Today we were able, with the help of the lovely lady in the café, to rent a car and drove around Kythnos to check out some very beautiful bays. The island has over 300 churches on it and we visited a couple of very pretty small ones where I lit candles for all of our loved ones no longer with us.

One of the first stops was in Merikhas, the ferry port on the West side of Kythnos. We had a very nice lunch in a local restaurant: red mullet and a sort of bream freshly caught that morning. They tasted great but were quite small and an ichthyology degree to avoid the bones would have come in handy. This was accompanied by a very tasty boiled local vegetables and a refreshing salad. We also tried the local white wine, which tasted more like sherry, and seem to have the same alcohol content. One glass was enough.

The rest of the day was spent negotiating hairpin curves and quick look-arounds in half a dozen of villages and hamlets on the island. Most places looked a bit like ghost towns as the summer population and tourists have left the island.

After exploring all day we returned to the café in Loutra to be greeted by George, a Belgian yachty who is living on his yacht in the harbour for the part of the winter. He invited us to join himself, the cafe owner, staff and Claude (a Frenchy who has an apartment in Loutra) and his daughter Morgane and her boyfriend Mallik for dinner. It turned out that George is also an amateur-chef so we enjoyed a very nice meal of chicken, olives and mashed potato. Much wine flowed and the discussion was very lively, a great night with lots of fun.
We managed to get back to Clio after 11:00 pm to crawl into bed for a good night's sleep.