Woke early & stayed in bed with the door open listening to the world wake up. Lovely yoga practise on the new mat followed by mushrooms on bread for breakfast outside in the sunshine. Actually managed to do a little bit of Greek homework today! I didn’t bother rushing because I was only planning on going the 10 mins down the road to Molyvos & wasn’t meeting Elena until 5.30pm.
As I was leaving at midday Maria suggested I go to the neighbouring town of Efthalou to visit the natural hot springs for a look & potentially a dip. I fetched my swimming gear & headed off. I thought I’d just pop into Molyvos first for a coffee & as I was walking into the village I ran into Stephen carrying bags of flower pots up the hill. I met Stephen earlier in the week in one of the cafe’s & offered to help him carry his plants home.
He lives at the top of the village & assured me the view was speccy. He wasn’t wrong! The place he rents overlooks the whole of the bay & it’s lovely & quiet up there. I ended up staying for a couple of hours as he shared stories of his life with me. We tried making me a Greek coffee, it was ok but not like I get in the cafe! He’s a lovely chap & has lived quite the life, travelled all over the world & been living in Greece for almost 30 years. I’m bound to spend more time with him over the coming weeks 🙂
When I got hungry I ticked off to find some lunch, at 3pm!! I decided to try the place I had a coffee with my friend Liza last year but lunch was disappointing so I won’t bother to go there again! Lovely view, friendly host but not great fare. I should have gone back to Martin’s but it’s good to try new places.
The weather was beautiful today so I thought I could walk to the harbour to see what was going on down that end of town. There were more people around today & lots of the shops, cafe’s, bars & restaurants are opening. The main market streets were full of people & the shop keepers appear to be starting the season well. The wisteria is still flowering but it’s past it’s peak now.
It’s a feast for the eyes walking around the village & I keep thinking I could take enough photos of doors to fill books! The buildings are the most beautiful stone & all so jumbled together, it doesn’t make sense at times. Some of the shutters & doors are burgundy, some blue & others green or wooden & everywhere are the little patios overflowing with spring blooms in pots.
The harbour was relatively busy with restaurant guests whom I avoided. I wanted to walk to the wall & sit in the shade for 20 minutes to watch the little fishing boats bobbing about . Just as I was reaching the wall I saw old mate from the other day. He was sitting in his boat with his bouzouki playing the most lovely music, so of course I stopped to listen!
Iv’e never heard the bouzouki before, it sounds like a cross between classical guitar, banjo & something old fashioned. It’s a long necked lute with steel strings which is part of a family of instruments that existed in Ancient Greece. Apparently Frank Zappa was a notable player of the bouzouki! You learn something new everyday! Of course after a few serenade songs I was tempted onto the boat! I thought to myself ‘This might be the only chance I get to go on a fishing boat & I want a close up of that beautiful instrument’!
It’s inlaid with mother of pearl & the inside is all pearl with love hearts of pearl & red. It’s a beautiful piece of art & he made it sing, he’s obviously been playing a long time. He told me that he was playing in one of the taverns this evening & Maria tells me that he was playing when she used to be here as a 16 year old, so it’s been a while.
He’s a real gent & handed me on & off the boat very carefully. He was really happy that I was interested & I’m pretty sure he was singing me love songs but since they were in Greek I don’t have a clue what they were about 😆
Once I had disembarked I walked back to meet Elena via the back street to the village centre. On the way I passed some ruins of an ancient baths. A Hellenistic & Roman built establishment it featured a monumental apse, three entrance doors, marble pools & paved mosaics. There isn’t a great deal left now but it would have been a lovely place to soak in a hot bath, the view, had there been no walls would have been stunning.
I spotted a graveyard behind the ruins & will make my way there another day, I do love a graveyard.
It was by now 5.30 & time to meet Elena. I waited for her by this wisteria in the Main Street. I don’t know how old the vines are but you can see by the trunk that they’ve been there a considerable amount of time. It was so peaceful sitting in the street under the shade of the flowers. The world carried on around me & I could hear the bees, voices, scooters, birds & at one point three young girls wandered past singing & after they’d turned the corner I could hear them smooching a cat, so sweet.
Here I am feeling very chilled out 💜
Elena arrived & we walked back towards the port, stopping at Πλατεία Ανδρέα Κυριακου, he used to be the mayor & is the person the square is named after. There are a couple of restaurants under a big old tree & a mini market underneath the house that Elena lives in. It’s a beautiful square & I hadn’t stumbled across it until today. Here is Elena’s place, above the mini market.
There are cats galore here & at one point a white one appeared, jumped up into my lap & settled in for a snooze! Elena had a coffee & I had a fizzy water whilst she gave me a Greek language lesson. I found out that there are 7 vowels, each one corresponding to a planet, a bodily organ & a musical note. Greek conversation is like a sung infinity, I ask you, you respond & so on around in a loop. There is a lot more to the Greek language than I ever realised but Elena is a firm & patient teacher so I think I’m onto a winner there!
She’s a sweet lady & I’m really enjoying spending time with her & being introduced to some of the locals as her friend Jayne from Australia. She was telling me as we walked to the Platia about how Greece was liberated from Turkish rule 80 years after the rest of Greece & how ironic it is that now it is the Turkish who come on holiday to Lesvos & the Greeks are free to run the island as they choose, collecting money from the Turkish tourists. How things can change!
She showed me the home of Eftaliotis, founder of the Mithymna library. His family owned the home & he heard, as a small child, the Turkish soldiers in the castle near his home. He made the decision then that he was going to fight for his country & that is what he went on to do but he fought with his pen. The home is empty at the moment but we looked through the gate to see the space where his father taught lessons at the back of the home.
Elena tells me that Lesvos is the island of harmony, light & music. Birthplace & home to the Archaic Greek poet Sappho, widely regarded as one of the greatest lyrical poets ever. Women were held in high esteem on Lesvos & it is said she operated a school for girls to which wealthy parents sent their daughter to study eloquence.
At 7.30Pm we haded to the other end of town so that Elena could go to liturgy again & I could race home to have the car picked up at 8pm. We arranged that her friend would pick me up tomorrow evening to go & see some live music. Like most things so far here it was a very tenuous, random arrangement!
I am learning to ‘let go’ here, to go more with the flow & accept that things happen in their own time & way. Arrangements are loose, coffees and long, chatting is really important & I really appreciated chatting with Stephen this morning without having anywhere else to be. The ability to live in the moment is in abundance here. All the years of yoga couldn’t give me the ‘in the moment’ practise that I am getting in spades here!
Upon my return home I found that the car is being picked up early in the morning because the car guy is taking some other guests staying here to the airport. I sat up on the patio with Maria & Aris & chatted until late whilst we drank beer & ate kebabs. I’m exhausted tonight, really looking forward to sinking into my little bed xx