Christmas Eve

 Saturday December 24th

Yesterday afternoon, one of my friends here got my little Vodaphone router working again. It’s handy to have it, as there is no Wi-Fi in this house, and it’s a good as a back up if the Wi-Fi fails in the house on Serifos. In the end, the set to defaults trick did the business, it’s often successful if you can brave doing it, hopefully knowing the relevant settings to put back! In this case, we had something similar to compare the settings. 

Photo interlude - Sifnos harbour near sunset time

I have been sending emails and messages to my friends around the world and it’s great getting replies back with news and Christmas greetings. I like Christmas cards but they really aren’t practical in my current situation! When I in the port area, I spotted a neat Sifnos walking map, that might be useful in the future. It showed the path that I went on and the Apollonia walk we did yesterday. I took my friends rubbish away with me yesterday afternoon, but I did not walk past a dumpster, so I left it outside this house. Big mistake. I heard this loud rustling noise and it was being torn apart by a group of cats. That will teach me! In the evening we had a lovely meal in Cameron, I loved this.

After the meal our friend introduced us to a card game, called Chase the Eights, it’s basically a game where you want to put down all the cards you are dealt, but based on the previous card, you maybe thwarted! Trying to remember the results of the various cards being put down before your go was hard, but our friend kept an eye on this until we started to remember. The worst thing that, we all got caught out on was you are meant to say last card, when you have one left, forgetting to say this and you were hit with a penalty card pick up! It was really good fun. We were also celebrating with this friend, as one of his sons had just had his first baby born, so we were wetting the babies head too.

Today after walking to my friends house, we drove to Apollonia, we fancied a walk to Kastro, by way of Kato Petali. The walk was on the map, and it looked like it would be nice in todays lovely weather. We bought some lunch from the local bakers and headed off. On the way there was a small herd of cows, not really behaving themselves at all.

The walk was through small fields with olive trees, and other produce growing. We were walking between walls of local stone,  the path initially was very good, it looked like a type of marble. Everything is nice and green, with the clover we see everywhere. We saw a friendly donkey, and some sheep with very small lambs, scampering around. Around us there were the rolling mountains and views back to where we started. One thing you realise, maybe as a result of the larger base population, is this island has over three hundred churches. We did see a small field with at least one pig in it, I have never seen one on these islands before.

I was hanging onto the dog, he was really enjoying the walk and sniffing around. I think he was looking for lizards, the sun might have brought them out. Eventually Castro revealed itself, it looks a bit like Hora but is not on such a pointy mountain as Hora is.

At this point the path wasn’t so easy going, it was a bit up and down and the surface was a bit troublesome. But we carried on. Castro’s windmills came into view, unfortunately they don’t have their sails. We could also see down to the sea and more churches! 

We had our lunch in Castro and then headed back by way of the road. It’s wasn’t as exciting, but we did see a pair of ducks in the long grass. We got back to Apollonia and at the first cafe we saw we popped in. I gave the dog some water and I said in Greek to the guy who was also sitting outside that the dog was very thirsty ( he understood). Again two simple words, but good for my practice ! When we got back to the house here in Kamares the good old Dionisios Solomos was in port, for one more delivery of people and goods for this special island. We are off to another friends for dinner tonight, they and yet another friend on this island are coming over for Christmas tomorrow ! As you might imagine my right hand has been stroking a very sleepy dog, after his long walk!

Happy Christmas Everyone!