Last Day in Paleros

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Yia su, which means hello, all.
Got woken this morning by the cellphone tone and got the news of the earthquake in Wellington. It sounds damn scary and we hope all our friends and rellies have escaped with no damage to their houses. It's times like these we wish we didn't have a pole house on an unstable hillside. We're leaving Paleros a day early as we have to get out of the apartment tomorrow. So we are taking another taxi to the port city of Igoumenitsa, spending a night there and catching a ferry to Corfu the next day. We've been able to add an extra day to the hotel we had already booked in Corfu so will now have three days there which will be a bonus before the "big" road trip through Albania, Montenegro and Croatia. Yesterday we drove to Mitikas to have a look at a different village. It's the home village of a friend of ours in Lower Hutt so it had a special feeling to it for us. It's another seaside place with the ubiquitous tavernas on the seafront, narrow streets, touristy shops, great beaches, many I unfinished houses - I can't work out if they are unfinished because of the financial mess here or whether, maybe, it's because of a summer heat shutdown. will find out today. The heat yesterday was searing. According to our landlord it was around 38, 39 degrees. It felt like it to us. We spent a lot of time in the water yesterday but also were the model of mad dogs and Englishman too often as we walked the streets of Mitikas until we found a breezy taverna for lunch right on the waters edge. And that brings me to food. And yes, we are eating a lot of it. Far too much in fact. An example of the typical meal: Stuffed tomatoes and stuffed peppers (delicious); cod (called cod but in this case 3 small whole fish fried in a seasoned coating); greek salad (humongous and delicious); green salad ( thought we were going to get lettuce etc but it was wilted spinach); grilled whole small squid, in this case opened up out flat and grilled; fried haloumi; fried zucchini; half a litre of red wine; half litre of Kaiser beer; big basket of chunky bread; lots of olive oil. That was yesterday's lunch. We have been eating Greek food as much as possible and it's generally been delicious. Mainly long slow cooked meat dishes or seafood or moussaka or souvlaki and so on. We don't think they do "western" food very well in the village but we're not eating that so who cares. The local red wine comes in plastic one litre bottles. It's very quaffable without any of the nuanced complexities of flavours that we associate with a Syrah or Cab Sav but ok for this lifestyle (that would be the very mildly hedonistic travelling Kiwi old persons lifestyle). Driving back from Mitikas we stopped at a small cove down some steps from the road where the water was a deep ultramarine colour. There were a couple of families picnicking but otherwise deserted. A few metres off the shore the sea floor dived away quickly down to about 40 metres hence the deep blue colour. Special.


Regards,
Lyn
Sent from my iPad

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Photos

Lefkada
Corrugated iron used extensively because of earthquake history

Lefkada
Beach babe

Lefkada
Kite surfing paradise