Kos - A Final Fragment

Monday, July 1, 2013—Kos Town, Kos, Greece

Made it to the beaches on the southwest coast of the island today. They are nice—they are big by Greece standards), sandy on go on forever (12 km, according to my Lonely Planet Guide). They were also pretty touristy, 5 euro umbrellas everywhere. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, though. Description made it sound like it would be a like a smaller version of the north coast of Crete: endless restaurants, hotels, and tacky souvenir shops. It was much wilder than that, though. Basically the beaches were backed mainly by fairly rugged scrubby mountains, featuring large swaths of junipers; the beaches reminded me of the much smaller ones on Gavdos. As I feared, though, the wind was up a bit, which made things a touch less enjoyable than they'd have been on a really good day. Still, I enjoyed myself. It was nice to get out of town, if nothing else …

Overall, though, I'm burned out on this island. It's just was too touristy here. It's been an interesting experience (which I've handled a lot better than I thought I would), but this is not why I come to Greece ...

[I got side-tracked and never got back to this entry—so I'll leave it a it stands.]

Paradise Beach, Southern Kos

Walking east (more or less) from Paradise Beach

While hiking in Kos I came upon this derelict Jewish cemetery. It obviously hasn't been looked after in a long time: it's full of weeds, headstone have fallen or been knocked over, etc. I have run into several of these in Greece and they never fail to tear at my heart. The reason of  course why they're abandoned is that the Nazi killed or drove off most of Greece's Jewish community during World War II.  The sorrow of these places is immense to me. I really don't know how to deal with it: they simply represent too much pain and loss to be processed ...

(Really) Creepy statue of Hypocrites I ran into on Kos