Day 10: Exploring Ithaca

I had some time in the morning to explore a little of Lixouri, and given that I planned to fly out in the evening, I wanted to be very intentional about doing two things: 1) I knew I would have a limited amount of time, so my thought was that the most important thing to do would be gaining a sense of the terrain as best as I could, to compare with Homer’s descriptions of Ithaca in the text; 2) more abstractly, enjoying my time there.

On point (1), I obviously would not be able to do as thorough of a job not just in scientific testing but also in physically exploring different locations as the Odysseus Unbound Foundation. Given this, I opted to focus on the geography of the coast and surrounding islands, as well as the types of flora and fauna growing in the region:

My conclusion to that point is that the geography does match up, to the extent I could glean, with the Homeric description. Taking as my starting point Odysseus’ description of Ithaca in the text, he says “Bright Ithaca is my home: it has a mountain, Leaf-quivering Neriton, far visible. Around are many islands, close to each other…Ithaca itself lies low, furthest to sea towards dusk; the rest, apart, face dawn and sun” (Odysseus Unbound Foundation). This description seemingly does, at Bittlestone writes, align more with Lixouri and Paliki broadly than it does with what is now called Ithaki — given the physical position and surrounding islands of Paliki.

Apart from the more academic thinking, I just sat around a square next to the Lixouri Port and engaged in one of my favorite activities: people watching while eating dessert for breakfast (in this case, a Nutella waffle with vanilla brownie ice cream):

Finally, I left for the airport to board a plane to Athens, where I will pick up my bags but also have a couple more opportunities for education and adventure. Cheers, and see you tomorrow.