Mytilene continued
The focus of our second visit of the day was another church, though this one was set in a traditional Greek village, unchanged in years except for the motor vehicles and suchlike. It reminded me somehat of our own village, where walls and houses were built long before there was a need to squeeze anything larger than a donkey through the streets and nerves of steel are needed to drive through there now.
Our driver dropped us at the entrance to the village of Agiasos. We’d driven up a steep and winding road, having returned to the port and out the other side. We drove past a beautiful bay and listened as Dina told us stories from Greek myths. There was no way our driver could get any further into the village however, so from this spot on, it was Shank’s Pony.
Our destination was the basilica church of the Virgin Mary. If the entrance portico was anything to go by, we were in for a treat when we stepped inside.
Indeed it was. The interior was somewhat similar in style to the Taxiarchis church earlier, but minus the technicolour highlights. No little shoes left as offerings here - they were specific to Archangel Michael. What we did see was a collection of ancient icons lit by hundreds of small lanterns. These would have been oil-fuelled but now, they were lit using small, flickering electric bulbs.
As Dina explained the role of the church in a traditional Greek family’s life - the men went to the cafe to keep up with the goings on, whilst the women went to the church -we admired the hefty silver chandeliers above our heads.
There was one magnificent centrepiece amongst the chandeliers however. This wasn’t made of silver, but carved from wood. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
With forty minutes or so before we were scheduled to leave, we wandered back down through the pretty village at a leisurely pace. We squeezed against the wall and narrowly avoided the white van man with his loudspeaker, announcing that he had carpets for sale - not that we saw any customers this afternoon. We passed cafes where the men were indeed relaxing and chatting as Dina had described and we resisted the siren call of the tourist souvenir shops. This is a popular spot, clearly, though on a November afternoon, it didn’t feel like peak season.
Splendor had set an “all aboard” time of 3.30 for a departure of 4pm, so we lost no time at all driving back to the port and jumping on the tender as soon as it arrived. A short trip back to the ship and we were back. The new facial recognition identity check takes a little more time than the old method of swiping a card, but we were soon back in our suite and ready for the next activity!
