Samos Day 1

As we expected, at 4:00 AM, both of us were wide awake ...  Bruce was able to settle back to sleep and Vicky stepped onto the terrace to take in the night air.  A lovely little pussycat was making (her) rounds and after glancing up at me in a slightly aloof gesture of welcome, walked past me into the open hallway of the hotel and took her place on a sofa.  Huh ... must own the place or something.

I was looking for some light to read by and by the time I came back to the hallway,  the little cat was gone from the sofa I took her place for a while and read until I was sleepy enough to catch a few more winks.  Next thing we knew, it was 7:00 and we had slept for nearly 12 hours!   Nice.

Breakfast is what you would typically find in Greece, with sugared cereal, a tang like breakfast drink, bread for toasting, canned peaches and  .... wait for it .... greek yogurt with honey.  That stuff is ambrosia (Melissa and Christina ... we already missed having you both on this trip).  This greek yogurt is the consistency of soft serve ice cream (I don't want to know the fat content) and drizzled with Samos honey which is distinctly flavored, apparently because the bees use pine pollen.  Go figure.  Why don't our bees do that?

Checking out breakfast

We head to Vathi to meet Kathy at the appointed time of 10:00 at Agios Stefanidos (sic) Church.  I'm glad I had the phone number on my phone!  When there was no Kathy to be found, we called her niece, Maria, in Vathi.  After some translation assistance from some ladies exiting the church on the phone with Maria, it turns out that Kathy is still at her summer dwelling in Limnonaki as her nephew Dimitri is staying at his summer home for an extra week and since he's Kathy's 'wheels', Kathy's plans are now extended by a week too.   We gave up our 4-wheel drive rental so can only hope the car we have can manage the rude trails to Limnonaki.   We phone Kathy and say that we will come to Limnonaki as soon as we can.

Headed to the main port of Samos, Vathi (you can see a ferry docked if you look really, really close)

There's a church, but there's no Kathy!

So, off we head to Limnonaki.  We've made the trip several times, but we still had to do some backtracking as the roads are not well signed.  In fact many of them aren't signed at all.  As Vicky navigates between the map and the GPS, Bruce is using his recall of past trips.  The roads are a tangle of donkey trails between olive groves that are hundreds of years old and fig trees leaning into the roadways with their distinctively shaped leaves.  Occasionally some oncoming traffic makes you draw breath as you choose between potentially sideswiping the other guy or rolling of the darn mountainside. We did alright and even helped some French tourists who were wanting to take the scenic route around Samos.  That's hilarious ... it's all scenic!!!!

Some joyful tears from Kathy and a good visit.  The little settlement is all but deserted now as most people only use these places in the summertime and for fishing.  There is a little church close by so there had been many worshippers that we met along the road (a Limnonakian traffic jam).  

The main road to Limnonaki ... no ... wait ... the ONLY road to Limnonaki!

Vicky and a windswept Kathy

Bruce hasn't lost his 'animal' attraction.  LOL!!  O.K. so maybe it's his lunch they're after.

Once back at the hotel, we prepared a snack, el fresco .... nom,nom, nom.  It included a leftover loaf of communion bread that was given to Kathy from the church this morning.  Look at the beautiful design on the top!  Likely marking the blessing of the bread shared by the villagers.  

 As we set our table we had a chance to meet our hotel neighbor, Peter from Sweden.  O.K. class ... remember the picture in the last post showing Turkey in the distance and the rocky outcrop on our beach?  Well, apparently at about 6:00 this morning a small boat came into the cove and six people, including an elderly lady and 4 'young people' (children?) quickly disembarked and scrambled up the rocks.  Shortly afterward a coastguard boat appeared and started searching about.  The conjecture is these were people seeking refuge via Turkey.  That used to happen a lot and there are continuous patrols in this narrow straight between Turkey and Greece. There are many thousands of Syrian refugees in Turkey and it gives one pause to consider who these people might have been and their reason for taking a risk like that.   What a contrast to our day.  Count our blessings indeed, marked by the inscription on the bread.  

Now for some beach and then the buffet at the restaurant later tonight.   Tomorrow we have another visit with Kathy .... and it's somebody's biiiiiiirrrrrthdaaaayyy.