sâmbătă, 7 august 2010

Lefkada beaches

For the past 5 years I have spent my holidays on the Greek shores. Every summer, my family and I got in the car and drove to a different place, on the lookout for the perfect beach. Due to recent developments in Greece, we decided to skip a new Greek experience this year and go to Turkey, but that's another story...

The place that impressed me the most was  the beautiful island of Lefkada. Our journey started in Romania, we crossed Bulgaria (by the way, during the five consecutive years we have crossed Bulgaria, not once did we have any kind of problems with the police or  thieves-how lucky can you get?! ) and entered Greece at Promachonas. We followed the road to Thessaloniki and we entered the Egnatia Odos Motorway. I don't  how it is in 2010, but in 2009 there were NO gas stations along the motorway, so we had to turn and fill up in Thessaloniki...and as it was Sunday, there were only one or 2 gas stations open in the city and it took us a while to discover them.
The Egnatia Odos motorway is impressive, I remember we counted about 60 tunnels, the longest one having about 5 km, if I remember corectly, until we reached the end of it at Igoumenitsa(you can take the ferry to the island of Corfu from this port). We spent the night at Ioannina, a cosy and picturesque mountain city with its very own castle. The next day we left for the island of Lefkada. In my opinion, the term "island" is a little bit of an overstatement as the island is linked to the mainland through a small tunnel, under the sea. We rented a 2 bedroom apartament in a villa in Lefkas, on the road to Agios Nikitas.
The island does not have an airport and for some reason( to this day I could not understand why- maybe because the roads are incredibly narrow and steep, thus quite inadequate for busses) it is not highly promoted by tourism agencies, hence it is not crowded by hordes of drunk teenage tourists.
I will continue with the beaches you must see, but not before I mention that the resort of Vasiliki is in my opinion only for the ones who love water sports. And I also strongly suggest you take a cruise and visit Skorpios, the private island of late Greek shipping billionaire Aristotle Onassis, and the islands of Kefalonia and Ithaca.

Mylos beach

It is not reacheable by car. You can only get there by foot crossing  a small hill, on a path through some pretty thick vegetation and walking for about half an hour. The beach is wild, so you have to be careful and buy water and food from Agios Nikitas(the path starts from the center of Agios Nikitas) as well as taking with you an umbrella and towels.

Kathisma beach


Beautiful, large, long beach with restaurants, taverns, sun beds.

Egremni beach


Probably the most beautiful beach and certainly not for the ones who are not fit, because you park the car and then you take all your stuff and climb down 300 steps, which of course at the end of the day you have climb up. There are sunbeds and umbrellas, and a small bar down on the beach.

Porto Katsiki


This beach is a lillte bit crowded because it is smaller than the others, but just as impressive.

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