In the end of august / beginning of september we decided to spent some days just relaxing in a nice beach resort on Kos island in Greece. After countless years of individual traveling I once again booked a prepackaged tour including flights, transfer and hotel - and I have to admit - it was a really enjoyable and relaxing holdiday and not a dedicated (and sometimes exhausting) photo tour like my road-trips through Scandinavia, Scotland, Iceland, Norway or Germany for instance. But of course I couldn't resist to take my large Nikon D810 camera + lenses with me, but to my own surprise I did not take a single photo with it. In fact, I did not even get it out of my backpack one time. I was just too lazy.

Kata Beach

All the images you see here are pictures made with my mobile phone (Samsung S8) in pro mode and shot in raw (not jpeg) and as usual processed in Photoshop. After a week I ended up with more than 800 photos, mostly vacation snapshots. During the first couple of days we just scouted the large hotel area and beaches and enjoyed the sweet idleness with reading at the beach, swimming along the hotel bay in the ocean and also enjoyed all the amenities of the all-inclusive offer with some decent drinks and a lot of fine food. The tranquility in the adults-only resort was just lovely and very relaxing.

Agios Nicolaos Church

On the fourth day or so we started a scouting tour with a rented Jeep throughout the whole island and explored the capital city of Kos, a typical small mountain village called Zia and of course nice sandy beaches with inviting names like "Paradise Beach", "Bubble Beach", "Magic Beach" or "Exotic Beach" for example. Noteworthy are the bubble areas at the beaches because there you can enjoy a natural phenomenon in the sea due to volcanic activity. In some areas natural - not dangerous - hot tubs (jacuzzi / whirlpool) evolve. I stood in the middle of one and enjoyed the rising bubbles all around me. A unique experience.

In the late afternoon we arrived at a pretty remote beach with only a few people there which is called "Kata Beach" (1st picture above) which for us was the best one. Because of its location on the west coast, there were the biggest waves we encountered on the island and while strolling along the beach and rugged cliffs we found a typical greek wooden boat that probably stranded there due to the dangerous surf of the bay. After taking our time there we started our way back to the hotel on the other side of the island, about an hour's drive. During the golden hour before sunset we stopped at a place called "Agios Stefanos Beach" where a little island (called Παλαιόκαστρο) with a typical church is located in front of the beach (picture above) and we also visited an ancient Basilica also directly at this beach. Btw, you can swim (almost walk all the way) from the beach to this little island, what some people actually did while we were there. It was a nice day trip and we saw a lot of the island. Back at the hotel we enjoyed Dinner and Drinks. 

Old Shipwreck

For the next day we had booked a full day cruise with a pirate ship starting in the harbour of Kos. Unfortunately we started with some delay but to glide through the turquoise-blue waters of the Aegean Sea with the ancient two-mast boat (called Captain Hook btw.) and the soundtrack of "pirates of the caribbean" was a really great experience.

We first stopped at a beach on the island Pserimos (Ψέριμος) with a small village which somehow strongly reminded me of my childhood and playing with Lego pirates back then. Today only 26 people live permanently on this little island. After an hour we continued our route around the island of Plati towards Kalimnos (Κάλυμνος) and a little town called Vathis (Βαθύς) and a special place called "dolphin bay". When we arrived there we almost instantly saw some dolphins swimming in the water and they even jumped in front of our eyes and made pirouettes. Awesome! After a while we continued towards a little fjord-like bay to Vathis. There we drank a delicious freshly squeezed orange juice for which the place is famous. Tabea did some shopping there and I took some photos and enjoyed the place. Again after an hour the ship continued its route towards another bay where all guests were invited to jump from board where they want and to swim in the ocean and then climb back over a ladder again on the ship. Another nice experience. Especially if you don't get too much salt water in your nose while diving into the sea. ^^ The ship then returned to the harbour of Kos and we to our hotel and enjoyed the rest of the evening with delicious food and a beach party at the hotel beach.

Greek House

We spent the remaining days enjoying the tranquility at the beach and the beautiful weather for which the Greek islands are so famous. In fact, we have not seen a single cloud during our time on the island, only bluebird skies like in the photos of this little trip-report. Good for the holidays and sun-bathing, bad for serious landscape photography. However, the goal of this trip was to read and relax at the beach - and yes, we have achieved this "goal"!

Breakers

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