We're currently in the bit of Greece that sticks out far to the east of the main peninsula. Today we took our little Toyota half-way up the finger of land situated right on the eastern border.


Both our destinations are situated very close to the Turkish border (which coincides here with the River Maritsa, aka Evros), and several times we saw work that looks to be adding to the border fence, whose goal is to thwart incoming migrants (there's a bit more context here).

Anyway, Didymoteicho first. It was bitterly cold today, with low temperatures aggravated by a sharp wind. So it was actually quite a pleasure to climb (warmingly) up to the Byzantine-era castle.

I knew there was a castle here, but I wasn't expecting such amazing views -- or the wealth of atmospheric rock-cut caves (which were used as store-rooms, tanks, or shelters depending on need).









Back down in the town, we were ready for a hot coffee (and a toilet...). It's always hard to pick the right coffee-shops here. Unless you press your nose against the glass before you go in, you really don't know quite what you're getting yourself into. Is it a coffee-and-cake-style venue? Or more of a drinking place? Our choice this time wasn't the best. The coffee was OK, but it was one of those old-men cafes where I always feel I'm too much of an object of curiosity. And no visible toilet... Maybe there was one out the back, but asking would have drawn even more attention from the old guys.

So we headed off south to Soufli, our next objective.


We parked up on one of Soufli's un-busy streets. And right opposite was the Saloon cafe. Just perfect... Delightfully warm (with a big fire roaring), and not crowded, it offered nice music, excellent toilets, and fabulously thick hot chocolate (a huge mug of it, just what you need on a cold day):


Soufli is known for its silk. Confusingly, there seem to be several silk museums, but this is the one we visited:




They give you a little tour (which is free), and then leave you to read the information, and look at the exhibits at your leisure.

Silkworms are amazing things... They start off as eggs the size of pin-pricks. The tiny caterpillars they produce munch their way through a ton of mulberry leaves, and grow exponentially. Once it's time for them to go into their cocoons, it takes them just two days to wrap themselves in a single thread that's two kilometres long...

Left to their own devices, they eventually emerge from these cocoons. But traditional silk production doesn't leave them to their own devices, of course. The pupae are killed inside the cocoon, and this is then unthreaded. Which is a bit harsh. But as the moths would in any case live just a few days, mating but not eating, drinking, or flying, I don't feel too bad about it... I think their caterpillar days were probably the most fun.










We bought a scarf for me... An early birthday present. At EUR 22, it was a fair bit more expensive than the one it's ostensibly replacing (which I bought on 25 November 2012 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for -- I can't remember if it was USD 1 or USD 2). That one is now literally falling to pieces (it has had a hard life -- it was my motorbiking mask all the time we were in Indonesia, for example), so if this one serves me anywhere near as reliably, it will turn out to be good value...


Soufli is a picturesque kind of place, which reminded us both -- for reasons we can't quite fathom -- of a Wild West town:



There are also some very handsome buildings:



Time to head home after that. With one slightly farcical interlude en route. In the cafe, we'd spotted some publicity for a local winery. It purported to be in a village that was literally just a few kms away from Soufli, so we thought we'd pop in on the way back to Alexandroupoli.

There was a map on their website. And Ms G. Maps was confident she knew where it was. But we drove round and round that village without finding hide nor hair of it... Not even a sign...


So eventually we gave up, and bought the most local wine we could find in the supermarket:


Excellent day out. Full of serendipity.