Away again

The cats’ feeling insecure, I can tell. We’ve just returned from another extremely enjoyable week-long break in Sitia and he’s currently acting like he worries that we’ll not be there the next time he looks for us. Since he’s been in the habit during the past months of disappearing for days at a time, we’re well convinced that he has a second home, who knows, maybe a third or a fourth. Whatever the case, he can survive quite happily without us when he wants to. Cats are well-known as exhibiting rather independent ways when it suits them and, unlike most dogs, a cat is never really yours, it’s usually the case that he or she deigns to allow you to enjoy his or her presence when he or she wants something, usually a cuddle, some fussing, or – as is more often the case – food.

So, when we left for Sitia on Sunday May 14th, we hadn’t this time made any arrangements for anyone to come and feed him. Angla’i’a, the village mayor, told us not to be so soft. “He’s a cat, he’ll be fine, just you wait and see,” she told us when we’d broached the subject a few days before leaving. “Half the time he’s along the street keeping Manoli company when you’re wondering where he is. Anyway, I’ll keep an eye out, but he’ll still be here when you get back, mark my words,” she’d said in her usual authoritative manner.

Of course, she was right. When we drove back up the lane on Sunday 21st he’d been nowhere to be seen, but the next morning, when I ventured outside at 07.00 hours, he came running up to me, meowing like crazy and insisting on being picked up and reassured that we were indeed back. He looked a little rough around the edges, no doubt from a few run-ins with interlopers (nothing too unusual about that, except that when we’re in residence I often intervene before he and a local feral bully come to blows, sending the street urchin packing while Mavkos sits near my feet with a definite air of relief, even smugness, about his face). He’d quite evidently done OK but I’m convinced that whatever he’d been eating for the days of our absence, it hadn’t been as nutritious as the food we usually give him. Plus he’d have had none of the nice little treats that we pamper him with either, his tasty salmon nuggets, or his nice moist salmon ‘sticks’ that he wolfs down in seconds as a rule.

Anyway, as of now he’s still acting very ‘clingy,’ and I have to keep telling him that, no, we’re not about to abandon him again for a while. I’m sure he knows what I’m saying, I do, honestly.

Our time in Sitia, when I wasn’t worrying about Mavkos that is, was equally as enjoyable as last year. In fact it was one year and one week since we last did the same thing, (See the posts from May 2022) and we’d again booked into our snug, if very basic, little room at the Hotel Nora, near the harbour where the ferries come in twice a week. It’s called a ‘hotel,’ but it would be better described as ‘village rooms’ with a reception area, and that’s why we so love the place. Nikos and his wife, plus his pethera Maria, and her sister, welcomed us like long, lost relatives. We’re convinced that one reason was that our previous stay of 7 nights was in all probability the longest any guests had ever stayed with them. More often than not the Nora acts as a kind of overnighter for those who’ve just come off the ferry, or for those who are due to board the next one that ties up. When you enter the building you’re met with a small reception desk in a quite acceptable lounge area, but there is no restaurant, no pool, in fact no other facilities. The reception desk, though, is manned by one of the family 24/7, which just affords the place that little extra bit of security (like Sitia is rife with housebreakers and muggers anyway). The lounge actually serves as the TV room for the family, and every evening they can be encountered sitting around one of the small tables watching a Greek soap opera on Alpha TV.

It’s that very ‘family’ feel that makes us love staying there so much. Once you’ve settled into your room, nothing’s too much trouble for Niko or his kin. As soon as we arrived this time around, after all the hugs and cheek-kisses had been dispensed with, Nikos, a stocky, ruddy-faced man with a perpetual smile on his round face, told us, “Anything you want, you only have to ask, it’s no problem at all.” Frankly, though, above asking him for a kettle (which he almost fell over his own feet in his hurry to supply us with), there was nothing more we could have wanted. The room is very basic, but the place is truly spotless. Yes, the bathroom could be modernised a bit, true, but the sink had a plug in it, I mean talk about luxury, come ON! Anyone who’s ever stayed in village rooms will know that a plug for the bathroom sink is usually something that you never, ever see, and wouldn’t even expect to. The amount of clean, fresh, brilliantly white towels they supply you with leads us to insist that they not change them quite so often. We can never use all the towels they give us anyway, so we make sure that those ones we do use last us a while, so as to keep their laundry bill down a little. I”ll not divulge here how much we pay per night, but I will say that I believe it’s a completely unbeatable nightly rate for this day and age on a Greek island.

So, here is the first clutch of photos from this year’s stay. Expect a series of posts before I’m through with this year’s Greek holiday!