"My last summer" doesn't sound so good and taken in the absolute sense it would mean that I will never set foot, (summer), on an island again. Which I don't want at all. Correctly and in line with my wishes I should have said: "My most recent summer I spent on an island"! And yet, with all the risk taken, "My Last Summer" sounds better as a title and I will keep it.
The only island I have ever been to was Thassos Island in the Aegean Sea, in Greece! And it wasn't even summer, it was a kind of Indian summer, which happened at the end of September.
The first summer, as well as the last one and the one in between, because there were three in total, were unforgettable. I also have a mountain of photos... just in case!
The small fishing port of Limenaria
I remember "the first time", as many of us cannot forget... "the first time". This time it was my first trip to Greece, which happened to be in Thassos, so also my first time on an island.
The excitement and thrill of getting to the island coupled with the desire to get rid of the fear of being on the water for so long, which I am not comfortable with at all.
Half an hour was the ferry crossing from the mainland to the island. Half an hour of intense excitement, both because I wasn't used to traveling by boat, and because of my impatience to set foot on the island.
The sea trip was pleasant because we were always accompanied by seagulls.
Once on the island, you arrive in the small town that the locals call a village, but it is more than a village. It's called Limenaria and is the second largest on the island. I was immediately drawn to the village town which was far from what tourism is today. That is to say, tourism promotes comfort and buildings with trendy resort architecture. None of that. A normal village-town, with normal people living there, working there and occasionally stumbling over tourists with no work to do.
Further away from the main street I saw some poor houses, a sign that some inhabitants of the island are not doing too well.
Many abandoned and overgrown houses
The sloping, island-specific streets that are like stairs. Unusual and beautiful. Painted white
In most seaside resorts the tourists are attracted and impressed by modern facilities, the special hotel architecture, and swimming pools of different shapes and sizes. Here I didn't see such a thing, and, unexpectedly, I also understood why it was so...Instead, the sea is magnificent! It's so different from the little Black Sea that I was used to.
Pefkary Beach
Here the sea is the most important! True sea for true sea lovers.
The fishermen's boats and the boats used for small cruises around the island are housed in the small fishing port of Limenaria. Beautiful and colorful, these boats are always a good subject for photography.
On one of my island holidays, I was accompanied by a good friend. So my wife had someone to talk to and I was left free, behind them, to photograph. The hotel we stayed in was situated on the edge of a pine forest.
Just a few steps and the daily walk through the forest began.
Beyond the pine forest there was a grove of olive trees and a church. It was very pleasant in the orchard and around the olive trees the ground was dug up and we found a lot of broken ceramic shards. We liked to think we had discovered ancient pottery.
I tried to feed my tired memory with photos from my trip to Greece. It worked and I remembered. Looking at those photos gave me the idea of converting a few to black and white. Thus this post was born...
That's how I ended a previous post and while writing that post, for the Black And White community I realized that this post is very fitting for the memories that I am posting on Throwback Thursday in the community.
I thought I'd experiment.
I used the same photos from the black and white post, see the post here: Do you remember what did you do last summer?, only now I put the original photos, the color ones. I wrote another story using the same photos, but the color version. I hope it can be considered a new post, different from the previous one.
