Serifos

We left Naxos, wishing we could stay longer and headed NW at 9:30 a.m.. It was a most beautiful sea. Actually the wind wasn't up as much as we needed to do a real sail but it was spectacular anyway. As soon as we had anchored in a nice bay we jumped off the back of the boat and into the beckoning waters.
We relaxed for the evening aboard and made plans for the next day.
Early morning we caught the bus from the busy main street of the tourist town to go up to the Chora which is built over the crest of a mountain. It was an extreme switchback drive but we were there in not too long.
The Chora is like so many others, in that it had small pathways between the white cubical houses and shops. We headed out on paths, I got separated from the others and made my way to the top where yet another church and chapel are built into the hillside. Met with Dave and Jim there and Marg came along shortly after.
Together we walked back to a plaza which was surrounded by a Greek Orthodox church, a venetian style city hall, several shops and cafes. We stopped there for our daily frappe and added a cheese pie to the order.
I saw another fired oven for baking bread, in fact the bread was just waiting to go into the oven. We found more old fashioned windmills, some working and some in disrepair.

We met 2 interesting people.
One was a Retired sea captain. When we told him we were from Canada he got all excited. He had been to Canada very often and knew Vancouver, Victoria, NANAIMO, and Port Alberni.
He is now retired, has a house here next to where he grew up and has his main home in Athens. He'd prefer to live in this little Chora and may some day move there with his wife.

The other was a Phillipino lady, about 35 years old. She is working as a nanny for an Athens couple who were vacationing on Serifos. The lady's 8 year old son and husband are still in the Phillipines and she can see them only every 3 years. We felt so sorry for her. I told her she must be very strong to do such a thing and she replied that sometimes she cries (and we all teared up for her) and told her that it was reasonable to feel so sad. She is hoping that her sacrifice will make a better life for her son. I hope it does.
Took the bus back down the mountain, did a bit of grocery shopping in local food markets and back on Cariad.

We pulled anchor and had a perfect little sail for 2 hours and landed in what looked like a quiet bay on the south side of Serifos. As the sun went down the seas began to swell. We rocked and rolled all night but were securely anchored, as were 4 other sailboats.