It was great to take the night ferry and not have to pay for a hotel for one night, though it is a bit tiring traveling for such a long time and not having the "home base" of a room somewhere. Ferries are really slow, but I like taking them because you can always go up to the deck and look around to see what islands are near. Islands are packed into the Aegean sea. At any point on my travels, I could see at least four islands just by looking around. The sun never set over water because there was always the next island in the way.
The castle, with Turkey in the background.
Kos has it all: ruins, beaches and nightlife. If there weren't hundreds of people employed to annoy you into looking at the menu for their restaurant, and if the beaches had nice sand, it would be perfect. I suppose I didn't experience any real Greek culture here either, though, because Kos Town is so touristy. But, you can just rent a quad or something and head off to the more remote parts of the island if you want to see what laid-back island life is like.
My expectations for beaches in Greece (and the Mediterranean in general) were far too high. I've only found one so far that has nice sand. It's on Naxos, south of town. Isn't Greece supposed to be full of beautiful beaches? I must be spoiled. The people here lay out on the rockiest shores, with sharp things poking through their towels and plastic trash all over the beach. Better than the beaches in England I guess. Not idyllic enough for me! Anyway, the beaches in Kos aren't THAT bad.
People seemed surprised that Americans made it all the way to Kos. It's a German and English tourist destination, but I guess we don't make it a point to go there. And it's not really on the way to anywhere unless you do a weird trip like mine. In any case, there is a lot of English spoken here on Kos, perhaps more than back home even.
The ruins here are awesome. They aren't the most historically important, but they are so unkempt and free of people that you feel like you are discovering the ruins yourself for the first time. They are overgrown with weeds, and you have to forge your own path through. You will often come across columns on their side or decorative reliefs hidden in the weeds. There are certainly not any plaques describing what you are seeing.
Here is the Xystos, which was a gym. It seems strange that the floor mosaics are left out in the elements. They are half covered with gravel, and it seems that people stepping on them would slowly destroy them.
Ruins of the public baths.
The odeon.
Kos' main historical claim to fame is that it was where Hippocrates lived. He was perhaps the first real doctor.
There is a complex of temples up the hill called the Asclepion built on the site of a sacred spring in a cypress grove. The water from the spring is said to have healing powers. Sick people would bathe in the water and drink it, then sleep in the temple until they received a vision from Asclepios, with instructions on how to get well. This is where Hippocrates studied and defined modern medicine.
Here's me in the sacred spring. I seem to have a lot of pictures of me in dank dark places, don't I? This spring is down a stairwell at the back corner of the temple of Asclepios, and if you crouch down you can see that a tunnel goes east and a tunnel goes north. They are almost too small for a person to squeeze through. I didn't explore enough to see where they went. Too many spiders.
This is my buddy "three-out-of-four". He likes to explore the ruins too.
What we call grilled cheese, the Greek call toast. Looks like Mickey-D's caught on.
Looking at a map of Kos Town.
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