On the way from Mount Olympus to the Pelion Peninsula we stopped in at another archeological site - ancient Dion. This was where the ancients worshipped Zeus etc and was where Alexander the Great built a sanctuary to his favourite god, Isis. It was a very big site and not all that well explained so some of it just looked like rubble, but the sanctuary to Isis was quite evocative, I guess because there was water there and still some statues.

After that south to Volos and the gateway to Pelion. We chose to go there as the guidebook said it was a lovely area and great for trekking with the old pathways used by the locals before there were roads still maintained for walkers. Well it was certainly lovely with fantastic views out to sea, and from the West coast where we were staying we could see over to the mountains of the mainland, but a bit too hot for walking, for us anyway. The heat also meant that everything is hazy in the distance, or at least thats our excuse for the quality of the photos! We'd like to go back in spring sometime as it would be nice to do the trekking there, but as it was we did some great tours on the scooter. We went over to the east coast which was a lot more dramatic than where we were staying with cliffs dropping straight into the sea, and we also toured a number of the mountain villages which perch precipitously on the hillsides. One in particular, Makrinitsas, was absolutely beautiful with tall skinny houses that alsost seemed to be built on top of each other. They call Pelion the mountain of herbs and here they were all being sold from street stalls dried in bunches so the whole village smelled of oregano and rosemary!

Our campsite was lovely, set in an olive grove on a nice sandy beach just along from a very traditional village with a few tavernas. We treated ourselves to some meals out - too bloody hot to cook - and we're not sick of Greek salad yet! This was also a touristy area and popular with Greeks but nothing like the Mount Olympus beach resorts and it felt a lot more laid back.

Another thing we have learnt about the Greeks is they really like playing bat and ball. We'd seen it at Poseidon but with so much else going on there didn't notice it so much, but here it seemed like everyone was playing it, and for hours. And the men are very competitive at it - another thing I don't understand as I go to a beach to relax!

Anyway, enough relaxing on beaches. We now need to start heading through those mainland mountains accross to the west coast to get the ferry to Italy.