Volos and Mount Pelion

After Thessaloniki, our next port of call was Volos.  This is a coastal port city at the foot of Mount Pelion in Thessaly.  It is situated midway on the Greek mainland, about 330 kilometres north of Athens and 220 kilometres south of Thessaloniki.  It is the sixth most populous city of Greece, and the capital of the Magnesia regional unit of the Thessaly Region.

Knowing nothing about this area - I'd never actually heard of it before - I decided to book a shore excursion.  It was titled Mountain Villages of Portaria and Makrynitsa.  Both villages are located on Mount Pelion. 

The bus climbed up and up a typical mountain road with innumerable hairpin turns until the buildings in Volos looked like small dots.  Unfortunately, the weather was very cloudy so the views weren't clear.  Also, the cloud ceiling was quite lot so it was damp and cool. 

The village of Makrynitsa turned out to be quite charming.  it is nicknamed "the balcony of Mount Pelion" and is one of the most characteristic traditional settlements, full of mansions and houses that look like hanging ornaments on the green mountain side.

The streets were lined with small shops (mostly selling souvenirs), small hotels and restaurants.  We stopped for a drink and some cake before going on to Portaria.  Like most of the places we've visited in both Turkey and Greece, the village was full of stray cats and dogs.  This time, the dogs (not sure they were actually strays) looked like some sort of Corgi cross.  Again, everywhere, people put out food for the animals.

While the description of the tour indicated we would be given free time to wander around both villages, we weren't.  There were two stops in Portaria (I skipped getting off the bus for both of them) as the first was to see a spring and pathway (people who checked it out said it wasn't anything special) and the second stop was to see a church.  By then, it was pouring rain so I opted to stay dry.  

The tour was fairly short so we were back at the ship by 1 pm which, given the weather, was great.  I cannot honestly say I would recommend visiting Volos as it appeared to be fairly generic as towns go and certainly it wasn't as pretty as Rhodes.