In the land of Homer

Once upon a Fourth of July, way back in the day, Catherine Renken and I lay in Plum Creek Park. As we watched the fireworks display, we made a list of adjectives describing the view: breathtaking, magnificent, spectacular….

All of those words should be used to paint a picture of Kefalonia. We took an island tour yesterday (Monday), and I tell you what—of all the days to leave your camera at home, this one takes the cake. In twelve hours or less, we saw some of the most beautiful places on the entire earth.

We started off with the rural village of Troinaka, where we saw goats, an olive press (it’s a big deal!), and generally soaked in the sights. That place is a photographer’s dream. Troinaka is a little village filled with flowers and lemon trees overlooking a sweeping valley, not to mention the bizarre but beautiful combination of earthquake-ruined building with working homes and shops. Then we headed off to the monastery of St. Somebody the Hermit, and got to see his sepulcher and crawl down into his little caves. Cool enough. For lunch we hit up Sami, the main port town, and ate gyros on an empty dock in the sun. And there is where we first really saw the color of the water. Blue, Green, Turquoise, and as clear as glass. That color is the reason I came to Kefalonia. I want to hold it, to grab it, to package it up in a thousand bottles and take them with me everywhere! Really! Okay, so maybe I’m getting a little melodramatic, but it’s totally amazing and brilliant. I’m really having a hard time coping with the fact that I can’t bring home an entire bay or two. Gosh, you don’t even know! And pictures don’t do it justice! Not that I had my camera, but other people did, and we’re definitely photo sharing.

Ha, also in Sami, I fell asleep on a bench and was lost to the group; apparently they were looking for a while! Ooops. We’ll blame it on the winetasting? Oh, backtrack! Before the lunch, before the caves of what’s-his-name, we went to the Robola wine factory! Robola is a type of grape only grown on Kefalonia, and local growers have formed a co-operative to produce excellent wines under the name of Robola. It does get exported some, but this product has a lot of potential for marketing. We got a tour of the facilities, saw testing, bottling, packaging etc., and then did a wine tasting—very yummy wine, and all before noon! Oish. But it was fun.

So fast forward to after they found me, we drove around some, saw where parts of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was filmed, and eventually got to Assos, this sweet peninsula that’s practically an island, and climbed up a mountain to the ruins of an old fort! It was awesome! The view… wow. See list of fireworks adjectives.

After adventuring at the fort, although it was getting late and the road had “unusually abrupt turns” (according to the driver), we went down to Myrtos beach. You may have seen pictures of this beach, it’s kind of a big deal. Basically, the most photographed beach in all of Greece. Google images, I don’t currently have one to post (sorry!). The beach is a pebble beach, covered in thousands and thousands of smooth white rocks (of which I stole several), and is surrounded by cliffs and mountains. The water, the main attraction, is that blue-green I mentioned earlier, but possibly better! It is constantly changing and unbelievably intense. More intense than Memorial Stadium on game day, I’d say! Teehee.

And after that we were beat, and so pretty much went back home to Argostoli. We concluded our fabulous, thrilling, and inspirational day by grilling pizza pitas. Mmmm. What a life.

Until next time, Kalinichta.