After a calm and peaceful night, we awoke to see the island of Kos in the soft light of dawn. It looked like it was going to be a fine day.

Judging by our easy approach to the port at Kos town, we got the impression that the harbour was not well sheltered from bad weather, which might explain why our ship was unable to dock during the windy weather a couple of days earlier. Luckily, there was no such problem today. It was really calm.

We had chosen to do one of the group excursions today (yes, we did sometimes do that!). The one we chose was "Asklepion and Zia village" which seemed to promise the chance of some sightseeing in the mountains (with the added bonus of some shopping!) as well as some archaeology. In hindsight, it was the right choice.

The furthest point of our excursion today was to be Zia village, more or less in the middle of the island.

In ancient Greece and Rome, an asclepeion was a healing temple, sacred to the god Asclepius. Starting around 350 BC, the cult of Asclepius became increasingly popular and pilgrims flocked to asclepieia to be healed. They slept overnight and reported their dreams to a priest the following day. He prescribed a cure, often a visit to the baths or a gymnasium. Since snakes were sacred to Asclepius and were often used in healing rituals, non-venomous snakes were left to crawl on the floor in dormitories where the sick and injured slept. Hippocrates is said to have received his medical training at this asclepieion.

After our visit to the Asklepion, we drove west toward the centre of the island. We then turned off and drove towards the hills and the pretty village of Zia, from where we took this photo.

We worked out that the island in the middle of the photo is Pserimos (Greek), with Kalimnos (also Greek) to the left and the coast of mainland Turkey (not far from Bodrum) on the right.

It looked like there were a few more interesting sights further up the hill, so we strolled up the winding village road, thinking it would lead us to them. Well it did, but it was quite a long way round. We passed this pretty parrot on the way.

We found the shortcut down the hill and were soon back in the heart of the village, where we had a few minutes to wait for our coach before our return trip to Kos town (bit more shopping!). The guide offered to stop en-route and let people off at the site of the odeon, which was within walking distance of the port. We decided to go and have a look. We were very pleased that we did.

Across the road from the Odeon is the Gymnasium. We walked through it as we meandered towards the port.