the island (cont.)

The roads are small on Syros and we made our way around the island slowly.

One place looked promising--a row of cottages in clapboard, like someting you'd see in a place like Bodega Bay. There was a restaurant beside a small flat beach. The doors were wide open but no one was inside. In front of one of the cottages I saw a man taking the sun on a chaise lounge made of wood in the Swedish style. He wore a small yellow towel wrapped around his stomach. A bottle of water and suntan oil sat on a silver tray beside him. I spoke to him and he opened his eyes, but he couldn't speak English. I knocked on the door of the office; no one answered so we drove on.

We turned off the main road at the sign for Vari. A couple of kids were eating popsicles in front of a small market. A small white dog walked back and forth, looking lost. There were two or three other little shops, each with a light on and door open though no one seemed to be inside.

At the end of the road was the K-A-R-M-E-L-O Hotel. It said so on a big sign on top of a two-story building painted in white with blue trim. The sign was like the HOLLYWOOD sign, in which each letter of the word is made to look like it can stand on its own, which means that the sign had the Greek sky behind it. There were 28 rooms. We could choose any room we liked. Two brothers owned the place, one managed the hotel and the other cooked in the small restaurant. The beach was nice, a big wide arc of sand on a small little cove, very private.

We stayed there a week, the only guests. Lorenzo, one of the brothers, said we were lucky, that by the middle of June the place would be "buzzing like bees." His brother was a good cook and the white wine he served was decent. 

During the day we drove up into the hills looking for antiquities. The middle of Syros is hot in late May, dry and rocky. We took long walks. Every footstep felt like it was touching something important, a shard of Cycladic pottery or the buried arch of an old palace.

We'd walk for hours on the island, inland or along  the coast, then drive back to the hotel, sleep, read on the beach, swim. Lorenzo opened the restaurant at 9 p.m. His brother would cook and Lorenzo would pour the wine. They'd sit together at a table near the entrance, watching soccer on tv and smoking, once we were served.