Day 42: Harvesting up a storm

Today's forecast was for rain in the afternoon/evening, so Johannes decided it was time to harvest his olives. So while Kate, Egle and Flora went off to get cat supplies, the girls started helping him strip the trees - Zoe still in her onesie. This involved using special electric beaters - long aluminium poles with some rubber prongs on the end that vibrate rapidly, shaking the olives off. Johannes also cut lots of branches off that the girls then combed with small rake-like implements. After a while, Johannes's nephew turned up and the five of us spent the rest of the day making our way through the trees around the house, eventually building up a pretty impressive pile of olives. 

 

Luckily, the rain held off until we had finished, but when it arrived, it arrived in volume. After dinner, a thunderstorm settled in over the island, and we all stood around on the verandah watching the lightning flash all around us as wet cats rubbed themselves against our legs.

Day 40: A walk thwarted

When Kate and the girls walked to Delphini beach with Flora, she told them that it was possible to walk around to the next beach to the north, so this afternoon, we drove to Delphini and set off along the coast path. 

The walk was lovely – and very fragrant thanks to the native thyme and sage that we kept brushing as we walked - but the path slowly became less distinct and eventually petered out at the base of a ridge that ran all the way down to the water and very effectively blocked our path. We started to climb the hill to see if we could find a way over, but Kate and the girls gave up pretty quickly and headed back to the car. I kept on going and eventually made it to a break in the dry stone wall that ran down the top of the ridge and was rewarded with a great view down to the beach. I then walked back high along the hill, passing numerous pink cyclamen flowers that had obviously come up recently but were sadly already mostly drying up.

Day 39: And back again

Another lovely day, another trip to the beach for volleyball and a swim. The water was dead, dead flat and a bit chilly but staggeringly clear. We were greeted on the way home by our friendly Greek granny (Kate informs me that she's actually Johannes's sister), who expressed her disbelief once again that we were still swimming – even going so far as to demonstrate the number of layers she was wearing (still including a scarf). Kate and I were walking ahead of the girls, so we gave her Zoe's fleece and she walked down and handed it over, admonishing both girls for their irresponsibility as she did so.

Day 38: Back to the beach

The wind has died and the sun is out and it's warm again! So, naturally, we headed for the beach again today, much to the consternation of the be-scarfed Greek grandma we pass on the way there, who clearly thinks we're crazy and isn't afraid to tell us so in rapid-fire Greek.

Of course, the sun went behind some cloud when we got there, so we played a bit of rudimentary beach volleyball first to warm up. While we were playing, one of our ex-pat acquaintances, a middle-aged Dutch woman, rode up on her moped wearing a bath robe and enquired about her Swedish friend's kitten. The water, when we finally made it in, did feel a bit chillier, but by then, the sun was back out and we didn't feel quite so crazy for going in.

After dropping in at home we headed back out to Delphini, the beach that we walked around the coast to back on day 12. This time we walked along the road, spotting our new friend Goliath looking very much at home sitting on a chair outside one of the houses. Kate and the girls stopped to pull seeds out of a sunflower and were greeted by a lovely all-white cat – not something we've seen very often up to now.

Day 37: Forsooth, I have lost a tooth!

There's a little park across the road from us and because the road is so quiet and we can see the park from the terrace, we often let the girls go over there on their own. Today, they returned not long after they had left. Turns out that Zoe had somehow managed to get her front tooth caught in Sarah's clothing while they were playing on the slide and pulled it out. We were kinda relieved as over the past week or so, it had become progressively wobblier and shifted position slightly, giving her a rather wonky smile. The only problem was that she had given the tooth to Sarah to carry home and she had managed to drop it on a path made from small white stones, so we had to ask the tooth fairy to go and find it herself.

Before

After

I'm sure it's here somewhere

Day 36: Lunch with Flora; ice cream with Mrs Bates

In the morning, Flora came around with three of her dogs and she, Kate and the girls took them for a walk to Delphini – the next beach around from us. It was incredibly blustery and they came back later looking rather windblown. The girls then helped Johannes to plough his vegetable bed in preparation for planting some spinach.

Along the route that we take to get to the beach there's a mysterious and alluring taverna that only seemed to open for lunch on weekends. As we walked down for a swim, we would see tables of locals having long, leisurely meals there and wish that we could join in. Kate mentioned it to Flora and learned that it was run by a guy who did it almost as a hobby – opening when he wanted to, serving what he felt like cooking. We were intrigued and arranged to have lunch there with Flora.

There were several full tables when we arrived and it took us a little while to be served. There were no menus – the owner/chef/waiter told Flora what was on offer and she translated for us. It all sounded so good that we ordered too much, so we reluctantly chose a few dishes to take off the order.

The food, when it came, was lovely – simple dishes cooked well – a fresh salad of cucumber, tomato, olives and capers; braised squid and octopus; slices of roasted pork; a rich tomato and cockerel casserole, fragrant with cinnamon; and a skewer of chargrilled pork with the ubiquitous flatbread, which had been put on the grill and seasoned with salt, pepper and dried oregano; all washed down with a little aluminium jug of white wine. Inevitably, Flora knew several of the other diners, one of whom sent over another jug of wine for the table. As Flora doesn't drink and Kate was going to have to drive later, the job of emptying both jugs fell to me, a challenge that I valiantly took on and proudly completed. 

 

On the walk home, we were greeted by a gorgeous fluffy tabby with the most amazing paws - they were a different colour to the rest of her legs and looked enormous (it may have been an optical illusion brought about by the colour difference), and when she moved them, the shifting fur made them change colour. 

It was now time for me to meet the mysterious Mrs Bates, an 83-year-old British ex-pat who Flora helps out most days. For most of the time we had been here, we had heard stories about Mrs Bates from Flora and Egle, the Lithuanian volunteer who's also living here. Kate had finally met her a few days ago and not long after that, she called to invite us for lunch with her and her Australian friend Lorraine. As we had already arranged our lunch with Flora, we settled on tea in the afternoon.

So, we hopped in the car and drove a short way up into the hills to where Mrs Bates lives with her 14 Cavalier King Charles spaniels. Barefoot, dressed in form-fitting all black and very sprightly for her 83 years, she invited us in and we sat together in a large, high-ceilinged room by a sweet little pot belly stove. Everyone on the island is obviously feeling the cold – Flora is wearing a big parka now – and Mrs Bates had lit a fire in the stove, making the room rather stifling and intensifying the all-pervading background odour of wet dog. She went off to the kitchen and brought out a tub of ice cream, which she, the girls and I proceeded to polish off, and then she let the dogs out for the girls to play with in the yard.

A knock on the door and the barking of dogs announced the arrival of Lorraine, who moved to the island 35 years ago but is heading back to Australia in a few days. Following the breakdown of her marriage and the drying up of her English-tutoring work due to Greece's economic problems, she has decided to move 'home', taking her (naturally) reluctant 24-year-old son with her. We all had a great chat and Lorraine visibly both relaxed and perked up – the move is obviously a big wrench and pretty stressful, and the chance to talk to some fellow Australians about her plans seemed to give her a new feeling of optimism and excitement about what she was doing.

After a while, Sarah came in complaining that she felt a bit odd. She was wheezing and a little flushed and it was clear that she was having an allergic reaction to the dogs. This was interesting in itself, as she hasn't had a reaction to the cats – it would seem that she's more sensitive to canines than felines. It also gave us an excuse to make a move for home – it was well into the afternoon by then - and we gathered up our stuff and bid our farewells.

Life is sweet

I'm not sure when Kate and I developed our taste for baklava, but I'm pretty sure it was back in our university days. My memory is a bit hazy, but I seem to recall that you could buy it from the student union and it was cheap and lovely. Kate discovered recently that you could get it in Waitrose, so she would buy some occasionally, but it never quite lived up to our memories.

As we got closer to Greece – and then into Greece itself - we started to see it here and there, and tried it a few times. Some was pretty good, some pretty indifferent. Kate's a particularly big fan, and was always on the lookout wherever we went, but despite going into numerous bakeries around Syros, we hadn't seen any. Then, during our exploration of the southern part of the island, I stopped at a very smart-looking bakery by the name of Ntanos in the small beach-side town of Finikas and saw what looked like a pretty good example.

And it was! Oh, my, how it was. I think we both agree that it's the best we've ever had. The pastry is crunchy on top and soft and sticky with syrup on the bottom. The syrup itself is incredibly light and just the right sweetness. There's a flavour in there that I can't quite put my finger on – it's not so coarse as to simply taste of honey - but it's so nice that I've licked the plate afterwards on several occasions. I think there might be some walnuts in there, giving it a hint of bitterness to offset the sweetness, as well as some pistachios. And I'm sure you'll agree that it looks really lovely from a purely visual standpoint.

The bakery has two other outlets in Ermoupolis but bizarrely, only the shop out in the sticks in Finikas sells the baklava. In truth, it isn't actually baklava – it's called something different here. We asked the woman behind the counter what it's really called but her reply left us none the wiser. Apparently the name refers to the place in Greece from which they come, but we couldn't decipher where that was either.

Our other great food-related discovery has been the Greek flatbreads. We were served them in 'our' restaurant in Ermoupolis and they formed the bread part of our gyros the other day – but the good news is that you can buy them from the supermarket. They come frozen in packs of ten or more and they're super cheap – a ten-pack only costs a couple of euros.

Chuck them into a hot frying pan with a tiny bit of vegetable oil and they're amazing with tzatziki and a cold beer. Even better, fry up some onion, garlic, mince, paprika, cumin seeds, ground cumin and turmeric, then smear some tzatziki onto a warm flatbread, roll it into a cone and spoon in some meat, fresh tomato and lettuce. Yum!