Yay! I'm here in Andros, in Gavrion to be exact, in an internet cafe. I've been here for three days, and I'm very relaxed at the moment.

First of all, the story of the chapel. Occasionally on Andros, as elsewhere on the Cycladic islands, you will see private homes with a chapel attached. The reasons behind this is not necessarily that the owner of the property is especially religious; more that the owner pays less tax. The only snag is that your chapel is not private, and you must open its doors to the public if they want to worship there. There is a big house outside Gavrion with a chapel attached to it. Of course, no one has taken the opprtunity to worship there; there are plenty of good churches around. One of my friends saw the arrival of the chapel: it is a prefabricated building, and had been put in the back of a lorry. So this lorry rumbled off the boat, and then wheezed up the hill, with the chapel clearly visible in the back. The vehicle at some point broke down or got stuck, and there was a saga about getting the lorry to start again, and the chapel to move on to its final destination. After a pow-wow around the refusenik lorry, a local priest was roped in to say a few prayers and sprinkle some holy water, and the lorry miraculously juddered into life and got going again. They eventually got the chapel up the hill, where it was unloaded and plonked unceremoniously next to the house. I just love the surreal image of a chapel on the back of a lorry. I can picture the conversation between the owner and his mates: "Where did you get that church?" "I got it off the back of a lorry."
Nikos and Ada are still in Gavrion running their bar; last year it was a jazz venue, but for various reasons too complicated to go into - including a tragic death in a motorbike accident - it no longer is a jazz bar; a great pity, as that was a big hit with the Cycladic holidaymakers. There are lots of bars now in Gavrion; too many, perhaps, because it does mean we are spoilt for choice, but I will be recommending one or two later.
Andreas' Steki (a taverna near Fellos beach) still does a roaring trade; Andreas' sons now do the cooking and if you want a good meal in the North part of the island, then this is a good place to have one, and it's not expensive when you think how expensive Paros and Santorini are. The cicadas, the heat and the general fatigue were too much for me, and I fell asleep in my beer.
I was so tired when I arrived that I didn't even go for my customary first swim - in fact I only did that today. How I got here is straightforward enough. I knew that my plane arrived at Athens airport a little late to catch the ferry from Rafina, so I opted for staying in Athens airport for the night (I didn't get any sleep - just a doze) and catching the first bus to Rafina the following morning. It seems that a number of people have cottoned on to the Rafina route to the Cyclades - there were loads of Italian backpackers doing exactly the same thing.
Sorry, I didn't check out the hotels.
On the way across it occurred to me how noisy the journey is - everyone chatting and squawking on the deck, and the roar of the sea underneath, the drone of the engines, the rattle of the deck. I looked out to see if any porpoises or dolphins were playing alongside the ship, but they weren't. It does sometimes happen. But I lay back and breathed in that sea air and felt the warmth all around and dozed off for a while.
When I arrived on Andros, it was the middle of the day and after I had established myself, I snoozed for a few hours.
Sleep seems to be a theme.
When I woke up the first morning after my arrival, I was greeted by the most amazing thunderstorm, and it chucked and chucked with rain, and blazed with lightning. It was more like the winter than the summer. In the cool of the next morning, I sat out on a small terrace, looked out over the view, and observed that in the early morning you could hear the crow of a cock, the cheep of birds, the bleats of sheep, the eyeore of a donkey, the barks of a dog, the zither of the first cicada of the day. By the afternoon, all those animal sounds had disappeared, except the cicada, who had now been joined by his/her siblings and were filling the valley with their rhythmic sounds. All very bucolic and rural for a jaded city dweller like me.
I haven't done anything yet, but once I've gathered myself together I will be.