Excursions in Itea
easyCruise offers guided tours to various interesting sites at all the destinations. We have selected these special tours for you to enjoy, which represent particular highlights of the destination.
Excursions (purchased on board)
Excursion: Galaxidi
Duration: 4 hours
Price: € 35 per person
Early in the afternoon, there will be an optional excursion to the noble Galaxidi, a picturesque seaside village where you will spend about 4 hours discovering its beauty at your leisure. Galaxidi has a heritage of 4000 years and is a city which many invaders tried to conquer - the Franks, Catalans, the Knights of Rhodes and Turkish Pirates. Galaxidi resisted, and today stands proud as one of Greece’s most attractive resorts.
On Ash Monday, villagers there mark the end of carnival season and the beginning of Greek Orthodox Lent by throwing over 3,000 pounds of flour at one another. This is a well known event called “alevromoutzouromata”, or “smearing each other with flour ", where intense preparations for “war” are made by the villagers by dying bag upon bag of flour with food colouring and paint their faces with charcoal. Authorities cover historical buildings with plastic tarps so they are not damaged by the clouds of dyed flour. And revelers, at least those who know what they are in for, wear goggles, rags, surgical masks and overalls with some keeping windbreaker hoods tightly cinched around their faces to ward off and protect their eyes from the flying starch.
On the day itself, the ringing of cowbells marks the start of the war and Galaxidians and visitors from across Greece march through the town, dance to traditional music and, of course, pummel each other with flour. Afterwards, there is hardly a carnival-goer not covered from head to toe in flour. Many jump into the sea to wash off -- prior to a long evening out in the town's tavernas.
