Some hidden gems in Greece – Sailing Felizia

Greece has over 2000 islands, and some of them you have never heard about. Like our two next islands. Oinousses and Psara/Anti Psara. Oinousses is the island on the east side of Chios, and Psara is on the west side, a nice place to have a stop on the way to Skyros.

Oinousses

But first we sailed from Chios town to Oinousses. It took a little bit longer time than we expected because there was a thunderstorm in front of us. So we turned around and waited for the thunderstorm to pass. We arrived Oinusses late afternoon, and we found a place to moor alongside.

This mermaid wishes us welcome to the island.

On the left side of the bay there is islands with at least three churches/monastery. I wanted to go ashore there to have a look.

The village is beautiful seen from the sea.

You can find some steps if you like to exercise!

Not many boats there so it is easy to find a place to moor. The highseason here is August and until then it is free to stay here. In August it can be caotic with many superyachts.

Nice small port with some restaurants and a small supermarket.

Many small local fishingboats.

Fishing has been a large industri here for decades and I guess, like it was back home in Norway, most of the womens sat back home waiting for them to come back. So maybe this is the fishermans wife?

You can see our boat in the left of this photo.

The duck looks fake but it is not!

Some nice houses in the village. We had to have a look around, but the temperature is increasing so it starts to get too hot to walk around in daytime.

A small beach next to the square.

Beautiful flowers!

A tip for other places? Why not decorate the garbage containers?

We had a short walk around the village.

It is allowed to enter the islands outside the main island, but not this one with the monastery on. The reason is because the rats has taken over the island!

The next morning we had plan to have a walk to the northern part of the island. We had seen a monastery on the map so we tried to find that. But on the way we saw a huge cross first and thought we had to go there as well. The trail was nice all the way here.

The view from the road to the cross. You can see a church in the middle of the photo, but you can still not see the monastery, it is down in the valley.

Here it is, you can see the roof of it! On the other side of the ocean you see Chios.

The cross is huge! The letters means “with this you win” and the sign has the names of the people who build the cross. Greek people often build a cross to have a place to pray.

After the cross we continue to the church (I am sorry I can`t give you the name, because it is only in Greek… And the church had a closed gate so we couldn`t see more of it. But from the church we had a nice view to the monastery. We walked a little bit back on the trail and took a shortcut down the hill to the monastery. I guess it has been the main road many years ago between the church and the monastery. It was now overgrown…

The gate to the monastery. It was a lot of flowers around, so it was a beautiful place to visit.

There were a couple in front of us, and a nun came out and took the woman in to the monastery. This monastery is only for woman. I could have waited for my turn, but we decided to walk further on.

From the other side of the monastery, you can see the church in the distance.

The view back to the village. I asked Astor if we should run down to the beach in the front. (or if I could manage that…) It was mostly downhill, but it was much more curves than we saw from the top, so the distance was 1,3 km. But I manage to run all the way down, the longest distance I have run in one leg ever! Between this and the village we had a short swimstop on a nice empty beach.

We found a part of this trail on alltrails.com, and the rest of it we saw on google maps. We thought it would be around 6 km, but when we came back to the village we have walked over 10 km.

It was a nice place to stay for a couple of nights, and it was free.

The next morning we were ready to sail further on. And after some windy days most of the boats left the island.

We didn`t had time to go over to the island with the two churches, so maybe we had to come back here..

Psara

We sailed past the northern tip of Chios and over to the west side to the island Psara. A beatiful small island and a perfect stop on the over to Skyros.

We moored alongside at the town quay and it was also free here.

Dimitrios Papanicolis, born in 1790, the fire commander who gave the first brilliant sea victory of the Greeks by firing a fireball at Eresson of Mytilene Turkish Dikrotos of 88 guns on 27. of May 1821. (google translate)

The villige of Psara. A nice harbour in a huge bay, you can also anchor outside the harbour.

When we came into the harbour we saw a small church up in the hill and decided to walk up there in the evening. We met this angel on our way.

The harbour where the public boat is coming in.

On the way up the trail. The view from an old building.

The view from the hill over the village.

An old windmill.

It was a nice trail up to the hill, really nice work!

The Churches, St. John and St. Anna. It was closed.

The view from the church. An interesting landscape on the island. You can pick and choose among many hills!

On the way down again. This is a really short walk, but it is worth it, specially in the morning or in the evening.

Drone photo of the hill (it doesn`t look steep…)

A video from the sailtrip from Oinousses to Psara and the hike up in the hill:

Some restaurants along the harbour. There is a bakery, but we only found a old woman baking in a small kitchen, and she didn`t speak English at all, so no bread for us!

A drone photo from the village. You can see Anti Psara in the distance.

Not many boats here, so it is easy to find a place.

The next morning we had a run around the village. Not long, but okay.

Almost back to the village we found this nice little beach and stopped for a swim.

On the way back to the village.

We ran here:

The village. You can find beaches on both sides of the village.

After breakfast we had a walk to the Church of St. Nicolas.

The church. Not a beautiful church from outside. But laying on the top of the hill with a nice view!

But it was nice inside. I am not sure if the church was open but the woman that cleans the church was there so maybe that was the reason it was open.

An important guy from Psara, born in 1796.

Nice decorated garden!

This amazing basils!

After lunch we left Psara to visit Anti Psara before having a night sail over to Skyros.

The harbour and the hill.

Anti Psara is a small island, and here we had the whole bay for ourselves! It was amazing! I really hope we can come back here and stay for some days!