The day started with
the beginning of our cat tuition – lessons on who needs to be fed
where and with what. I've since done a quick census and I reckon that
there must be about 35 to 40 cats that hang around in the vicinity of
the house. Two or three of those sleep and eat in the kitchen, about
10 or 12 sleep in or out of cages in a special shed (where they also
get fed) and the rest fend for themselves.The girls started to pick up the cats' names straight away, but I'm still struggling.
At breakfast, we
were joined by Jacky's Scottish friend Marjory, who had flown over
from Fife to accompany Jacky on her mercy mission back to the UK –
the two of them were going to transport six (later revised to five as
one of them was diagnosed with a fatal disease known as FIP) cats
over in Jacky's disturbingly small car. This would involve getting
the ferry from Syros to Pireaus, driving across Greece to the port of
Patras, catching the 24-hour ferry to Ancona in Italy, driving from
there to Calais and getting the Eurotunnel to Folkestone, and then
finally driving to London. Breakfast turned out to be a very long and
leisurely affair – finally brought to an end by Marjory's quiet but
firm insistence that they should probably start preparing for their
journey (Jacky clearly doesn't do anything in a hurry).
In order to get out
of their way, we decided to go and check out the beach. Now, when
Jacky had driven back to her house the previous night, she had taken
the back way, and in our tired, disoriented state, it felt like her
house was quite a long way from the beach. Both of us had felt our
hearts drop as we drove further up the hill, convinced that we were
staying too far away to walk down for a swim. So, it was a great
relief when Jacky told us it was an easy walk - and upon making that
walk, we discovered that we could be there in about five minutes.
The little
settlement of Kini proved to be quite sweet – just a collection of houses
and tavernas (four of which were open), a few small hotels and a
couple of mini-markets. It's situated on a wide, round bay and has a
long sandy beach fringed with palms and a type of small salt-tolerant
cypress tree (known locally as the armirikia tree). The sea was dead flat when we arrived and the shallow
water was a bit on the warm side, but Kate and the girls had a nice
paddle as I explored Kini itself, looking for somewhere to have
lunch.
I settled upon a
taverna by the name of Two Cicadas on the Armirikia Trees, where we
ordered the mandatory tzatziki, some tabouleh and a couple of sausage
dishes – and two beers (we've settled on Fix as our tipple of
choice – you can get a half-litre bottle at the supermarket for
less than a euro and there's even a 14-cent refundable deposit on the
bottles; and it goes down very nicely). Looking through the menu, we
spotted something that we would go on to see regularly in other
restaurant menus – virtually all of the seafood is cooked from
frozen. The Med has largely been fished out and getting hold of fresh
fish on Syros is quite a task - one that we still haven't achieved
after more than a week here.
The meal was lovely,
marred only by the fact that the cypresses were in flower and gave
Kate terrible hay fever – she was snuffling and sneezing for the
rest of the day. It also gave us a bit more of an insight into
Syros's stray-cat situation as about ten hungry felines swarmed
around our feet throughout the meal.
After lunch, Kate
and I made ourselves busy around the house, sweeping paths and
generally tidying up. There's a small walled garden attached to the
main house that has a stone-built covered alcove in it, and I
gathered up all of the bits and pieces that had accumulated in the
garden and put them in the alcove – it's in this garden that we now
eat our dinners.
Later, I cooked some
some pasta for everyone and then we sat around and watched Jacky and
Marjory pack – their ferry wasn't due to leave until 2am – before
saying goodnight and goodbye to, and exchanging hugs with, the
intrepid cat couriers.
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| In case you're wondering where Syros is... |
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| Kini is on the central-west coast |
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