Europe Summer 2017: Greece 4 – an authentic rural village

August 20

Tripotamos

     After seeing so many small enticing villages along the route of our bus tour to four tourist sites, we were curious to see what a non-tourist village was like. We did some research and leg work and found that there was a local village called Tripotamos on a local bus line. Armed with a bus schedule and timetable we took a solo day trip to Tripotamos on the local bus.

"She pointed down the road."

"...we spotted a stairway going ... down
and followed it."

       Tripotamos is a small village only 4 km. from Tinos Town. The village, like most villages on Tinos, is situated on a hillside and so is built in tiers on different levels. When we got off the bus at a crossroads we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, there was no obvious village. We saw a woman on the road and asked her how to enter Tripotamos. She pointed down the road. We headed in the indicated direction and saw a few houses and several cars parked on the roadside. Looking here and there we spotted a stairway going through a stone arch and down and followed it. It led into a maze of small bright sunlit alleys for pedestrians only, no one in sight. It seemed unreal almost surreal, so very unlike the popular thronged tourist villages we had visited.

       The houses, typically, are white walled and brilliant in the sunlight. Yet, they don't look, how shall I say, dressed up in their Sunday best? They had an authentic look and feel that I didn't get in the popular tourist villages and towns, and we saw very few people. We met a very friendly woman who was sweeping the pavement and who spoke a little English. She told us that the permanent population of the village was only 30 people. There are more, apparently, in summer including people who keep summer homes there. I noticed many tiny churches and asked the lady about them. She said they're so small because they're private family chapels—people wealthy enough to afford their own chapels. There is, of course, a larger church for the ordinary people.

a family chapel 

       There are some 2000 churches (2/3 Greek Orthodox and 1/3 Roman Catholic) on Tinos for a population of only about 10,000—that's one church for every five persons. Considering how tiny some of the churches are, that's about all that would fit comfortably inside some of them.

       We strolled around the town, up and down many steps, and soon covered the whole town from top to bottom. The town was very quiet and empty. 

broken crockery

laundromat?

from top . . .

. . . .to bottom

unreconstructed windmill

dovecotes

       There was no taverna or cafe and no street life in Tripotamos, so we decided to try and catch the next bus and return to Tinos. Back at the main road we looked around and waited, with increasing anxiety, for about half and hour in the hot sun. We started to discuss Plan B. Plan B seemed to boil down to walking the 4 km. back to Tinos, fortunately mostly downhill. But just then I glimpsed the bus coming along and we ran to flag it down with a huge sigh of relief.

at Symposion

       When we got back to Tinos Town we decided to eat at an upscale restaurant named Symposion (Συμπόσιοv) after the dialogues of Plato. The food was pretty good but not, as suggested by TripAdvisor ratings, of cordon bleu quality. But it was a pleasant alternative to the basic meat and potatoes approach of the Cavos hotel restaurant in Agios Sostis.