Still feel lousy but I will endeavour to update y’all anyway. Yesterday was great, I was awoken early by the sound of a gobbling turkey & a crowing rooster followed by the tinkling of bells. For me this is a fairly soothing way to be brought into the consciousness of the day, although I concede the gobbling turkey is a new one for me!
Maria wanted to take me to the castle in Mitilene but before we left she introduced me to her parents. They live in the bottom of the three storey house they built & can walk straight out into their lovely garden. There are fruit trees, chickens, goats, a large water holding pond (in case of fire) & extensive gardens for flowers & veggies.
Mum was making cheese out of the goats milk they harvest themselves. There are two kinds of cheese, a harder type which is made from the first part of the process & a soft ricotta type made from the remainder. I love this, sustainable living at its best. Here the girls are amongst the olive trees, fire going & sun shining & the second pic is the cheese drying in the hanging larder.
After a wander around the garden, Mum came back to us bearing fresh ricotta & said I must try it…how could I refuse?! She is a power house & was baking bread at the same time as cheese making, had already been to see someone that morning & was bustling off somewhere else so couldn’t stand around talking! We sat at the table to spoon fresh ricotta, which Maria covered with honey, omg this honey is next level, made from pine pollen it tastes a bit like treacle, into our faces accompanied by delicious bread. I think I might move in, the hospitality is second to none 😘
I asked what the furnace contraption was & Maria told me that it heated the radiators & water in winter, they have solar for summer & that it burned olive pits which are ground so they look like wheat. Recycling at its best. The olive husk is cheaper than petrol & better for the environment, very efficient & easy to use. You buy it in sacks, put some in the bottom of the furnace, light it with a bit of alcohol & top it up throughout the day. It’s calibrated to sit at the correct temperature & appears to be easy to operate.
After saying our goodbyes Aris dropped us at the castle & Maria took me on a tour, it’s very handy having a certified tour guide as a friend! The Medieval Castle of Mytilene is one of the largest stronghold’s in the Eastern Mediterranean, covering 80,000 square meters. First construction commenced in the 5th century on the site of an ancient acropolis, under Byzantine rule. It was built to protect the island from pirates & was reformed many times over the years, particularly under the domination of the Genovese Gatelouzi family during the 14th century. In 1462, after a brief but violent siege, the castle fell under Ottoman rule & more changes were made, including the lower section close to the sea, of the three part castle construction.
Check out those crenellations In the background! It really is a beautiful time of the year to be seeing things here because of all the flowers & the lack of people. There is just so much to tell about this castle but I will stick to the most interesting bits & try to keep it succinct.
The crypts cover an area underground of 720 square meters & were used over the centuries as a safe place to gather, particularly during times of danger or during hot weather. There are latrines & a water cistern down here & ventilation is achieved via holes formed in the roof, set at different angles to allow for maximum light.
Communal latrines, not sure about them? Imagine the smell & I don’t think nowadays we would feel comfortable being this exposed whilst going about our ablutions?? Never the less, this whole space is an amazing feat of construction & engineering. The shape of the arches, the ventilation, the use of light & the plumbing, all very clever.
Coming up to the surface again we emerged into the sunlight to move onto the next area of the castle & passed a monolithic sarcophagus, made from one huge slab of marble, thought to be the funerary monument of the Gattelusi & Palaiologina families (Genoan & Byzantine). It is embellished with both family’s emblems & is quite a vast monument to behold.
From here we walked to the Tekkes, a Muslim monastery founded by Dervishes in the 16th century. It was part of a bigger tekke & probably had a courtyard, now it is just a one room building with an amazing roof.
Next was the cistern, one of the most important structures of the castle. It stored & supplied the inhabitants of the castle with drinking water, even in the event of a siege. It has a capacity of 400 cubic meters & the inside walls are painted with impervious hydraulic plaster. Shafts channel rain water into the cistern, which is comprised of three vaulted compartments.
Water was also bought to the castle via the aqueduct, part of which I saw with Maria on our walk the previous day. What a feat of engineering eh?!
As we headed towards the exit we passed some women working on an excavated area near the outer wall on the sea side of the castle. There are extensive reconstructive works happening throughout, the newish minister for history/archeology/culture is really proactive in garnering funds for this kind of work. The women were sieving dirt & separating their findings into piles of, actually I’m not sure what was in the piles, but it is painstaking work. It was hot in the sun but they seemed happy enough digging & sieving.
This pic is the view back across the bottom part of the castle to the town & the port where the boats used to come in & unload the cargo which was transported up the river that used to run inland. The area below the castle was a notorious red light district until the 80’s, eh you got a port you got prostitutes, that’s life!
From the castle we headed to the cafe owned by Maria’s brother & sister in law where we had coffee & lunch. People were out in force, shopping, drinking coffee & in many cases carrying what looked like all their worldly possessions around with them in plastic bags. These people are obviously the illegals/refugees that inhabit Mitilene, many of them very obviously not Greek natives. I passed a few women with big loads of stuff on their heads, one of them was even looking at her phone as she walked along. That’s some skill 😲 check out this awesome scooter, so stylish.
We popped into Jumbo on the way home, Greece’s version of the Reject shop, set out like IKEA, where you can’t skip any areas, it is gigantic & sold everything under the sun! I resisted all urges to buy crap & left with a packet of tissues to sop my streaming nose.
On arriving home I took to my bed where I read & watched tv until I fell asleep. Today I have been lazy & that’s as it should be. No creative juices have flowed & I only went into town briefly to get coffee & a sandwich. I did however, meet Mark, a Dutch semi retired river engineer. He is an interesting guy & we passed a pleasant half hour talking about writing, his life around the world & the death of his wife 5 years ago. He is a lover of punk & had music playing from inside, not punk today though. He’s off to Thailand in a couple of weeks so I might catch him again but I might not, who knows? Outside his wall is his massive quad bike which he slowly fangs around the district on, good for him!
I’m in bed watching crap on telly & about to drop off so I’ll post this, since nothing else happened today….night x