yesterday's adventure

so we got the 10:45 bus to Vounaria, which is about 5 minutes drive from A.A. one stop after Nea Koroni. Sitting on a hill, visible from A.A. It is a sleepy little place with 2 little shops, all restaurants etc being part of the holiday industry and secluded to the beach a few km down from the village and closed, though one had olive pickers who let use the five star loos. We had a beautiful walk down, found an incredible beach, mostly sandy, some swimmers and their dogs, and a greek old lady with a stick, ho showed us she's been bitten (a little) by one of those dogs. Must have been overexitement due to seeing another live soul besides their swimming masters, who stayed in the water all the time we were there - at least 40 min, so my suspicion, that the water is still wonderful when you are already in it, must be true. I haven't been in it since with Marta, with the cooler breathe I didn't feel like it. Anyway, we wanted to walk back to the hill on a different way and got lost, found another tiny place called Kompoi, instead. (I find it hard to call them villages, as in my eye, if even a few houses are sort of wall-to-wall with little shops, than that is a town) anyway, we had no idea which way to return to Vounaria, so we asked a nice old man, who invited us in for a nice cup of greek coffee, which was ordered of the woman invisible to us, who stayed in the kitchen, unless she was the young one, who sneaked upstairs without saying anything. It turned out that the old man used to be a sailor, been to Liverpool, and Budapest and is a communist, very worried about the world, and stressing, that people are the same everywhere. We agreed, shook hands and were on our way, not really that far lost as we thought. Mind, that all through there are views of the sea, olive groves and the Taigetos, where the snow is meltng, but still there on the highest peaks. Meanwhile Rosemarie got us Port and hopefully some other tid-bits for xmas, no custard powder and marzipan yet. But xmas pudding and mince pies probably. I will have a go making cake, with or without marzipan. I could experiment with chestnut mass, it is marzipanish... anyway, we got back to Vounaria just before the little shop at the bus stop closed for siesta, managed to secure a bag of chewy pretzels, tomatoes and drinks. Though Alan couldn't finish his beer, as the bus arrived on time to take us back. So we did at least 10kms, some quite steep bits included.