Page 6

Day 7 - A monastery, a wine plant and a castle.

We did the sites close by our hotel today, a Monastery, a Co-operative wine maker and castle.

The Monastery was actually a Nunnery, whilst looking up Google just now I discovered that “Nunnery” was an Elizabethan slang term for a brothel, perhaps that is why the map labelled it as monastery. It was a huge establishment but we only spotted one nun. There was a small church which houses the body of Saint Gerasimos, the patron saint of Kefalonia. According to Wikipedia his body is made available for veneration as it has never decomposed. During the feasts of Saint Gerasimos it is passed over ill and sick people for the purpose of healing them. Perhaps I should have crawled under his casket, which is photographed opposite for a miracle cure.

The much larger church next door is shown in the photograph below, it was locked.

A more interesting religious establishment was the Co-operative wine making plant next door.
All the local vineyards have got together to manage the processing and bottling of their wines. As we arrived we tacked onto the back of a special tour which had been put on for a multinational group of students, as English was the language they all understood it suited us fine. At the end of the tour the guide told us they don’t normally do tours, just tastings, so we were lucky.
It was a surprisingly large business, the most impressive bit was a bottling machine which can sterilize, fill, cork and label 2,000 bottles an hour. It would have been nice to see it running but that won’t happen until the autumn. One mistake on our part, we bought a bottle to drink later and then realised we do not have a corkscrew, the hotel opened it for us but I expect they were a bit peeved that we were not drinking their wine. Our last stop of the day was a hilltop castle, it dates from 1100 but in practice most of the walls and buildings are Venetian dating from the 16th century. It’s biggest attraction were the magnificent views of the island.

There are eight or nine tavernas within walking distance of our hotel and as is often the case we have only just found the best, all the others we have tried have been fine but last nights was a bit special so we have booked for Friday evening which will be our last night worse luck.