Day 3 – Greece: Georgios & Grias Castle
I slept in until 12pm. I don’t know why but the time difference and jet lag is really taking a toll on me this trip. I quickly ate a Greek yogurt with peanut butter to hold me over until lunch & got ready for the day. Leo wanted to stay and play with the kids in the backyard, so Stelios and I walked down to Chora for lunch.
We grabbed a table at 44 Cafe – a coffee bar that also has salads, sandwiches, and wraps. After eating so much yesterday all I wanted was some lettuce. I ordered a Caesar salad, Stelios got a club sandwich, and we got 2 frappes. My salad was definitely not a Caesar salad, nor did it look appetizing but the dressing was actually very tasty and I just needed vegetables after all the heavy food yesterday.
Stelis best friend from Greece, Georgios , met us at the Cafe to chat and catch up. Georgios speaks little English so the two of them mostly talked in Greek but Stelios did a great job pausing to translate in between. After finishing up lunch we decided to continue to walk and talk along the port. Georgios was telling us that next time we should visit Rhodes, one of his favorite islands with beautiful beaches but that it gets 6x the number of tourists Chios gets in the summertime (Chios is not a very well known tourist destination to begin with). However, at the end he said it’s a beautiful island but the coffee and food is not very good, so I’m not sure if that island will be at the top of my list. Around 5pm we said goodbye to Georgios and walked back to the house.
For some reason I’ve been getting extremely sleepy around 5pm on this trip which makes no sense because that’s 11am back home. I needed to push through so we decided to go on a hike with Leo. I had saved a few hikes on AllTrails prior to the trip and picked one that was closer to the house and only 2 miles to see how Leo could handle it. While 2 miles is an easy walk, the incline and elevation in the Chios mountains can be somewhat steep. We drove 25 minutes to the starting point in Kardamyla and then started on our 2 mile hike up the mountain to a spot called Grias Castle.
The hike was beautiful, remote, and we were the only ones on the mountain the whole way up. We did encounter a lot of local cows who stopped and stared at us as we passed by. I realized we missed the first turn at one point and had to backtrack 10 minutes
Travel Tip: always download the AllTrails map ahead of time so you can navigate offline if needed
The “turn” was a wooden peg in the ground with an arrow etched into it and was the only “trail marker” on the whole hike. The Mountain Views were beautiful the rest of the way up and it wasn’t hot which was nice since the sun was setting behind the mountains.
When we reached the top we walked to Grias Castle, which means “old lady castle” in Greek, and could see the remains of a castle wall. The panoramic views of Chios below were incredible and the sky had a subtle rainbow hue to it as the sun continued to set. Leo really enjoyed the hike and asked if we could go on another before we leave. That was most definitely the plan! On the hike back down there was a herd of sheep blocking the path but as we continued walking towards them they quickly moved out of the way.
After the hike we drove back home, showered, and drove to Chora for dinner. It was 9:30pm – I was dead tired after the hike (although it seems I’m just always sleepy on this trip) and Leo and Stelios were wide awake. I tried to power through dinner in hopes that I would actually sleep through the night tonight. We walked along the port and grabbed a table at Mi Bainaktaris Estiatorio. We ordered a mix of light bites to share for dinner including spicy feta dip, Greek cheese balls, Greek salad, octopus, calamari, fries, feta with honey pie, Leo’s mastica lemonade, glass of red wine for me, and a chios beer for Stelios. We finished up dinner and went home. Time for bed, kalinychta.
