Lamb Dish from a Science Fiction Novel

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I think that our blog might be appealing to the wrong audience. I notice that the two posts from last year's trip that have been read the most often are "Topless Sunbathing with a Difference" and "Indecent Bottle Openers". I think I might need to take a bit more care with the titles from now on.

We head off towards Myrtos Beach, which is only about a ten minute drive from Assos. Issy thinks that it might be safe for us to drive there without her needing the assistance of her coma-inducing drugs. She tells me that as long as I drive at the same speed all the time, she thinks that she'll be alright. I tell her that if I drive around the hairpin bends at the same speed as I drive between them, I'll probably drive off the cliff into the sea. On the other hand, if I drive between the bends at the same speed as I drive around them, it'll take us about three days to get there.

The road down to the beach is about as steep and windy as the road into Assos, and the views are stunning. This place is clearly very popular, and parking seems to be at a premium. We quickly find ourselves in a traffic jam, and the nearest available parking spot is what seems like several kilometres up the road from the beach. Hmmm. We seem to have left our run a bit late. We decide that maybe we'll come back another time, perhaps a bit earlier in the day (cue 7am?) , when hopefully there aren't quite so many people here.

So it’s back to Assos for a cooling dip. A Greek American lady wading in the shallows asks us if we know whether it's possible to drive up to the Venetian Fort. It’s not, but she doesn’t seem disappointed enough at this devastating news to prevent her chatting to us. She says that she was born in Greece, but moved to the States about twenty years ago. She comes back to visit her mother twice a year, sometimes only for the weekend, and sometimes she just turns up without telling her mum that she's coming. I hope her mum doesn't go away too often. She says that we should visit the mountains of mainland Greece, which she says are beautiful, and are usually ignored by tourists. She tells us that she’s just come back from visiting a mountain spring with her family to get away from the heat. She says that the water there comes out of the ground at three degrees Celsius. She's careful to add the word "Celsius", although presumably if it was Fahrenheit it'd be coming out as ice blocks. Even so, that seems like an extreme way of getting away from the heat. She didn't say she actually swam in the water, and if she did she's keeping any signs of frostbite well hidden.

Issy says that she feels like walking, so we head on up the hill towards the Venetian Fort along the rougher of the two tracks around the cliff face. We‘re keen to get a look at the buildings inside the fort that I didn't get to when I came up here earlier in the week. If the bars on the windows are anything to go by, some of the ruins look like they might have been part of the prison that we read was here at one stage. The smell in one building is foul. I hope this wasn’t the quarantine station. I wonder what bubonic plague smells like; I hope you can’t catch it just by smelling it.

It’s hard to stop taking endless photos. The views are mesmerising, and I think again that this must be one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Issy says that we should rank all our destinations. She says that Assos should start as a five out of ten, and we should then move it up or down the rankings as we visit other places. She says one of our destinations has to be a five out of ten, and until we've seen the others, Assos must start as a five. If this is a five, I can't wait to see whatever’s going to trump it.

We have dinner at the restaurant in the village square. Issy orders soup, but the waiter says that they haven't made any tonight. She then points to another dish on the menu, which our then waiter proceeds to explain is a traditional Kefalonian dish of lamb, wrapped in lamb's gut, with a sauce made of lamb's brains and lamb's testicles, garnished with a lamb's eye. He can see Issy turning green. He says that the only people who order the dish after hearing the description are from Scotland, and everyone else tells him they think it sounds like something out of a science fiction novel. Issy says that she might instead just opt for the sausages....

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