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Published: August 4th 2017
There are windows in our apartment's bathroom. This wouldn't normally be worthy of comment, but they aren't there so you can look outside, they're there so that you can look into the living room. Maybe they're also there so you can look from the living room into the bathroom, although I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to do that.
Today we've decided to drive to the village of Fiskardo, which is at the far north end of the island. Issy is looking forward to this like a hole in the head. She says that she felt sick most of the way driving here from the airport along the very windy road along the coast, and the road we're going to be on today doesn't sound like it's going to be too different. She tells me that she won't be able to tell me where to go while we're driving. I'm about to butt in that this will be a first, but before I have the chance she quickly adds that this is because it will make her feel even sicker if she has to look at a map.
The views from the road are again stunning; it's like
the Great Ocean Road back home on steroids. It's again very windy. It gets very narrow through some of the villages, and we often find ourselves stopping to let cars coming the other way get through.
Available car parks in Fiskardo seem to be in short supply. Eventually we see a vacant spot next to a sign that looks like it might say that you're not allowed to park there because it's a bus stop. It doesn't however seem to have stopped anyone else, so we decide to take a chance. I wonder what I'll do if I get a parking ticket. It will probably be in Greek, and I won't be able to read it. I won't then know how much it‘s for or where I need to go to pay it, so I'm sure my name will end up on a list at the airport, and they'll arrest me when I try to sneak out of the country. I think I might be overthinking this a bit.
Issy's feeling really sick. We find a chemist and she scoffs down a bunch of travel sickness pills, and then sits in the shade waiting for them to take
effect. This really sucks for her. Eventually she starts to feel well enough for a gentle stroll along the waterfront.
Fiskardo's set around a pretty bay. It's less hilly than Assos and the village is a bit bigger. The harbour is home to some very fancy looking boats that look like they probably belong to the rich and famous.
We browse through some souvenir shops where the main items on sale seem to be phallic shaped bottle openers. These come in every conceivable size, and some that aren't conceivable. As she did when we saw some of these in Rhodes last year, the first thing Issy says when she sees them is that we should buy one for her sister. These ones are different to the plain coloured ones in Rhodes; they're all decorated with different brightly coloured patterns. As we're about to leave the shop an American couple comes in with their Greek guide. The American lady sees the bottle openers and asks the guide very loudly why anyone would ever buy such a thing. The guide is unfazed. He responds that a lot of women buy them from souvenir shops because they're too embarrassed to buy
them from sex shops. I wonder why they don't just buy normal bottle openers from supermarkets like everyone else.
Issy says she's feeling slightly better, and willing to try to brave the drive back to Assos. We get back to the car where I'm pleased to find that we don't have a parking ticket. I then start wondering whether it's just a paper parking ticket that we don't have. Maybe they've recorded our car's registration somewhere instead, and we'll still get arrested when we try to leave the country. I think I'm feeling a bit distracted by this, and set off driving on the wrong side of the road. I'm struggling to get used to driving on the right, and I also keep turning on the windscreen wipers instead of the indicator. I'm not sure why they have windscreen wipers on cars here. We haven't seen a cloud yet, let alone one big enough to have any rain in it.
Issy's feeling sicker by the minute, and I begin to think that the travel sickness pills they sold us might just be sugar. We were planning to go to the neighbouring island of Ithaki tomorrow and she tells
me that I might need to go by myself. I think my poor bride is feeling trapped. The only road in and out of Assos must be one of the steepest and windiest in the known universe, and most of the island’s roads beyond that aren't much better.
We reach the turnoff into Assos. There's a very large bus in front of us, and it takes the turnoff as well. I think it must be lost. We struggle to get around the hairpin bends in our tiny car, so I'm not sure what hope a big bus thinks it might have. It somehow manages to negotiate the hairpin bends, albeit at glacial speed and by taking up most of the narrow road, and traffic’s now banked up for what seems like several kilometres in both directions.
We spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing by the pool. The view from the pool terrace over Assos is spectacular.
We Viber our offspring and Scott tells us about a news article he’s been reading. Apparently two tourists who were sunbaking on a beach in Portugal were killed when a plane crashed into them. We'll be going to Portugal later
in the trip and he warns us against sunbaking on any of the beaches there. I appreciate his concern, but I think this is a bit like warning someone not to go outside because they might get hit by an asteroid.
We dine again in the village square and the discussion turns to spelling. So far we've seen Kefalonia spelt that way, or Cefalonia, or Kephalonia, or Kefilonia, so it seems that you can chose to spell it just about any way you want to. Same goes for Ithaki, or Ithaca, or Ithaka. It seems that Greece might be a good place to come if you happened to find spelling a bit challenging….
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Suzanne Conroy
non-member comment
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Ba Ha, very amusing