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| Views whilst driving up to the Hóra |
Next it was a drive up and inland to get to the Hóra.
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| Samothráki Hóra |
The Hóra sits in a bowl in the hillside with the houses stepped up the slope and perched on top of the ridgeline is the town’s castle.
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| Samothráki Hóra castle |
This originally Genoses fortress dates from 1431 but as the island has passed though different control it has had many inhabitants. With the dissolution of the Byzantine empire the castle came under the control of the Turks (1456-1460), Demetrios Palaeologus (1460-1466), the Venetians (1466-1479), the Turks (1479-1770), the Russians (1770-1774) and the Turks again until the integration of Samothráki into the Greek state in 1912. In a nutshell that’s the recent history of the island!
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| Samothráki Hóra |
The castle was actually closed in the afternoon but we still saw a reasonable amount of it and we were also able to explore the rabbit warren of streets in the Hóra.
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| Samothráki Hóra |
The Hóra is an engaging mix of old and new with some lovely stone houses nestling amongst the whitewashed ones.
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| Farming country on the north west tip of Samothráki |
Our list of tourist sites to visit was complete and so it was time to drive back down to the port of Kamariótissa and return the hire car. The route took us through the green and fertile peninsula on the north west tip of the island where all of the farming is done. I’m sure that there is more to see on the island but we felt that we had done a fair job of looking around and decided that it was time to move on.
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| Kamariótissa’s main street |
The plan for the morning was to buy a few food items and then use the forecast fresh wind to sail west to Thásos.
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| Kamariótissa harbour |
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| Samothráki, Greece |
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