Sunday

Slightly worried today that all the shops would be closed. Thankfully, it’s not the case. Plenty of small shops open. I didn’t try the big supermarkets.

Went for a long walk to see what a white building was, across the water, that we could see from our side of Gouvia harbourside.
Pavements are intermittent here to say the least. We didn’t see another person walking, in miles. Everyone drives a car or rides a moped/motorbike.

We found the building and it’s a church. The “Church of Ipapanti”, to be precise. I’m an atheist, so there’s three random points to note about this particular walk/visit.

1. Two couples arrived just before us (they were driving, so overtook us as we were on foot). The church was closed/locked, so they took photos of each other standing in front of it, much like you might in front of Buckingham Palace or wherever. Maybe it’s a very famous church?
The lady of the first couple did a pose lying on the wall next to it, propped up on her elbow, but with her legs spread. Like a relaxed but overtly-sexual pose. The inappropriateness of this made me laugh.

2. There were two signs outside the church. One had writing all in Greek, but the other had writing in multiple languages including English. It said “This is a sacred place and visitors are kindly requested to be suitably dressed”. Even if it had been open and I’d wanted to get some praying down, shorts and sandals probably aren’t suitable dress.

3. The road down to the church (which goes nowhere else but for a couple of private houses – it’s essentially a dead end), had loads of empty condom wrappers and several used condoms, strewn around the small parking/passing places along it. Is the church road ironically where the doggers go? Or where the prostitutes work from?

Later:
My girlfriend convinced me to try out the swimming pool for our apartment block. We compromised and went when it became less busy. I’m a bit embarrassed about doing exercise in front of people, and especially swimming as I’m not a great swimmer. Who wants to be there with people doing lengths, when you’re flailing around like you’re drowning?
I’m not as shit as I remember anyway. If I could remember to breathe and stop pulling faces like I’m drowning, that would be even better.

Dinner:
Soup! There’s something you can do with one saucepan and one hob.
The shop round the corner sells Heinz tomato soup it seems. Not the cheapest, but cheaper than eating out. Today has been a very cheap day. Spent less than €10 all day, I think. Woop woop.

Later:
Fuck knows what our Italian neighbours are doing. They typically shout to each other all the time. And then they put on loud music and shout even louder to each other. Essentially if I spoke Italian, I could tell you every conversation they’d had since we got here.
But right now, they’re doing what sounds like scraping furniture around. Like when you drag a chair without lifting it. But they’ve been doing it for hours. No idea. Maybe we’ll find their entire apartment outside, tomorrow morning.

To end, here’s a nice picture I took on the way to the church, earlier.