Salamina Weekend - part I

Humans apparently do this to relax.

I'm exhausted.

We got invited to stay in a forest house on Salamina for the weekend. Not perhaps the cleverest thing to do with the fire risk being what it is, but F was under some perceived obligation to accept the generous and well intended invitation.  She had apparently inspired this friend to 'revisit' their inherited family home last summer.  After years of neglecting and ignoring it,  they realized it gave them the opportunity to have a garden (an impossibility for apartment dwellers in most parts of Athens).

Garden space might have become important when they added a small human to their household and started thinking about the environments he could experience.

Anyway the family has finally established a love affair with the house their Grandad left them and F's friend wanted F to see their garden.

F and I walked a bit and caught a bus to the ferry connection at Perama where we joined L and her 2 year old 'cat torturer' in their car for the ferry trip and transport to their island village. 

Coffee while we waited at Perama

Salamina is not on tourist maps. It is an island, but it's only 10 minutes by ferry from the mainland.  A fairly large percentage of it is wooded - pine forest mainly (the kind that burns well....)   Many Athenians regard it as 'industrial' but they have clearly never been there and we expect those who live or visit there prefer that it remains that way too.  Sometimes an undeserved bad-rap can actually be a positive thing.

First order of priority for our hosts was to 'hit the beach'.  The beach was a narrow pebbly one with some sort of lounger things lined up along it under umbrellas.  At the feet end of the lounger was sea, and at the head end was a high wall holding up a row of cafes, tavernas and bars.  F got us a lounger in a shade patch and arranged my backpack as you saw it in my 'guess what' post - looking away from the sea.

I prefer it that way.

We were there for about 4 hours during which I did the 'look relaxed but stay on high alert' thing that cats do well. F sat sort of cross-legged on the other end of the lounger ready to repel invaders (namely K9s that seemed to come to the beach of their own accord, take a swim about and then wander off again), and the humans with us either played in the water or slept.

After a late afternoon taverna meal, we finally went to the house.  I immediately went into 'hotel inspector' mode and eventually passed it as suitable to stay in and relaxed on the cane settee in the front room over-looking  the garden.  Outdoors was a war zone as the small 'cat-torturer' had command of a garden hose and was spraying water everywhere, at anything that moved and lots of things that didn't.  At least there was a degree of separation and whatever kept him happy on the other side of the closed door was fine by me.

I did do an early evening inspection of the garden with F, but deemed it unsuitable for my purposes and retired indoors again.  There were more places to hide indoors and I found a particularly good one under the bed in the main bedroom.

Reason for yard to be deemed unsuitable  

Eventually the small human's batteries ran down and he was moved to the bedroom.  I went in a few times just to make sure they hadn't connected a battery charger, and, satisfied they had forgotten to plug it in I finally joined the big humans in the comfortable chairs as they drank wine and 'shot the breeze'.

Relaxation at last.

During the afternoon we had received weird siren noises coming out of the mobile phones, which were accompanied by warnings about fire risk.  Despite the warnings, that same night someone was letting off fireworks not far from us. I guess if your time is up....