Dwindling Days on the Peleponnese

Friends and Family,

Well, another couple of days have slipped by. The weather has continued to be weird (“Global Weirding” as Tom Friedman calls it.) Wednesday was a lovely day as we walked to Drepano for a glass of wine. Alright, a half liter! Read quite a bit and then out to dinner.

One thing that I treasure is our established routine. In fact, it has become so important to us, that anything that might disrupt it becomes a significant irritation. Unconsciously, it is almost exactly what we had in Mexico. We awake a bit earlier here, usually about 5:45 or 6 am. That is largely due to the cacophony of birds that commence their symphony at the sun comes up. There is quite a variation of song birds here and the music they produced is startling. That is our daily alarm clock.

We spend the next 90 minutes reading, feeding any number of cats, drinking coffee and generally getting ourselves going. I take the hour-long walk that has also become the opportunity to pick up a few things at the store. One thing that we have discovered late in our stay here is that the water at Ingrid’s is so “hard” that that it gums up the coffee maker and creates a kind of hard surface on the towels. It also made the coffee taste odd. We have now gone to bottled water and things have improved greatly. The sad things, especially for us Oregonians, is that Greece has no recycling plan. Thus plastic container after plastic container (glass as well) goes into the trash. It feels so odd to be throwing these things away, but there is no place else to dispose of them.

Anyway the morning constitutional over, Polley and I refresh the coffee, catch-up on e-mails, blogs (if I am sufficiently motivated) and some more reading. Then it is into one of the two villages for a glass of wine and a bit of voyeurism. In Tolo, a typical beach town, we watch the array of international visitors, mostly Germans and English, but there are some French, Italians and quite a number of American college students on two or three week summer programs. Tolo is a good base for them as it is relatively close to major antiquities and it has a beach.

Every other day, we walk to Drepano, which as I have mentioned before, is a real, working village. It is a different kind of show we are privy to in this little town. Farm vehicles go up and down the street, old men sit and talk in cafes, women walk children, shop and gossip on shop doorsteps. We have a little place where we can sit under the canopy of a trees, somewhat protected from the sun (when it shines), right in the middle of the village square. It all passes before us.

After the wine, we walk back, about a mile each way and have lunch. Lately we have been taking leftovers home from dinner. So we are now getting two meals for the price of one. Meals generally cost between 15 and 25 euro for the two of us. That is for wine, too much food and lunch the next day. Not too bad!

Siesta, of course, is next and then after 90 minutes or so we are up for a concentrated period of reading before going down to the bar for an ouzo and some nice conversation with Yorgos, Ingrid, assorted guests if they are available. Then it is off to dinner.

Unfortunately, on Wednesday night we tried a new place that we selected solely on it appearance. We were very disappointed! We did, however, come away with a great appreciation for those places we have enjoyed. So in the last 6 days here, we are decided to rotate our three favorite restaurants; It will Niko’s on Thursday, Ilias on Friday, Kastraki on Saturday and one more round on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Next Wednesday we head for Crete.

Yesterday we both found that we were tired, so we drove into Tolo for wine. Are we ever glad we did! Within 10 minutes of arriving, the skies darkened, lightning flashed and thunder echoed. Fortunately we had stopped into a covered café and so we sat for an hour or so and watched people scurry about, many reduced to fleeing on their motorbikes, which are great vehicles in Greece, except when it rains. And rain it did! We finally caught a break in the weather, dashed to our car and got home.

Lunch, siesta and then for a drink and dinner. Niko’s, the little taverna in Drepano (he calls it a tavernetta) has wonderful food. We had their amazing tzatziki, some zucchini fritters and for the first time, they had the stuffed tomatoes on their menu. Actually it was one stuffed tomato and one stuffed green pepper. Delicious! Our Austrian friend, pictured in an earlier blog, stopped by and we shared a 3rd half liter of wine! Thankfully, he heads back to Austria today. We enjoyed talking with him, but he did tend to cling to you once he had found you. Then it was home following two satisfying, uninterrupted days. We are planning to relish the 5 that remain.

Ed and Polley