24 February 2025 – Ioannina part 2

Miles driven today = 0

Total Miles to date = 1,259

I wandered up to the campsite reception this morning and waved my ACSI card at the guy behind the desk.  He told me in exceptionally good English that despite the sign I had spotted in the window they aren’t yet part of the ACSI scheme, although they have recently been inspected.  Regardless he gave me a discounted rate of just €20 so I immediately paid up for a second night.  As a reminder ACSI is a camping club whereby members can get discounted rates of between €14 and €27 a night including hook up at numerous campsites across Europe outside of peak season.  We’ve found in the past that the annual subscription pays for itself after just 3 or 4 nights so we use their sites extensively when we can.

Then a secondary piece of admin was to find a Vodafone shop in order to buy an unlimited data SIM for our “mi-fi” on board router.  We’ve been surviving on our UK packages with £15 for a fortnight roaming extensions but we are limited to 25Gb per month with those, which is OK for a bit of browsing and uploading these blogs but we can’t stream anything or have extended video conversations with our nearest and dearest.  The nice lady at the shop told us they were currently doing a deal of unlimited data for just €15 a month so we paid up and went on our way.

Then we headed back down to the Castle and the jetty next door from where the ferry boats leave for Nissi Island.  These were heaving with day trippers yesterday but we were very relieved to see there were much fewer people making the trip on a Monday.

In just a few minutes we were approaching the island.

We took a stroll around some of the narrow alleyways around the island’s solitary hamlet.  Only residents are allowed to bring cars here but most of the accesses are far too narrow, so if they do own cars I suspect most leave them on the mainland.

Many of the houses had heavy traditional stone roofs.

The lane through the middle of the village had a number of fairly tacky souvenir stalls.

A couple of the restaurants had tanks outside displaying fish like this rather sorry looking carp, which had been caught from the lake and which you could have dispatched, cooked and served up for your lunch.

We also saw trout, eels and crayfish.  Frogs legs were also notable on some menus. 

Next we made our way to the Ali Pasha museum which is held in the home he had on the island.

There are some small caves up behind the museum with a reconstruction showing how the island’s residents fled into the caves when the area was bombed by Italian aircraft in 1940.

This was the house where Ali Pasha was tricked into believing he would be allowed to live if he surrendered Ioannina to Ottoman forces.  When he found out that the Sultan had no intention of letting him survive he made a last stand here with a small group of his soldiers before being shot through the floorboards, captured and executed.

A tapestry representing the man himself in conversation with two of his advisors.

A painting showing the head of Ali Pasha being presented to the Sultan in Istanbul.

Artifacts and curios from the time of Ali Pasha including at the bottom a “flogging device made from a bull’s penis”.

A pair of 19^th Century silver pistols with a gold embroidered belt.

Costumes and more artifacts from the time of Ali Pasha.

Another fine example of the locally produced filigree work we saw in the silversmithing museum yesterday.

There is a small chapel in the museum grounds so we popped our heads inside for quick look.

Another building was showing a film and had a mannequin reproduction of a grim event which is simply referred to as “the drowning”.  Kyra Frosini was the daughter of the Bishop of Ioannina and married to a wealthy merchant by whom she had two children.  She had an affair with Ali Pashar’s son Muhtar and as a result, in a politically motivated decision, Ali ordered her and 16 other women to be executed for adultery by drowning them in the Lake.  Nice guy eh?!

A further exhibition room included these silver “Palaska” which were used by soldiers to carry gunpowder and bullets.

And lots more weaponry including these silver daggers.

I think we’re done with museums for a bit now.  We continued our wanderings and came across several of these tiny little harbours.

The island is home to no less than 7 different monasteries.  These are all positioned a little way out of the village but we took a quick stroll to the nearest, the Filanthropinos or Spanos Monastery of St Nicholas. 

Inside it was dark and smelt heavily of incense.  The walls and ceilings were all covered with frescos of assorted saints.  Officially we weren’t allowed to take any photos but I did covertly manage a couple of sneaky ones including this of one of the chapel ceilings.

I had promised Lisa I would buy her lunch so we chose a taverna in the centre of the village called “Me… Noy”.  Due to pollution in the lake we had read that eating any of the creatures who resided in it might not be the healthiest option.  So instead I chose the “Boar”, which was beautifully cooked and just fell off the bone.  How about that for €9!  Lisa’s chicken souvlaki was even cheaper at €6.50.  I know how to treat a lady.

We just missed a ferry back to town so we had a relaxed coffee on the dockside while we waited for the next one.  Back at the van we’ve had a frustrating time trying to get the Mi-fi to work.  We know the SIM is OK as we’ve been able to connect to the internet with it in our phones and we’ve used the mi-fi successfully using local SIMs in Spain, Portugal and Italy so we’re at a bit of a loss really as to why it’s just not playing ball.  If the worst comes to the worst we have an old phone we can slave off but it’s not ideal.

Anyways, that aside we’ve really enjoyed Ioannina.  Tomorrow we head back to the coast to begin our journey southwards towards the Peloponnese.

25 February 2025 - Dodona & Parga