James Salter

Souvlaki and Presentation

Last night we took a taxi across the island to Vath�, also known as Samos, the island’s capital. The “city” is larger than Pythag�rio, but not exactly city-sized. According to the taxi driver, the population totals only 10,000.

We walked around the small backstreets which play host to all sorts of small shops and then had a look inside the town’s cathedral. It was much smaller than any British cathedral, more the size of a parish church. The style was very much Byzantine, with icons and pure gold ornaments everywhere. It was a very beautiful, peaceful place.Nick asked some locals for directions to a good Souvlaki shop, which turned out to be near the shore on the outskirts of the town. Souvlaki is to Greeks what hamburgers are to Americans or Fish and Chips are to the English. They seem to come in slightly different varieties, but mine were pork kebab-style meat with chips, tomatoes and onions all wrapped in pita bread. Absolutely delicious!After a walk back to the taxi rank, we returned to Doryssa Bay sometime around 11:30pm.This morning was the morning of my paper presentation (ah yes, I remember: we’re here for a conference ). It went well, although the audience wasn’t exactly massive. I think most delegates heard the call of the beach. However, for those of us who were there, the whole session proved more interesting than yesterday’s, with some good work presented.

Lunch was nice again: a pizza-type thing with veggies and little breadcrumb coated potato balls. I’m now back in my room, waiting for the heat of the day to pass and watching the build-up to the 2012 Olympic city announcement on BBC World.