Greece: Cheronisos

For our last day on Sifnos, we decided to explore the only part of the island we had not yet experienced, the northern village of Cheronisos.  The town is separated from the rest of the island by a very large mountain, making it difficult to access.  The bus only runs to Cheronisos a few times a day, and we missed the first one, so we were stuck in Kamares for a while.

We walked down by the port, but not before I stopped to take a picture of this beautiful succulent plant at our hotel.  I really love succulents, so I was in love with this plant.

Luckily, we caught the next bus to Cheronisos.  Just off the bus stop we found a path leading down toward the ocean, so we started on it.  Once it ended, we took the uneven rocks down to the ocean.  We spent some time relaxing and enjoying the water and rock formations around us.

We headed back up to the top, but you can see the effort we had to put in to get to the ocean in the picture below.

Directly in front of where the bus stopped, we saw a church (yes, they are everywhere).  It looked as if it would have a good view on the top of a cliff, so we decided to hike up the very red path to it.

Walking up to the church offered some impressive views of the coves and the town of Cheronisos.

This is the entire village, it was so tiny

We stopped for another self portrait with Cheronisos in the background

We explored the outside of the church, which I cannot find the name of anywhere, when we came across a man and woman.  They were German travel buddies who meet up every year on the island of Sifnos.  We chatted with them for a bit and they encouraged us to go inside the church.

We had seen several churches since being in Greece, but we had yet to go inside one of them.  Actually, we weren't sure we were allowed inside, but we figured, why not?  The inside was very small, but showcased some beautiful paintings.

Outside the church we found the remains of a tower.  There are many of these towers on the island, which were once used by mine workers to communicate with one another across the island.

After seeing the church, we finally walked down to the village of Cheronisos for some lunch.  There were exactly two options for lunch, so we went to the first one we saw.  We had fried cheese balls (so good!), Greek salad, and a fish, caught locally.

We had a few hours until the bus was set to arrive, and we thought we would try to find a walking path in the area.  We followed the road in hopes of finding a path, walking for almost half an hour only to end up exactly where we started and ate lunch earlier.  Fail.  We did see this duck though.

After failing to find a proper path, we headed back toward the bus stop and decided to take a seat by the ocean.  We very carefully made our way down rocks until we found the perfect place to sit.

We put our feet in the ocean and just soaked in our surroundings, with no one else around.

Check out our awesome Toms tan lines!

Before we left, I insisted Brian take an Ariel picture of me.  You know what I'm talking about, Ariel is leaning on a rock that is sticking out of the water as the water splashes around her.

Nailed it.  Not really.

For some reason Brian wanted in on my Ariel moment

Luckily, we headed up to the bust stop early because as we were climbing onto the street, the last bus of the day showed up to take us back to our hotel.  Since I had been so careful to photograph the sunsets on the other islands, I insisted we catch the sunset on our last night in Sifnos.

The trail up to our sunset spot, kind scary.

Not too shabby

We ended our day with some gyros and lemon Fanta (surprisingly good).