Tour de force

Yesterday, we ventured on an all-day bus tour of the island under what turned out to be a punishing sun. The tour of about 20 people (mainly Brits and Aussies), traveled all over the island, with stops at the wondrous but only partially excavated city of Poliochni—perhaps the oldest city ruins in Europe (approximately 6,000 years BC). The kids found a rebuilt small dwelling amid the cross-cross of wooden boards, and immediately took occupancy perhaps not unlike their sea-faring predecessors so many millennia ago.

We next stopped at Kotsinas—site of small chapel in the midst of heavy remodeling. The real find, though, was below the modest shrine, where steep stone stairs descending several hundred feet led to an underground well containing holy water. Evidently, the underground passage was discovered in the 1800s, along with a Byzantine-looking religious icon. So it was assumed to be holy water, and hence the church was built on the site. There was also a statue of a woman with a sword over the water here—a sort of Limnos Joan-of-Arc, who rally the people during an earlier war with the Turks.

My dad and me, along with the others, drank holy water. D, being Jewish, did not drink the water. Although after I told him that it’s suppose to heal all ailments, he gave it a second thought but still refused. I didn’t take the girls down the steep staircase because it was a small space. However, I did place some holy water on their foreheads.

We also drove past the ancient city of Ifestia—complete with its famed theater—but we couldn’t get off the bus because the road was too rocky. We stopped nearby at the wonderful Kavirio—a partially excavated temple complex. Here, ancient peoples worshipped the Kaberoi, half-mortal descendants of Hephestus, who was thrown by his angry father Zeus to the island as an exile from Mount Olympus. This formerly volcanic island was said to contain the forger of Hephestus, and a complicated mystery cult—with human and animal sacrifice—thrived during the ancient period.

Toward the end of our tour, we visited the small town of Portianou, and saw the house where Winston Churchill lived during WWI when he was planning the ill-fated Battle of Gallipoli.

We closed with lunch over Zamatas beach, where our exhausted crew refueled with a feast of rice-stuffed peppers and tomatoes, grilled eggplant (which Baba quickly inhaled), and, for the coup-de-grace, sweet-but-slightly warm watermelon—thankful to be sheltered, at least for the time, from the throbbing Aegean sun.