Ithaki and the Cute Old Man

We went on our (fourth?) field school on Friday... to Ithaki! Which, for a long time, has been considered the home of Homer's Odysseus. Apparently there are better arguments for Homer's Ithaca to actually have been in the area of Kefalonia where we're staying for the semester but much of the research has not yet been widely published.

Anyway.


It was a lot of driving around but the scenery was pretty spectacular and the towns we visited were are all very cute!

The highlight of my trip actually took place in Vathi, the capitol city on the island. Is has a population of about 2000 people which makes it big; the population of the entire island is roughly 3000.

Vathi itself was surrounded by sailboats and filled with all kinds of shops and things. I went into a small market at one point, though I can't remember what I went in looking for... I spent almost twenty minutes inside talking with the man who, I think, owned it! He was so cute! He asked if I was from England (I get that a lot here -- so weird!) and when I explained that I was from Canada, he responded with delight, "long time! long time! Toronto, Montreal, New York... long time!!" and ushered me over to this counter where he proceeded to show me about a dozen really old photos of a big ship and of he and his friends on that ship. It was so much fun -- he was so excited to show me the pictures! Especially when I picked one up of him when he was 17 and held it beside his face to take a comparison photo -- he was thrilled with the result and proceeded to try to explain in greater detail which areas of the ship the other photos were taken at. I think he was mostly just excited that I was interested in looking at his pictures with him.

Anyway. He grabbed my hands and said "Bravo! Bravo!" a bunch of times and kissed my cheeks to say goodbye when I left. Apparently when Neil went into the same market a few minutes later, the man was still pretty excited and started to tell him about this other Canadian girl who had just been in and looked at pictures with him... *grin*


And so it happens that the highlight of my trip has very little to do with where I was and everything to do with my experience of a cute old man who once spent years sailing all over the world and obviously loves telling people all about it. Beautiful!