Greece: Day Four (Poros Island)

Our fourth day in Greece was mainly spent on Poros Island, which is about a one hour hydrofoil trip from Athens. What we immediately noticed was that there were cars and motorscooters on Poros, unlike Hydra from the day before. Poros is also much larger than Hydra and the vehicles do lend noise to the otherwise very tranquil atmosphere of the area. You need to be careful when walking around the corners because there just might be a motorscooter there to run over your feet! They come up quickly! We literally walked from one side of the island to the other (at least the parts that connect to the ports) and spent the entire day just exploring the island. After eating lunch, we went into a cute kids' clothing store that Ashlyn found and the girls tried on some swimsuits. They both ended up getting one each...they were just too adorable and we just couldn't say no. Dwayne thinks it's pretty funny how both Kaleigh and Ashlyn act like their Mommy when shopping...talking about fabrics and good colors...so grown up-sounding. Kaleigh and Ashlyn wanted to be the "line leaders" and would take us off onto a narrow backstreet adventure...saying they had been there before and "Oh...aren't the colors just beautiful!". Ashlyn is very "into" mermaids and we found a beautiful mermaid fountain where the girls had a great time splashing the water on us and posing for silly pictures. We then met a nice old dog who just followed us around for a bit and wanted us to rub her tummy. Of course we indulged her. Hydra was filled with cats...cats cats cats. Poros had dogs, mostly...but not so many.

We decided that next time we come to Greece, we will stay on one of the islands. Our vacation style is to just relax and explore what is naturally around you...rather than searching out things to do. That's why one of our favorite places to vacation back home is the Outer Banks of North Carolina...mostly Avon and Ocracoke. These Greek islands reminded us very much of Ocracoke...so relaxed, beautiful, and full of interesting people who love the water and nature as much as we do. At the end of the day, we boarded back onto the Flying Dolphin hydrofoil and headed back to Athens. Even though we were all pretty tired, we decided to make our way over to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner and we were really glad that we did! It wasn't crowded (most Europeans eat dinner much later than we do) and we literally had a room all to ourselves...the non-smoking floor! Lots of smokers here in Greece...so it's nice that you can usually eat outside where you can somewhat escape it. Dwayne and Lisa split an order of Souvlaki and the girls enjoyed good old-fashioned macaroni & cheese. Then we went down and splurged in the Hard Rock cafe store before heading back to the hotel.