Touring Kos - Our Experiences

For those who don’t know, the island of KOS is a Greek island, part of the Dodecanese island chain in the South-eastern Aegean Sea, off the Anatolian coast of Turkey.

It is also a very small island, around 5 miles long and 2 miles wide. Maybe this is why I have such fond memories of my visit several years ago. You can see most of the sights in a single day.

We visited for a relaxing beach holiday, but detailing every day basking in the sun wouldn’t be the basis for a very interesting read, would it?

Being so small there’s not much to see, or is there? We rented a car for 2 days as I felt this would be long enough for us to uncover just what there is.

In a single day we visited three places of interest, the first being Kos Town which is on the northern tip of the island. Neratzia Castle was a place that we needed to see and see we did.

From what I can read the castle was constructed on the island by the Knights Templar at the end of the 14th century A.D. and was partly destroyed in 1816 by a gunpowder explosion. The Germans also used it as a prison during the 2nd world war.

@bingbabe is rather sensitive to old buildings and history and she picked up some bad vibes from the castle. It’s mostly in ruins now and was full of tourists. There was an entrance cost for the castle, but it was quite nominal.

After getting some ice cream for my daughter who was getting very bored at this point, we moved to the second historical sight of interest in the form of ‘Asklepion’.

On reaching our destination we were greeted with a horde of very friendly and hungry cats who were very grateful for some bread. My daughter was a little wary of them though.

Asklepion was a ‘Temple of Healing’, in old times. A place were the Greek people would come and pray with a problem and make their confessions. This place really is ancient, dating back to times before BC and you can really feel it. Several columns are still intact and there are little or no restrictions on walking right up to these historic pillars and feeling all that history.

It’s also quite elevated and cooler, I guess the Greeks loved a little breeze at times. The views were quite lovely at Asklepion, you can see the sea in the distance far away.

On our way back to our hotel, we spotted a sign on the side of the road, ‘Fortress of Antimachia’. This is the best part of finding new places, spontaneous discoveries, and this one was intriguing to us!

So we ventured off the road on to a sandy dirt track with a ton of dust flying up behind us and drove for the best part of almost a mile to this spooky looking ruin. To make it more even ominous, the place was completely deserted, the gate guardians where you used to pay the entrance fee gone, the guest café deserted too. What was this place?

Heading through the gates and up into what was left of the castle, I felt a chill. Something had happened here once upon a time. It was located next to the ocean, and there were huge defensive walls guarding it from seafaring vessels.

From what I read, it is a medieval fortress built in the 14th century and served as a prison for condemned knights. It was also abandoned in 1840; was this what I was picking up? The feeling of isolation was quite oppressive and @bingbabe was feeling quite disturbed. We left shortly after, still without seeing a soul.

I don’t tend to go back to counties I have visited once, there’s simply too many places to visit in out short lives. However, Kos is probably going to be the exception to the rules. I do have a soft spot for this small island.

No story should be without some sunset scenes and there were plenty of those. I’m always amazed at how quickly the sun sets in the Mediterranean countries. You can literally watch it sink into the ocean within the space of a few minutes, a marvellous sight!!