. By mid-summer, the island’s terrain is mostly brown, but in early June, it was still delightfully green and punctuated with wild flowers and aromatic pine trees.

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As we drove west on a dizzying, but scenic, road from Pythagorion towards Kambos, the base we chose in the southwest, we passed a slew of stands selling honey, one of Samos’s best exports. I didn’t indulge at first, but after seeing so many of the places, my curiosity got the best of me and I spent the remainder of my week drizzling honey on anything that moved.

Near our base in Kambos, a pleasant enough one horse town that serves as a convenient base for exploring the beautiful west end of the island, we fell in love with a psili ammos beach. I say “a” rather than “the” because psili ammos means “fine sand” in Greek and you find lots of beaches with this name all over the Greek isles, including two on Samos.

Both are great, but the Psili Ammos beach just outside Kambos may be the best beach for kids I’ve ever experienced. It’s a lovely beach with unbelievably shallow water, so even my 2- and 4-year-olds could comfortably wade very far out from the shore.

From Kambos, take a drive out to Kalithea and Drakei to see one of Europe’s last great, undeveloped coasts, filled with stunning cliff top panoramas of the blue Aegean and the surrounding islands. Around every curve, you’ll want to pull over and get our your camera. Western Samos has the feel of a wild, virgin paradise. There are no tacky souvenir shops or much of anything, save the odd taverna here and there but the natural beauty is astounding.

Just as interesting as the coastal drives are excursions into the mountainous interior. We drove up to the enchanting mountain villages of Vourliotes and Manolates for stunning views and a taste of village life and stumbled across a group of drunken seniors celebrating a religious festival on a Monday morning.

You could easily idle away a week on a beach in Samos but the most rewarding part of my ten days on this addictive island were hikes I made up to Panagia Markini, a 13th Century cave church near Kallithea, and the 10th Century Evangelistria convent, near Kambos. Both are fairly strenuous but the views are astounding and the icons behind the curtain in the cave church are haunting and beautiful.

If you look at a map of Samos, you’ll see little black dots with crosses, signifying churches and monasteries that were built all over the interior of the island, many of them in hard to find locations to ward off invaders. Working monasteries like Panagia Vrontiani and Megali Panagia have beautiful frescoes and are well worth a visit.

Samos also boasts good, sweet wine that can be bought straight off the back of a small vintners pickup truck for a song. I feasted on grilled souvlaki, calamari, octopus and other treats, always for about 7-9€, and I never had a bad meal. We experienced remarkable hospitality wherever we went and even our buggy car owner turned out to be a gem. We disliked the small rooms in her hotel but rather than pout or blame us, she helped us find a more suitable place to stay.

Our car rental experience seemed to sum up the island’s laid-back charm. We picked up our car in Pythagorion, in the island’s southeast, but later on decided that we wanted to drop it off in Karlovasi, where our ferry was to leave up in the island’s northwest.

A branch of National car rental, which also offered by far the lowest rate for an automatic transmission car at 30€ per day, told us not to worry about making the 1.5-hour drive back to Pythagorion to return the car, even though they have no location near Karlovasi.

“Just leave it at the ferry, and put the keys under the mat, we’ll go get it,” said Alex, the young man we dealt with who told us there was no extra charge to leave the car anywhere on the island.

“But is that safe?” I asked. “I mean, what if someone steals it?”

“This is Samos,” he said. “Things like that don’t happen here.”

If there’s no bill for a four door Hyundai on my next credit card statement, I’ll know he was right about Samos.

If you go: We arrived in Samos via a ferry from Patmos, which takes about three hours, but you can also fly directly to the islands on a variety of European discount and charter airlines, or take a ferry from Athens.

If you want a very lively place with some nightlife or don’t have the budget to rent a car, Pythagorion might be a good base, but I much preferred Kambos. We stayed at the Sirena Village where we had an early season steal – a two-bedroom villa with breakfast and access to a lovely pool for just 55€ per day.

If you like to hike, definitely make the treks up to Evangelistria and Panagia Makrini. And if you have time, you can also hike from Kokari up to Panagia Vrontiani.

Definitely check out the honey stands west of Pirgos. There are all kinds of good places to eat but I absolutely loved the souvlaki at the little Vraxos restaurant in Vourliotes.

(Photos by Dave Seminara)

Photo Of The Day: Locks Of Love

by Meg Nesterov on


Today’s Photo of the Day was taken on Paris‘ Pont des Arts bridge, where it is tradition to write your name and your lover’s on a padlock and attach it to the railing to symbolize your unbreakable bond. It’s a tradition popular all over the world, from Florence to Taiwan (check out Gadling’s gallery from Cologne, Germany. Over the years, many cities have tried to remove the locks or limit new additions, but true love prevails and it remains a fun way to leave a symbol of your beloved. Thanks to Flickr’s Luke Robinson for the photo, we hope some of that lovey doveyness followed you home from France!

Seen any sweet traditions on your travels? Add your photos to the Gadling Flickr pool for our Photo of the Day.

A Sunset Mosh Pit In Santorini

by Dave Seminara on

Tourism is supposed to be way down in Greece this year, right? Then perhaps someone can explain why there were approximately 35,000 tourists jostling and clawing for space to capture the perfect shot of the setting sun last night in Oia, on the island of Santorini?

I knew before we arrived that Santorini is the most popular (and expensive) of the 200 or so inhabited Greek islands, and I visited the place once before, 15 years ago. But I wasn’t prepared for the tsunami of tourists that descended on the dramatically situated blue and white town that has 813 jewelry shops but just one supermarket and school.

Oia is renowned for being a beautiful place to watch the sunset, and so scores of tour operators bus package tourists into the town right around sunset to capture some memories. As we made our way through the town, I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw at least 4-5 vantage points, each clogged beyond belief with a few hundred people jostling and competing for the perfect spot to photograph the sunset.Watching the setting sun is supposed to be a tranquil, romantic, intimate thing to do while on vacation. But we found ourselves in a veritable mosh-pit of mostly Asian tourists, who were intent not only on photographing the setting sun, but also on photographing themselves in front of the setting sun in various glamour poses.

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We saw young men and women climbing up and over walls and fences, onto private property, to try to stake out higher ground, despite the risks. We witnessed two verbal fights that appeared as though they were going to degenerate into physical ones, as people argued over who had the right to stand on what spot. And I saw more than a few people physically push others aside in order to get the shot they wanted.

To say that it was a circus would be a huge understatement. I thought that the first vantage point we saw (in the video above) was crowded but soon realized it was by far the least crowded of the bunch. We’ve spent the previous month in the much lower-key islands of Kos, Patmos, Samos and Syros, where we encountered no busloads of Asian tourists, and only a couple of Americans, all cruise ship passengers.

So when we arrived in Santorini for just a short two-day stay en route to Crete, we felt a bit like country bumpkins arriving in the big city, as an armada of tour buses left the port, all in a long line, creating a ferocious traffic jam leading up into Fira, which reminds me a bit of the tourist sprawl in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, the gateway to Smokey Mountain National Park.

As we waited for the sun to set, I couldn’t help but notice that everyone had a camera, myself included. I wondered what the hell we were all doing there, in the same spot, and concluded that we weren’t there to experience the beauty of a sunset. No, we just wanted a photo of the damned thing.

But I was curious to see this magical sunset. I assumed that the hordes of people were there for a good reason and was expecting to see the most glorious setting sun of my lifetime. Oddly enough though, it was just an ordinary sunset. Beautiful, sure, but no different or more beautiful than one I’d experienced in a lovely and completely empty restaurant with a great view in the town of San Michalis in Syros just days before.

The crowd in Oia broke out in applause when the sun set behind the horizon, but I couldn’t help but feel like we’d all just been party to something very, very strange. I was initially put off by the pushy crowds of camera toting tourists but then I became intensely interested in the bizarre spectacle.

We had traveled a long way to see a glorious sunset, but it felt like being stuck on a crowded commuter train in Tokyo at rush hour. But tourism is way down in Greece by all accounts. So just imagine how crowded this same place must have been last year or the year before that! And it’s only June, wait till July and August when the crowds really form, locals said. Greece needs the money and I hope the place gets even more crowded. That is, as soon as I leave.

We’ve had the luxury of time and have been fortunate to be able to explore the Greek islands at a leisurely clip on this and other trips, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for anyone in the crowd who was about to get on a bus never to see another sunset in the Greek islands. I wanted to tell them about the sunset we saw in Syros, maybe give them the address of the restaurant. But why? So that place could become the next Oia?

There’s a lot of natural beauty in Santorini and if you get out past the most well known places, you can find serenity, even in this intensely touristic island. The geography of the place is undeniably unique. I know people who love Santorini and have the ability to enjoy the beauty and ignore the rampaging sorority girls on quad bikes, tacky tourist traps and hordes of package tourists.

I’ve always sought to avoid intensely touristy places like Santorini, but for one night, I was there with the masses, clicking away. The funny thing is, I think most of us were so busy taking pictures we missed the actual sunset. Maybe it was better than we realized.

(Photos and videos by Dave Seminara)

Eating ‘Trash Fish’ In Croatia And Testing The ‘Bourdain Bump’

by David Farley on
I wasn’t necessarily in Croatia to find an aphrodisiac. But there I was standing on the Adriatic shore just outside of Rovinj on the Istrian peninsula with some local conspiracy theorist/café owner staring at a pile of twigs in the palm of his hand. “Here, eat it,” he said. “It’s good for, you know, the sex.” And then, as I chewed the bitter weed that he’d just pulled from the ground, he began a long tirade about how multi-national banks are controlling our thoughts.

After a little research I realized I was eating rock samphire, also known as sea fennel. It is mentioned as an aphrodisiac on websites – and, as we all know, everything we read on the Internet is true. (The site I looked at also lists bananas, sea snails, garlic and Champagne for “the sex.”)

I swallowed the motar, as samphire is called in Croatian, and wished I were back at Batalina instead. Located in the town of Banjole, Batelina is run by David Skoko and his two parents. David has quickly risen to fame in Croatia, thanks to his appearance on the popular Croatian TV show Master Chef.

When I first arrived at Batalina that afternoon, I immediately recognized Skoko from another TV show: “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations.” On it, Skoko and Bourdain cruised around the Adriatic waters pulling up all manner of sea creatures and plopping them in a cooler. Later they ate those creatures, which is Batalina’s specialty: not just raw and seared fish but the types of fish and parts of the fish often discarded – what Bourdain called “trash,” the stuff that comes up in the net after all the good stuff has been fished. Basically, the seafood fishermen would keep for themselves.

Case in point: I sat on the terrace sipping local wine as Skoko brought out a procession of plates to my table: conger eel mouse, angler fish liver, shark confit, grilled shark belly, grilled grey mullet in a dandelion emulsion. I ate well while I was in Istria but this was the best meal I’d had in a long time.

Eating raw or partially raw fish is a sort of new phenomenon in Istria, sort of because, as Skuko told me during one of his trips out of the kitchen, “Raw or freshly caught fish – not frozen – was always eaten in the home. Never in restaurants.”

A fourth generation fisherman, Skoko goes out to sea every day and cooks up that evening whatever he pulls out of his net. Starfish? Yes. Shark? Yep? Squid? You bet.

Batalina isn’t the only restaurant in Istria serving up fresh, sometimes raw fish. In the last few years, a small handful of restaurants have put it on their menus, including Marina (which does straight up sashimi like dishes) and Damir e Ornela, both in Novigrad.

And have visits increased since he and Batelina were featured on No Reservations? A Bourdain Bump? “Not really,” he said. “At least not until it airs on European TV, which it is scheduled to do in a couple months. Then we might see an increase in business.”

That would be a real aphrodisiac.

Teacher’s Travel Promise Fulfilled, 40 Years Later

by Chris Owen on

Lucky students can recall one or two teachers from their academic career that stand out as truly motivational. That motivation can come in a number of ways too. Some engage us with thought-provoking discussion. Others insist on the best from us. A very few plant seeds that take root in our young minds and will blossom later in life. I had the pleasure of having one that hit all that and more.

In 8th grade Social Studies class we had a teacher with a love for travel and world history. Mr. Hoobing’s passion was so intense that when studying ancient Rome, students were required to hand-draw renderings of iconic structures to exact scale.

Over the course of the semester there were probably a dozen of those drawings, many of which were rejected if not totally accurate. But by the end of that grading term, most students had a greater understanding about what it took to build them so long ago, when modern construction techniques had not even been thought of.

On the last day we would spend with Mr. Hoobing, finals were done. Summer, high school, college and the rest of our lives were ahead of us. Summer was of interest to all – the rest of our lives, not so much. Mr. Hoobing made us an unusual offer on that last day of class, one that we would most likely forget all about.

The deal was this: “promise me that sometime in your life, you will visit one of those places you drew and I will raise your grade for the semester by one letter grade.”I remember every hand in the class instantaneously going into the air to take him up on that offer. What did we have to lose? How would he ever know if we did or did not go to Rome to see the Pantheon or Coliseum?

This week I made good on that promise, visiting Rome for a day, stopping to touch not one but several of those structures.

The drawings are long gone, lost in probably the fifth or sixth move I made after leaving home. But along the way, between then and now, the seed Mr. Hoobing planted 40+ years ago survived.

Walking down the cobbled streets of today’s Rome, it was as though I had been there before. The exact memories of life in ancient Rome were a bit fragmented but I felt very familiar with the area I had learned about so long ago.

Thank you Mr. Hoobing.




[Photo/Video- Chris Owen]