The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
May 17 - More Impressions of Ia
Since we are not really planning to go anywhere for the next couple of days, I thought I would end our Santorini story by sharing some of the sights and stories that haven't quite fit into the narrative for the past few days.
One continuing story we have been following is the old woman who takes care of the churchyard. We call her "Yaya" (grandmother) and she is out there every day, always in black, mostly sitting and watching. When we went to the far end of the village for our first sunset-watching expedition, we saw the old man we tagged "Papoos" (grandfather) walking up the street. Then we saw him again the next night when we went to dinner at Lokal Polski -- he lives in the same building. Then we started seeing the two of them hanging out together in the churchyard. When the gang came back from walking the steps up from Amoudi, they had photos of two local fishermen and the one with the net full of sardines was Papoos! I'm sure the stories we are making up about the two of them are more interesting than the reality ... but who knows?
Every morning a truck drives through town pitching what he has to sell over a loudspeaker on the roof. This day it was patio furniture. I continue to be amazed by how these houses are build into the rocky cliffs and just seem to hang there like icing on a cake. I would love to watch the complete construction process just to see how they do it.
In addition to houses ON the cliff, there are dwellings actually IN the cliff. from our terrace we watched workers scurry around like ants to put the finishing touches on what appears to be a hotel. If you look closely, you will see that the rooms are actually more like caves in the cliff face. There are dozens of stories unfolding in the houses, apartments, patios and stairways we look at every day. I can sit up here in the shade with a pair of binoculars and take mental snapshots for hours!
Our house is the highest house on this face of the cliff and, we understand, is called "the big house" by the locals. By day we look out toward Thira and the cruise ships moored in the harbor. By night we have the lights of the houses in front of us and a few steps up to the churchyard gives us the lights of the village behind us. How much better than this does it get?
© 2007 Restaurant Doctor
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