Side Trips: Sorano, Tuscany

 

The freedom of a rental car trip through Tuscany was a welcome breath of fresh air after leaving steamy, crowded places like Venice and Florence.  It also turned be the best part of our trip, offering some spectacular food and lodging at cheaper rates than we'd been paying in Venice and Florence. 

In Sorano, we spent two nights in a medieval stone castle, surrounded by a Renaissance era fortress that is built over an old Etruscan mountaintop settlement.  Our room was located in same living spaces that castle owners, for centuries, had reserved for their own families.  Big casement windows and high ceilings caught the natural breezes, and offered panoramic views of the streets below and the Tuscan landscape beyond.  The archway leading into the castle's courtyard, dates from the First Century AD, but the town's Etruscan roots predate the Roman Era.

Giant bellows once used in an
underground weapons forge.

 

Connecting tunnels carved into the rock beneath the fortress were used for escape routes, stables, storage, the forging of weapons, and the manufacture of gunpowder.  There are several old buildings inside the walled fortress: one has been repurposed as a museum and another is being used as a music conservatory.  Our last night there, after a dinner in the countryside and a hand of cards in the courtyard, we could hear music from an open air concert in the town below.


Complimentary breakfasts with cappuccino, pastries,
prosciutto, croissants, Tuscan bread and cheeses.

Hotel della Fortezza, Sorano

 

Side Trips: Venice

 

Venice is about an hour trip from the airport by water taxi or water bus.  Everything on the island moves by water or on hand carts, there are no cars.  Even cement for construction arrives by barges, with each barge carrying up to a half dozen cement trucks with their cargos rolling.

If you are looking for an overload on fine Art History, or want to earn a black belt in extreme shopping, Venice has some amazing things to offer.  But from mid morning into the early evening, the streets are clogged with tourists who outnumber the residents during the summer months.  The lines of people waiting to see attractions like the inside of St. Mark's Basilica, look like the kind of lines you'd see at Disney World.

Kathy managed to find us lodging in a quaint little B&B housed in a Renaissance era building that's located on a corner where a shop keepers' side street converges with one of Venice's famous canals.  There is small a brass pack on the building and an electronic entrance keyboard near the door, but nothing else to indicate what a gem of quiet elegance lies inside.  It is less than half a block away from Piazza San Marco, St. Mark's Basilica, the Doge's Palace, and dozens of little outdoor cafes.  The bad news is, that it lies even closer to a major upscale shopping district.

 

 

The Prophet Elias



 

A visitor to this island cannot help but notice the many rustic chapels that dot the landscape here.  Some cling to isolated mountain faces, or perch atop prominent hills or mountain tops.  Most of the ones "nearest to heaven" were built and dedicated to the Prophet Elias (Elijah in the Western Church).  Every year, near July 20, each will host a special mass and feast dedicated to the prophet.  Like so many rural festivals dedicated to Orthodox saints, these festivals have unbroken local rituals that predate the Christian era.  The name Elias for instance, is very closely spelled in Greek, like the ancient name Helios, and shares many coincidental traditions associated with the pagan deity.  There are also several other threads that connect Elias' story to Classical references.*

* On his last journey, Odysseus is instructed by Tiresias to take an oar from his ship and to walk inland until he finds a "land that knows nothing of the sea."

To escape the sinful ways of his neighbors, Elias put an oar on his shoulder and walked inland until he reached a place where a stranger mistakes the oar for a 'winnowing fan'.  From that point he ascended to the top a mountain where he drank only water from the mountain's brook and was nourished only by ravens who brought him "flesh and bread" to eat. 



Kathy's icon of the Prophet Elias

For his piety, Elias was whisked, still living, into heaven in a 'whirlwind' or 'chariot of fire,' where he waits to be returned to Earth, and to experience a normal mortal's death there.  In Eastern icons the prophet is often depicted on a craggy mountain face, with a raven bearing food in its mouth.  This is the icon Kathy painted of the prophet (right) and presented to 'Pappa' Kostas, the Orthodox priest who serves the village.

 

In Vourloites, the Feast of Elias is sponsored by one of the neighbors, and is celebrated at a chapel above the village. An Orthodox mass is sung to commemorate recently departed souls and to bless a specially baked bread and a ritual dish called Yourti.  The recipe for Yourti varies from island to island, but the local dish calls for 3 equal parts of goat (usually whole), wheat grain, and onions.  It cooked in a large open pot, and stirred for hours by the men from the village, with a large wooden (oar like) paddle.

 

 

 (Use the full screen option to best see the video)

Stone Walls

The wooden shutters, windows and doors of our house have all been replaced over years, but beneath decades of plaster and paint, the stones of the thick walls still lie in the same precise order they were stacked in two centuries ago.  I have often wondered about the people who were conceived, born, or died in this house, and wished that their stories could be summoned from the private conversations that the walls of this house have heard.

Two evenings ago there was a knock at the door and two polite Greek men introduced themselves and asked if they could step in and have a brief look around the inside of the house.  With the younger of the two men interpreting, George Tamvalis told us that he had been born in the house in 1945. At that time, the first floor of the house had been a cobbler's shop and his family lived upstairs.  George noted that a door, some windows and the staircase have been relocated.  Then he showed us where the shoe repair benches had been when he'd worked at them as a boy, "Everything seems so much smaller now."

In our upstairs bedroom George looked at the mantle above the fireplace.  "My mother held onto that when I was being born.  She delivered me on the floor in front of that fireplace."  He also pointed out a window and told us that during the first part of the Second World War, Italian soldiers occupied Samos and had ordered Greeks to turn in all of their fire arms.  There had been a search of the house, and a family member was hauled off to prison when an Italian soldier found a rabbit gun hidden behind a window curtain.  Details of the stories were sketchy and a little hard to follow. I wanted more information, but they were anxious to walk up to the Plateia and meet friends for dinner. I'll update the story if we hear more from them later.

 

'Joe' Thymianidis, 'George' Tamvalis, and Kathy

 

 

 

To Kokkari for Pizza

 

Kokkari is beautiful and probably the most popular tourist destination on Samos.  At least once every year we drive down to Kokkari just for pizza.  The entire waterfront is rimmed with small hotels, bars and restaurants.  Our favorite is Moscato, a quiet place at the farthest end of the peninsula, away from the crowds.  The pizza there is crispy thin and the fried calamari appetizer they serve is the best I have ever tasted.

 

 

Moscato is owned and operated by Sylvia, a Kokkari native who spent most of her working life in Australia.  Like so many of the island 'repats,' her English is accented with a Greco-Australian twang.  Sylvia inherited the building that houses Moscato from her mother who was born in Vourliotes.

 

Season 2018 - Samos, Greece

Leaving Athens - photo by Kathy, window seat



Arriving on Samos - photo by Kathy

We just touched down on Samos early yesterday morning.  The flights from Jacksonville to New York and Athens had gone well: no delays, no tight connections, no drama.  To shake the jetlag we spent a night in the Sofitel Hotel at the Athens airport, then caught a 45 minute hop to Samos that departed at first light Wednesday morning.  The carrier is a no-frills airline that has a fleet of stubby propeller driven planes that specialize in getting passengers to the Greek Islands beyond Athens.  The accommodations are a little rustic and can make the trip feel like being in an Indiana Jones movie.  The runways on some islands (like Samos) are often short, and require some hard braking after touchdown, which I suspect, could be a little stressful for white-knuckle flyers.  The smaller airports here are much more passenger friendly than those at the big international hubs, and we are always glad to arrive: the sky is always bright, and the first breath of island air always smells like a sweet mixture of figs, White Sparkle flowers, butterscotch and hay.




White Sparkle flowers, used by the Greek
Orthodox monks here, for making incense.