Syros - Ermoupouli Hill Climb to Churches and Views 🥵🥵🥵

Up and out the door in time to catch the 8 am (ish) bus into the capital of Syros. It’s called Ermoupoli, not Chora—perhaps because it’s also the administrative capital for the whole Cyclades group of Greek islands. There are 31 islands in the group, including Naxos and Santorini.

The bus doesn’t stop at as many places on this morning’s journey, but once in town it takes a different route than yesterday to drop some children at school. We still take about 40 minutes to get in. I’d found two barbers online not far from the bus stop, both opening at 9 am. We stopped by both—open, yes, but no free time today for a haircut. Good grief, my hair is getting quite long now. ☹️

Giving up on the haircut idea, we started climbing the hill to see the church that had looked like a castle that we saw yesterday when we were on the bus to Finikas. Hmmm… now we could see there were actually two different hills with two different churches perched on top.

I offered Sarah the option of taking the bus up and walking down. She asked how far it was—1.5 km according to Google. “We can walk that,” was her reply. So up we went. Halfway there we had to decide which hill to climb. The lower one seemed the logical choice. We went right, towards Anástasis (Church of the Resurrection of Christ). It was quite warm on the way up, but we stuck to the shade as much as possible.

At the top, while Sarah took photos of the church, I went around to check out the view. There I met Dave and Shelly from Hawke’s Bay. It took just one word—“hello”—for me to pick them as fellow Kiwi travellers. Sarah soon joined us, and we had a good chat. They’d also walked up, from the large cruise ship in port today. We didn’t think cruise ships came here—that was one reason we chose Syros over Mykonos. Oh well, live and learn. Hopefully it wouldn’t get too crowded. So far, our “crowd count” was only two people.

After saying our farewells, we had a quick look inside the church. For me, the main goal was the view anyway. Then it was on to the second hill—the bigger one. If only we could sidle across without losing much elevation… but no. We lost elevation, and it wasn’t easier! Instead, it was steeper steps, and hotter. I had the company of a very hot and grumpy wife—not at me, I think 🤞—just at the heat. 🥵

The bonus (if you can call it that) was finding three churches on the higher hill, two of which we could look inside. “Whoop-de-do,” Sarah would probably say.

But it did make for an interesting story—not just that it was bloody hot and a hard walk. Oh, and did I mention Sarah has a sore foot since yesterday? That wasn't helping things today either. My knee held up on the first climb but started hurting again on the second. Anyway, the interesting part…

At the bottom of the steep steps up to the higher hill we came across another couple who sounded American. They were either just ahead of us or just behind us, depending on who’d stopped for a breather. At the first church I was checking the view when I overheard Sarah chatting with them. The guy (Mark) said, “My brother lives in New Zealand—he lives in Richmond.” I turned and asked, “Richmond, Nelson?” “Yes,” came the reply. Really, what are the chances?

It turned out they were Canadians from New Brunswick, touring Greece by ferry. I had to ask where in Richmond his brother lived. Turns out—600m from us, on Daelyn Drive! We’ve seen him (Phil) gardening, but never spoken beyond a passing hello when walking Sammy. Small world! Next time we see him out front of his property we will stop for a chat. 

We continued up the hill together, chatting until we stopped for a rest and they carried on. We found the second church, closed, but with an amazing view down over Ermoupoli. At the top we ran into the Canadians again, along with another New Zealand couple from Auckland. A day for meeting people—it was fun to chat with someone new.

The disappointment with the top church was that there was no real view, and you couldn’t properly see the castle-like structure—it was built up all around. Fortunately, that hadn’t been the case with the first hill’s church. There was a side window view, but not as good as the lower viewpoint. Churches and views ticked off, we started heading down.

By now Sarah was melting, and I was pretty hot too. We decided a morning out was enough—it was time to head back to the apartment for a swim and cool down. There was a bus at 12 pm, and we made it in time. Our plan was for me to stop in Finikas to visit the bakery while Sarah carried on to Voulgari Beach and the shorter walk home. But at the Finikas stop, the driver told us to get off. “What? Don’t you go to Voulgari and Poseidonia?” “Is school bus, ends here!” came the reply. Sorry Sarah—more walking!

Back at the apartment, I had a lovely swim and lunch, while Sarah had a lovely sleep. Later in the afternoon we got frustrated trying to complete an eVisa application for a new country we hope to visit. The website was useless. We gave up and instead watched TV while eating a large slab of bakery pizza for dinner.

After dinner, we tried again. Switching from Chrome to Edge finally worked. Now we just need to wait and hope it gets approved. 🤞