In which we see our valiant walkers find respite on a veranda, capture a stone-chat on camera, and deal with a large plate of meat.
Down that hill (see yesterday’s post if you haven’t already) and we find ourselves at the Catacombs. Not sure if it’s been done on purpose or by the weather but there are now four openings; the old one (well, they are all old dummy! How old and for what reason built are other questions), where you drop down into the hole in the ground, which is actually a roof-collapse I think; an apse collapse per’aps? Then there are two areas where the rocks have slid away leaving gaps acting like windows into one of the side chambers, though these could have been doors at one point; and then one other entrance that looks again like a collapse, but where you can get down and inside, to stand on the bone and goat poo covered floor. Worth a careful look around if you are visiting.
Next door is the church, or rather the three chapels, and the mosaic where we stopped to make out the man with the camel, a deer, the partridge, a boat under sail and a something-else in the old, Roman floor. And then, after a short walk down, we were at sea level and on the way back – via a stop off to see Jeanette and Todge and be offered a welcome glass of wine on the veranda.
The route back that we took was around the coast road where we saw a raven, a stone chat and a goldfinch or two. Neil got some shots of some of the birds which I will share if he shares them with me. We also passed Habib and Velocity of their way for a swim – it was a warm day though cloudy at times, and wandered back into Yialos about four hours after we’d started from Horio.
We passed a new gathering of refuges at the police station, having noted that a couple of the impounded boats are now being kept over at the old fish farm, a couple are still in Yialos, and noted that the Christmas lights are up, but were not yet turned on.
Lunch was a bit of a meat feast at Olivia where a litre of wine is only €7.00, which is a bit of a bargain as at most other places it’s at least €5.00 for only half a litre.
We considered the bus, which was due to set off having long returned from Roukouniotis, as it was now getting towards dusk, but instead headed up the ‘lazy steps’, which, according to some book I read, are not the lazy steps at all; they are further along the coast road near the Port Police station. Up into Horio and, as Yiannis Rainbow is in Athens having his operation and that bar is closed, stopped at Lefteris’ for one on the way home. And then, as it was still too early to get home, stopped at Petros and Zoi’s Village Café for one more on the way to being on the way home, and then, just because it was such a cosy place to be, had one more one more before finally heading home (having been to the supermarket and caused havoc with the picture of the sacrificial altar).
And then to an evening of watching the new Spiderman film to about a third of the way in before falling asleep at around nine in the evening. Now that’s how you spend a Sunday on Symi in the winter.
