Sounds like a Greek myth but we bought a fish with (potential) magical properties yesterday and cooked it for dinner. We didn't initially know that it contained magic--ok, not magic but ichthyoallyeinotoxism-- until I was looking for recipes when we got home. The fish is called sarpa and instead of recipes, I mainly found articles about it potentially causing hallucinations (see Wiki for more on this)! We realized that we had eaten this type of fish 4 years ago on a previous trip to A., blithely ignorant. We didn't have any side effects then, so we rolled the dice again. No hallucinations. It's also called dreamfish, and fittingly, we both did have some peculiar and vivid dreams last night. Was this due to the fish or merely the suggestion that such fish can cause hallucinations or weird dreams?
We chose not to swim at the usual beach, Milia beach, for a couple days because the jellyfish were more prevalent and Sam got a little sting (quickly healed up) from one of them. Yesterday in town we saw Takis, one of the daily Milia swimmers. When he saw us approaching, he immediately shrugged his shoulders and half-sternly said, “You haven't been at Milia for two days!” We told him that we decided to try nearby Votsi beach, pictured below, since it had fewer jellies. Today we ran into his swimming buddy Tassos in town, and Tassos said, basically, “You haven't been at Milia for two days!” We had gone back to Milia this morning at the usual time and neither Takis nor Tassos were there. Tassos told us that they swam at Votsi today. It was a bit like musical chairs beaches, but Tassos made sure that we were agreed that we would all swim at Milia tomorrow. These gregarious, welcoming Greeks! 😁
We enjoyed a second swim this morning at a beach called Tsoukalia. It's also an archeological site and was an ancient Greek pottery factory where they manufactured amphorae over 2,500 years ago. There's a huge pile of shards right behind the beach. Most seem to be newer but maybe some of these pieces (pictured below) are over 2,000 years old?
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| Votsi beach and view of the town |
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Sarpa, or dreamfish, before cooking
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| Tsoukalia beach (which has an old mill on it) |
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Broken amphorae at Tsoukalia
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| Moonrise from our place |
