Down from the hills.

Yesterday I meandered down from the hills to the town/small city of Ioannnina, I was here by 11am so I parked up and tramped all around the walled city which is refreshingly uncluttered with shops selling tourist tat, there were a couple of shops providing basics for the locals and a restaurant and café. The citadel was at one time Ali Pasha's seraglio but is now the site of his tomb next to a restored mosque there is also a museum with an annex which you can visit for the princely sum of 2 euros. Lunch was a giros pitta, the chef told me that when I say pitta it sounds like pizza but then again he is American. He kept me amused with his take on the problems between Greece and the EU, apparently it was the Germans forcing Greece to take out loans and then having the audacity to want the money back. After the entertainment I visited the Archeology Museum which had some amazing articles on display, I could not believe the intricacy of the silverwork from over two thousand years ago. another surprise was the display of coins. There was a coin from Syracuse in Sicily which had the three legs of Man on it and I thought that was a Viking symbol, the other was a representation of the goddess Athene on which the Britannia on our coins must have been based and both of these coins were from around 25BC to 14AD. To cap the day I checked in to a very homely hotel and the food last night was a Greek version of chilli chicken with olives and sultanas which I do not normally like in hot food but it all went together so well. This morning the hammering rain woke me up, I resolved to not let is stop me from exploring I would put on my waterproof and go for it but my waterproof is still behind the cabin door on the boat, not the only thing I have left behind this trip! Anyway the visit to Dodoni went well, the rain slowed and I still had an umbrella in the car. Dodoni apparently was the site of Greece's oldest oracle 4000 years ago and I thought the original oracle was at Delphi, anyway by 1300 Zeus was speaking here too, so I stood under the sacred oak tree in his temple and asked him what direction my life will take when I grow up, all I heard was birdsong, goatbells and the patter of rain on my umbella. The site is well placed in a bowl between the mountains to the West and the hills to the North and East and there is an aura about the place which is hard to describe, the other feature is the very large theatre which is still in use, according to the blurb, in it's heyday it could seat 17,000 people, there was no one there to see me perform. This afternoon I caught the ferry across Lake Pamvotis to visit the small island which has six monasteries on it and I discovered three times as many stalls selling tourist junk, anyway the weather gods got me back for mocking Zeus. I am now in my cosy hotel room after a hot shower listening to the rain on the window. The forecast tomorrow is clearing then the following 9 days wall to wall sun which should make for a pleasant week in Corfu or Kerkyra in Greek, maybe that is a sign?