After a couple of days at anchor in the south of Zakynthos at the lovely bay of Keri, we moved on. With time to spare before my daughter Alice arrived at the end of the week, we headed for Killini on the Peloponnese mainland. About a five hour trip, around 24 nautical miles.
This is well out of flotilla boat territory, there is little information available on the place, and most of it is out of date. We did meet one fellow sailor on Kefalonia who mentioned it, so we thought we'd give it a try. It is known for being a major ferry terminal, with frequent vessels coming and going from Zakynthos and Kefalonia. Being fairly close to Patras, which has major ferries from Italy, Killini is a stopping point before taking another ferry to the Ionian islands.

Killini is not a terribly attractive town or inspiring place, I didn't even feel like taking any photographs. The town is very Greek, not catering for foreign tourists, although there is a large stretch of beach with umbrellas and sunloungers close by. I guess a lot of local people from the interior travel to the coast to spend the day at the beach. There were some small hotels but it is certainly not a major foreign holiday destination. The town looked a bit run down, several shops had closed and it was a bit scruffy. But as well as some tavernas, we found a couple of butchers, mini markets and bakeries.

The harbour at Killini has recently been upgraded and a considerable amount of Greek money spent on it. A smaller inner harbour has been built, giving excellent shelter. This is where the fishing boats and yachts moor. There appears to be lazy lines on part of the harbour wall, so no anchor is needed, but the lines were missing where we moored, so we laid our anchor.
Because of the ferry traffic nearby, there is excellent lighting, rubbish bins, oil disposal bins, and best of all free electricity and water on the quay! So no excuse not to do lots of washing, scrub the decks, fill the tanks, and Hoover the carpets. I also used the electric slow cooker for a delicious chicken dish.

Another excellent attribute that we bestowed upon Killini was that we had the best ouzo meze that we had come across for some time. And we are the experts on ouzo mezes. It is traditional for Greek tavernas to give you a mini snack to go with your meze, as it thought too powerful for you to consume without food. The worst case scenario is that in very touristy areas they give you a small bowl of crisps, or nothing at all, usually you even have to ask them to bring the necessary water to go with your drink, but quite often they might give you a tiny plate of small fish, or some cheese with salad, or a slice of bread topped with taramasalata, or a couple of meat balls. You never know what you are going to get! All this is delicious and very welcome, but then you find places that give you more - something that would even make a good lunch. Once we had a decent portion of gavros ( small fish), fried, with chips. Another memorable meze was a plate of meatballs cooked in tomato sauce. Sometimes they give you a mixture of lots of things, and this is what we had at a tiny taverna in Killini. An oval shaped platter appeared, loaded high with freshly cooked ingredients including spicy sausage, meatballs, courgette and aubergine slices, some delicious fried mini peppers, a few chips, cheese cubes, ham, tomato and cucumber. A real feast!

So we were pleased to find this marvellous meze to accompany our ouzo or two on our first night in Killini, and spent a very enjoyable hour or so people-watching. They were certainly very generous hand poured measures of ouzo - after adding ice, it filled the glass! On our second evening, we again returned to the same establishment only to be told that they had run out of ouzo! Shock horror! We felt a bit guilty at this point as we were obviously responsible for drinking their entire stock of this essential Greek drink the night before! How could they have run out? It's like an English pub running out of wine! No problem, the girl told us - I will make your meze and in five minutes I will get more ouzo! We heard her on the phone, talking animatedly in Greek, clearly ordering in extra supplies for the crazy English tourists.

This reminds me of the little bar in Keri where we ordered a cold lager each after a hot walk around the village. We ordered a second one soon after, as it was very thirst quenching. The waitress looked at us with indignation. "You English - you drink such a lot!", she sneered.......