In case you might of notied I have been away - both in person (to the Greek island of Thassos) and one of my servers has been offline - so I fear I have lost a lot of email and have been unsubscribed from various lists.
Before I went away I was working on my sUp3r s3kr1t pr0j3ct, which I was hoping to release before I left so that it would be spidered for a week or two, but holidays and house-buying have eaten into my 'spare' time so much that I managed only a small ammount of hacking. Hopefully next week I will have the site online - the prototype at home is pretty cool.
Thassos is cool. We spent a week there and, while the accomodation was on the 'basic' side and my wifes health can limit what we do, I think we both enjoyed a well earned break. The highlights were probably Aliki (Amazing Beach, roman/greek/byzantine ruins) and archangelos (A monestary run by nuns that is opposite Mount Athos and holds part of a nail of the cross as well as some 18th century icons).
Thassos has so much history that it is an amateur archeologist or photographers dream - in Thassos Town alone you have an Odeon, an Agora, an Ampitheatre, numerous temples and gateways and arches, varying from well preserved and looked after too a pile of rocks overgrown with weeds. There is a nice walk along the back of the town and up the peninsula by the old harbour that takes you past a temple to hercules, a sanctuary of athena, the ancient agora, the odeon, an archway, the ampitheatre, the acropolis and a larger sancturary of athena top the hill. It takes about 30 minutes and involves quite a climb but the views and ruins are amazing. The ruins are also entirely free to access and pretty much untouched (sometimes unkempt) so you don't get fences or barriers or plastic protection and can wander feely amonst the lizzards and rocks without modernity sticking in your face or your photos.
I think we could go there again several times and still find new stuff to see and do, assuming we can find the money and some better accomodation. I would reccomend Thassos to anyone wanting to get a feel for real greek islands - the locals were very friendly and the food good, the mountain villages and even much of Thassos Town was very greek and quite traditional in areas.
