Things are starting to get quieter, now. On Thursday the beach was very busy, but after Friday's mass exodus there were far fewer people around yesterday. Mango Bar is progressively removing sunbeds and stacking them up ready for winter storage.
The record dry and hot summer continues into autumn. We've had no wind and no rain all week and the forecast is currently for another five or six clear days. Nights are noticeably cooler - light sweater needed.
It's unlikely that Zorba's will stay open for more than a day or two, according to Vasillis. They've stopped dancing already. Beachcombers will be staying open to the end of season.
We went to Ereikusa island on the boat trip. Fantastic views of the sandstone cliffs on the way to Sidari. The island is rather strange. Almost all the houses are shut up - looks like people just use it as a summer resort. Just two cafes open, although one was closed for a funeral wake. The funeral cortege went past while we were having lunch in the other cafe: the black coffin was on the back of a white pick-up, draped with flowers. The two principal women mourners led the procession - maybe thirty people all dressed in black, followed by cars, trucks, mopeds and amazingly enough, several quad bikes!
The island is quite small - much smaller than Mathraki -but has superb concrete roads everywhere, with the inevitable "Built By Europe" blue board to explain where a bit of the Greek national debt went. Nice boat trip - about half an hour to Sidari to pick up grockles, and then an hour to Ereikusa.
Back here in Ag Stef, Spiros is practically dragging passers-by into the Havana Bar in a bid to grab as many Euros as possible before the season ends - or the Euro ends, whichever comes first.
Despite the fantastic weather it has not been a good season. People have not been spending much money and the tavernas' takings have been significantly down at the same time as the taxes have gone up. Views vary on the future, but I get the impression that most people think it's when rather if that Greece will default.
End of season or not, watching football in the Athens Bar remains a loud and highly amusing way to spend an evening. The long summer sun has not induced much in the way of sanity on Nikos!
Also amusing was last night in Little Prince. Little Alex and tall Spiros now have this routine where Alex jumps and locks his legs around Spiros' waist and Spiros spins around and around so that Alex flies with his arms out. Last night Spiros was not there, so Dimitris deputised. He came dancing out to cheers and whistles, and Alex duly took off and attempted to latch on to Dimitris. Unfortunately they had failed to do the great tape-measure test before attempting this life-threatening performance. The floor is made of rather unforgiving hard marble. Dimitris is, let's say, more generous of girth than the six foot slender Spiros, and little Alex's legs are only so long. How we gasped as Dimitris started to swing Alex around, not seeing what we could see, that Alex couldn't cross his ankles! For a moment Alex seemed doomed to head-butt the marble tiles, and only frantic scrambling by Dimitris and others saved the lad from at least a serious headache.
"Dimitris tried to kill me tonight!" little Alex said mournfully, later on. I suspect he'll be doing a Tevez and refusing to come off the bench if the boss asks him to give it another try.
Topic: Winding down (Read 64320 times)