SKYROS | Little Known Greek Island in the Aegean Sea

[Music] he [Music] this is the incredible Greek island of skiros [Music] [Music] the [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Applause] hi there yasas khara good afternoon this is the hard to get to island of skiros with a magnificent main Town skiros town or Hora sprawled across the hill there I'm going to walk in that direction now my hotel right over there just arrived yesterday my first time to this island I have been wanting to come uh here for a little while so today is May 11th you can see not exactly busy the summer tourist season won't begin on a lot of the Greek Islands for another month or so it is currently 65° f that is 18° C so right on the edge of coolish and warm as soon as you step into the sun then you warm up a bit but it is better weather than yesterday when it was cloudy it was rainy and very windy well it's still windy today but uh when I was on the island of tinos just uh two days ago then a guy had mentioned to me that there were going to be heavy winds and it could affect the fairies looks like wind effects right there or maybe not no it's all tied up so uh maybe that is somebody's work so it was a couple days before my Ferry going from tinos back to uh rafina on the Greek mainland and a guy says heavy winds coming now fortunately my Ferry was the next day that was not affected by the winds but uh the next day I had my flight here from Athens International Airport and it was very windy I was concerned about whether it was going to be a uh problem getting over here the flight was delayed a bit about a hundred bucks for that flight I will put the exact amount down below here direct flight 45 minutes so the flight was delayed a little bit finally we got out there and into the air and uh it was a bumpy you know takeoff and then they said that they weren't going to do the drink service because of the turbulence throughout the flight and then it was a bumpy Landing coming in but it all worked out not so much for this guy as I said this island is a little hard to get to so as I walk along I am basically going to tell the story of finally arriving here on skiros island and what sort of led up to it including my previous attempts to do so so skiros hadn't really been on my radar as far as Greek Islands until I went to the islands of skiathos scopos and alanos I think that that was three years ago and in the course of researching those islands then I also learned about uh skiros here and based on what I'd read about it it sounded like the most interesting one okay we have a uh dead end here the question is is it a dead end for pedestrians as well I think that I'm going to give it a try got to be a way to sneak through there somehow maybe get over on the beach or something we'll see and so I took a ferry from Volos on the Greek mainland over to skos and then scopos and then alanos and I was considering coming to skiros here but uh I think that it was another 6 hours on the ferry it was a long Ferry Journey 4 hours 6 hours something like that from alanos to get here and then you have to get back and so that's like a you know 10hour fairy Journey something like that from skiros here back to Volos there is another option which is you can go from Kimi on the island of AIA which I visited just a little while ago the beginning of my uh trip here to Greece this time then I rented a car at the Athens airport and drove to Avia Island and I was considering coming to skiros from there okay looks like this will in fact go through for Walkers interesting we're going to get into a uh little bit of a jungle here it looks like so where does this go it must go through because this is a substantial uh walkway here so I was checking fairies from Kimi on the uh island of IIA it is only an hour and a half ferry ride oh some bad smells in here I think there's a swamp ahead so just an hour and a half on the ferry from Kimi over to here so that's a lot more reasonable than 10 hours from Volos yes we have a funky Creek okay so far so good but when I was checking online for fairies then it seemed that the ferry didn't go every day for one thing and then what I was seeing was uh fairies that were full up as best as I could tell figuring it out uh on fairies. grr and fairy hopper.com two websites good for checking fairies and booking tickets as well I never ended up going into a tourist office that can book the fairies for you if you aren't finding it online then it is worth checking with a ferry ticketing agency just to make sure because that's how I ultimately got from Evia over to Andre's Island was I went to a ferry office and there was another Harbor nearby that I didn't know about and so I wasn't searching for fairies leaving from there but uh the websites can be uh useful in Booking those fairies a lot of the time so I scrapped the idea of uh getting to skiros Here by taking the ferry but I discovered that there was an airport here I hadn't known that and there are direct flights from Athens and therin those flights don't go every day and so you want to uh strategize your time here and uh check the flight so I have a flight fight in 3 days from now so I have four nights total here and then flying to Thessaloniki and then from there we'll uh probably explore Northern Greece and so I booked this flight yesterday and take it and land and then I was hoping to get a rental car at the airport and then just have the car for the whole 4 days but no rental car agency at the airport the airport is definitely one of the smallest airports I've ever been in it's like teeny tiny and so uh instead I got a taxi services here in general are limited so there were just a few taxis there and there were you know putting multiple people into the taxis so uh I get it in the front and then two guys get in the back and I end up talking with them they live in Portugal but they're sort of from other places but they mentioned that in the course of their research they were trying to go by ferry from Volos to you know scopo skiatos and then take the ferry here but apparently that Ferry is not running anymore I don't know if it's just because it's too early in the season or what but that might not be possible now and so you want to check on that and then coming on the ferry from Kimi is basically going to require you to have a rental car if you're coming from Athens then you have to get to Kei somehow okay let's again go Thea dead end route it does say right there to the beach so I don't know if there's buses going from Athens to keimi maybe so but that would be a bit of a pain and then you will have to deal with that going back as as well so point being as of now it looks like taking a flight is really the best way to get to skos looks like we're getting back to the beach okay we have people nice a full restaurant I guess because I'm uh getting closer to the uh main town unless maybe there's some sort of an event going on some nicely dressed uh ladies there maybe there's like a wedding happening or something all right so now I need to uh get up the mountain there and so that is called molos where I'm staying and then up there is where we're trying to get to will it go through here all right looking good and so because I didn't get the rental car at the airport then I decided Well I think that I will just see what I can see today wandering around on foot and then hope to rent a car tomorrow for 2 days and have it for two full days to properly explore the island also the uh weather is getting better going forward it should be even sunnier and warmer the next couple of days so things are looking up okay where does this go I am deep in the Maze now okay I am heating up in this long sleeve shirt time to deal with that that's much better all right let's get up the hill into skiros town H and so now I'm on this Main Road looks like that might be a road going up there or some stairs let's find out [Applause] I guess this is the way we have a barking dog to contend with Unchained uncaged let's check the map and make sure this is actually the right way H H and here we go I wonder if this is the main way or sort of a back route this can't be the main way if I hadn't asked that guy and he confirmed it I would be thinking oh this isn't going to work but uh I guess it will so the map had shown driving a different Direction so there is of course another way to get there by Road okay this is making more sense that was just their driveway to that house and then there's this little Trail to get here but obviously there is a more main uh way to get onto this path here that I didn't see which is is probably the other way on the road and so I didn't come across it what a sight up there the castle and here we have a museum archaeological Museum skiros today is a Saturday open from 8:30 to 3:30 so I guess it's open look at that 1787 wow what is this very interesting cross relief with a depiction of two figures reclining on a couch funeral banquet inscribed Estella dedicated by the Athenian woman Artemis a real journey through history here that guy looks like it's somebody's apartment I could hear music anyway coming into the town how many people will we see that must have been some sort of event for that restaurant to be so packed when there's almost nobody around everywhere else okay what have we got here little chapel perhaps yeah cross to rert Brook 1887 to 1915 and it mortal poetry so I guess maybe a local poet and we have a person all right I'm not completely alone here and person number two it just smelled something that smelled very good and three people over there so people are around and cooking up some lunch [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] okay so seven people witnessed but where is the uh main Square I might have missed uh a main Square looks like this must be the castle entrance and the door is open so uh all right wow very interesting 18 looks like 95 and here we go Castro wow this is a really cool tunnel entrance all right more at the [Music] town so I would definitely say that but uh the area where I'm staying molos is the best place to stay especially when summer rolls around and it's warm enough you actually want to take a swim if you're here in the village then you have a uh long and intense hike getting down to the beach and especially coming back up all right so how old is this that looks Byzantine era to me let's see what this sign says skiros Castle Town had an uninterrupted presence from the prehistoric times until the beginning of the 20th century during the prehistoric period so I'm not exactly sure what they mean by prehistoric in this case I guess as I mentioned in the last video literally prehistoric would be like at least you know 6 7 8,000 years ago and before that before like Sumerian civilization but maybe they mean kind of pre well-known Greek historic something like that so you know before 2500 years ago 3,000 years ago something like that so during the prehistoric period it had probably been the only place of residence of the today hor of skiros the increasement of the population during the historic and Medieval Times led to its presence as theopolis during The Classical period so Classical period of Greece being you know 4th fifth century BC and probably just before the explosion of the pelene war I'm not sure when that is but I will put a subtitle down below when was the pelian war Athenians fortified all the settlement with the external wall and its Acropolis with a second wall during the Byzantine Frankish Venetian and ottoman period so those are all separate periods skiro Castle town was in its most intense phase during the late ottoman times the castle functioned occasionally as shelter in case of emergency and families used to retain a second household inside the fortification after the Greek Revolution and the foundation of the Greek State the place was abandoned in 1927 the last Bishop of skiros gregorios who had been the last inhabitant of the castle Town died I think this must be Byzantine ER the oldest known Christian monument in skiros according to the dedicatory inscription it was founded in 895 ad during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Leo I 6 the wise this church served as the seat of the bishop of the Island from 895 to 1837 the year the last Bishop of skiros Gregory died so yes Byzantine era the uh style of construction is just classic Byzantine style the altar clearly there were very colorful frescos here not much left of it very interesting altar though looks like that is a Scabbard and a hand holding a sword there and then I can see two hands there a body head is missing [Music] [Music] there was something about the Fresco here let's uh read that the frescos in the inside the church preserves fragments of Fresco from different periods among which the oldest is located in the prothesis and can be dated with certainty in the 11th to 12th century there are also remains of the original sculptured decorations of the monument so 1,000-year old paintings there holy moly it might be windier today than yesterday even a little chapel okay and what is this like the Watchtower the medieval sistern dark prison now sistern means a water tank the dark prison as it is called locally is the largest sistern among the three that remain in the castle of skos the other two are located on the east and west part of the castle it is a robust construction with horizontal dimensions and a maximum height of 7 m okay that's like 24 ft or something so it must go down that much from there all right let's see what it looks like inside you're curious whoa [Music] okay ah no that's not a deole okay this collects rainwater I wonder if the prison reference was literal maybe it was also used as a prison you can easily imagine as a prison okay so this is right below the hole so is that something that was like created as a result of rain falling in I don't think so it looks like it's intentionally dug out but obviously the point was the water rain water comes in and Falls here and then but there's a big door so it can't fill up all the way so is it actually just a prison a little confused on that one huh all right well I think that is basically going to do it for today's exploring just keep it a little bit uh simple for today and then in the next two days lot more of the island to see is there going to be a rental car company you saw I wonder if I'm just going to have to like take a taxi somewhere I think there must be a rental car agency anyway I'll figure that out later so uh there you go the first day on the little known but very very interesting island of skiros looking forward to seeing more have a good one safe travels and one more thing looks like that is the main Square I didn't show any of that part of the town so I will plan to show it in another video [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Gabriel Traveler

Views: 17,620

Keywords: Gabriel Traveler, Gabriel Morris, travel, traveling, budget travel, travel video, adventure, adventure travel, world travel, tourism, holiday, vacation, backpacking, Skyros, Greece, Greek, island, islands, Sporades, Skiathos, Skopelos, Alonnisos, beach, beaches, Mediterranean, Aegean, sea, Europe, European

Id: t2oN9Vul4ag

Length: 34min 45sec (2085 seconds)

Published: Sun May 12 2024