Loaded up a grocery store bag with stuff to make pastitsio this evening. Should last us until we head to Athens on Friday.
I don’t know that I’m getting better at it, and I can’t imagine the little changes I’m making are actually mattering, but today’s stuck together pretty well when I cut the pieces out. I put a little sauce in the bottom of the pan this time (because last time the noodles stuck to the pan) and tossed the noodles with cheese as directed, but they weren’t “baked” together like mac and cheese can get. Some videos we watched used eggs or a LOT of cheese and I might get around to trying that, but this week’s result was a resounding success.
Doubled down on yesterday’s lazy lie-in and really did it right today. Kept the drives local — coffee and Agios Nikitas first, then back through Lefkada and down to Nydri, just enjoying the water and the cool breeze. Corrected our food decision yesterday by getting souvlaki tonight.
(It was an extra weekend day, so it wasn’t wasted really.)
(Thanks to my mother only singing the first line of every song ever, that’s all I know of that quote. My brain only holds on to a single sentence of anything.)
We skipped the alarm. We skipped the second alarm too. I don’t think there was a third alarm but we would have skipped that too. It was cool outside and the bedroom window was open, and it was cozy in bed.
We did finally make it out of bed and down into town, and went out by the old windmill ruins on the north side of the island to find a handful of people kitesurfing.
(H used to water ski as a kid and thought it looked fun. I thought it looked less likely than snowboarding to break my legs.)
Buoyed up by a fresh infusion of coffee and adrenline-by-osmosis, we decided why not ride down to the lighthouse after all? We figured we could make it there close to sunset and get some excellent afternoon shots.
More drone footage coming forthwith.
We came back to the cottage before heading back out into town for dinner, opting to forego the usual Greek fast food for good old American hamburgers. I say “good” but they were average at best. I suspect we’ll stick with souvlaki for the rest of our time here.
Still some local things we want to explore here on the island, so we’re taking the long weekend and crossing them off the list. First up? The abandoned radar station.
(Of course, there’s an abandoned radar station on the island.)
The site sits on top of the highest peak of the island, looking both east and west across the sea. It was built in the 60s and was used for NATO missions. The station bounces radars off the inside of the atmosphere to be able to communicate longer than line-of-sight systems could. It was decommissioned some time in the 90s as satellites became the new method of long-distance communication.
There’s a more modern military installation up around the same area, and an Orthodox church up on an even higher peak along the line, but the cool part is definitely the massive radar dishes.
Enjoyed spending the afternoon out taking video and flying the drone out to get some spectacular shots of the radar station, the tower, and some nearby windmill ruins. Gonna try and put the video together and online before we head to Athens on Friday.
We came down the inland side of the island after checking to see if any place was open in the little villages along the ridge — sadly, nothing was open.
The plan is to get up early tomorrow and head down to the lighthouse on the southwestern tip of the island, early enough to get some more drone footage before the midday sun.
Small day today — the usual routine of groceries, coffee, drive around town — and since it’s Friday, souvlaki for lunch. Did get blocked off a couple times by Buff Tony while driving through the square.
H: He’s definitely not fat — just thick. Me: He works out!
Looking forward to the long weekend to get some exploration around the island in, some more drone action too!
Finished the video from yesterday’s drone flights and put it up. All the video was so soothing that I picked some nice piano music to run over it. Gonna try and put a video up once a week if I can!
In the aftermath of the storms over the weekend, the water around the island has been pretty choppy, so we went out to the ocean side of the island to see what the cove around Agios Nikitas looked like. We pulled up to the little parking spot where you can look back towards the town so that H could get out and take some photos as the waves looked choppy and the water itself was almost opaque in the churn.
There was another car in the spot when we got there, and a young guy was standing near his car looking off in this distance — I looked a little closer and realized he was holding a drone controller! He eventually landed his drone — a larger model than the little one I have — but it inspired me to get out and put my own drone in the air just to play around a little.
After I started up the drone and was getting set to take off, he came back out of his car (as he heard the startup noise and recognized it) and came over and introduced himself, and we had a nice chat about Lefkada, drone flying, and just island life in general. He had moved to Lefkada from Israel about a year prior, and was doing drone film and photography as a full-time job for various tourism companies and boat outfits. Nice guy! Offered to be helpful or make recommendations if we needed them. Check out his instagram here: motti_avraham
I’m still figuring out the drone stuff, the neat flight paths pre-programmed into it and such, so it’s nice to get some practice. We still had to run back into town, so we continued the photo safari by taking the northern road into town and catching the windmill ruins right as the sun was going down behind the cliffs.
I’m cutting the video together tonight and trying to work out some fun titles or effects or music or something, something more to keep learning how to edit this stuff as well, and then I’ll put it up on the Youtube channel.
Storm is heading towards the island (and might even bring some snow further inland in the higher elevations) so we decided to explore the island a little more and be “close to home” should we need to batten down any hatches. Unfortunately the wind was likely going to make flying the drone a little impossible, so we chose a couple spots on the southern coast that we hadn’t been to yet and started out.
(But first, into town for coffee and a tank of gas.)
Took the oceanside road out through Agios Nikitas and down towards the southern end of the island. As we got up around Kalamitsi and headed towards Agios Petros, the clouds started to descend on us, and eventually we got into one that made for some very moody driving. We considered heading towards the lighthouse, but ultimately decided that we’d stick with our plans, head into Vasiliki, and explore whatever southern beaches we could access.
This was the first time we found ourselves in Vasiliki proper. Usually we just skirt the town on the main road which goes by the rental apartments and a store or two, but we checked out the port today — Vasiliki runs a number of ferries to other islands south of here, Kefalonia and Ithaca — and found a cozy little downtown with some nicely painted tavernas and tourist cruise shops, mostly closed or being renovated before the summer season kicks back off again.
First beach we came across was Ammoussa Beach, a pretty small little cove protected on both sides by rocky outcroppings, with a restaurant and patio on the other side of the street that’s probably a great place to have a liter of wine and a little sun in the summer.
We poked around the back roads around there, mostly finding future beachfront houses and dead ends, before making our way back up to the main road and turning back towards home on the inland side of the loop.
We did take a little detour to a little harbor village called Syvota, also completely closed up, and we could see the boats bobbing pretty heavily and the water splashing up on the pier at the end of the village. Then grabbed some snacks and headed home, where the last of this week’s pastitsio was waiting to be reheated.
Second day in Ancient Olympia. Woke up a little stiff after a night sleeping on a bed hard enough to be in any hotel in Mexico City. I wandered down the street from the hotel back to a bakery we had seen yesterday, took back some baked goods and some sodas, and we fortified ourselves to check out the museum for the archeological site and finish out the rest of the site we hadn’t seen yet.
We arrived at the museum thankfully ahead of the tour groups, which meant a quiet and slow tour around the exhibits. It’s all things recovered from the archeological site during its excavation, including portions of the frescoes from the front and back of the Temple of Zeus.
As we wrapped up our visit, the museum started to crowd up with tour groups, so we made a hasty retreat and walked over the grounds back towards the archeological site. We headed to the back of the site where the workshop sat, and realized we hadn’t missed as much as we’d thought. We spent a leisurely stroll through the grounds to check out the last few sites, caught up with a cat by the stadium that absolutely could not care about any sporting events that might have taken place there, and then again made our exit before any further tour groups could overpopulate the site.
We had lunch at a little restaurant right at the edge of the site called Ambrosia Garden, a nice sunny little spot with traditional food, although the menu might have been a little light since it’s off-season. We were near a table of old guys who were holding court with everyone in the restaurant, staff and patrons, having a good laugh and probably a lot of wine. (We didn’t disagree, we also had some good laughs over the half-liter of wine H drank, or at least seven-eighths of it!)
We took a different route back to Patras, this time through the Pelopennese mountains instead of along the coast. We drove through a couple tight towns before spotting a coffee stop called “Nanobros” and turning around after deciding we couldn’t skip coffee from what I assumed were tiny little bros, probably in tiny little track suits, knowing what I know now of Greek fashion. Even thought there was no immediate evidence of bros when I walked in, by the time I got the coffee back to the car, a whole soccer team of local guys in what looked like little league uniforms had loudly made their way onto the front porch, hooting and hollering at passersby. Looked like a good time.
The rest of the drive through the mountains was gorgeous. The sun started setting while we were driving, with the oranges and pinks coating the eastern wall of the valley. A few more little tightly-roaded towns, a few herds of sheep blocking the road, and we crossed the Patras bridge just as it was starting to get dark.
We tried to pick up souvlaki for dinner on our way in through Lefkada, but our normal place was closed, so we picked up some peinirli instead and called it an easy night.
Took a bunch of video over the two days so look for a video — later!
