The church bells pulled me out of bed this morning, and for once I didn't mind. It's the fifteenth of August, the Feast of the Assumption, and the whole town is moving toward the Church of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary. I'd been told the holiday would be quiet here, that Arachova's real season is winter, but this morning the streets are full of families in their Sunday best, carrying flowers and small candles. The sky is overcast, a soft grey lid over Parnassus, and the air holds that cool pine smell I've come to love this week.
I stood on the balcony of the Likoria Hotel with a cup of instant coffee, watching the procession form below. It's a strange feeling, being a traveller in a place on its holy day. Everyone else belongs here, has a seat in the church, a grandmother's house to go to afterwards. I have a room and a backpack. But there's something in the air, a kind of shared attention, that makes you feel less alone. I finished the coffee and decided to walk down and see what the day would bring.
The streets were quieter than I expected for a holiday, save for the bells. Most shops were shuttered, their metal doors down, and the few open kafeneia had their chairs turned toward the church. I passed the Clock Tower on its rock, and a man was adjusting a string of Greek flags along the railing. He nodded at me, and I nodded back. That's the thing about Arachova in summer - it's a small town where everyone seems to have time to acknowledge you, even a stranger with a camera around his neck.
I didn't go into the liturgy. It felt like a private thing, the church packed to the doors, the bishop's voice carrying out into the square. Instead, I stood at the edge of Lakka Square and watched. Some of the women wore black, as they do here, and the men stood in clusters, hats in hand. A little girl in a white dress was sitting on her father's shoulders, holding a candle that flickered in the breeze. I thought about my own family, far away, and wondered what they were doing this morning.
When the service ended, the square filled with people spilling out into the sunshine, though the sun was still behind the clouds. I found a table at Cafe Αρκούδα, the one with the wooden bear sign, and ordered a freddo cappuccino. It cost about three and a half euros, which feels like a small luxury up here, where the tourist prices can creep up. I sat and watched the families reunite, the old men slapping each other on the back, the children running between the tables. This is the real Greece, the one that exists outside the museums and the ruins.
I decided to make the climb to the Engarsios steps one last time. It's a habit now, that 264-step stone staircase that climbs to Agios Georgios, and I wanted to see the village from above on this feast day. The steps were slick from the morning damp - the forecast said sixteen to twenty-three degrees, and it felt like rain might come later - so I took my time. Halfway up, I passed an old woman carrying a tray of pastries, and she smiled at me and said something I didn't catch, but the tone was kind. I think she was wishing me a good holiday.
At the top, the churchyard was quiet. The view opened out over the tiled rooftops of Arachova, the green valley dropping away toward Delphi, and beyond that, the hazy blue of the Gulf of Corinth. I sat on a low wall and let the cool air settle around me. It's hard to believe this is the same Greece that bakes at forty degrees in Athens this week. I've been lucky to have this pocket of summer, this mountain cool, and I said a small thank you to Apollo, or to whoever might be listening, for the accident of being here.
When I came back down, the town had shifted into its afternoon rhythm. The tavernas were setting up their grills, and the smell of charcoal and thyme drifted through the streets. I'd heard about a dish called kokoras krasatos me hilopites - rooster in wine sauce with egg pasta - and I knew today was the day to try it properly. I chose a table at Ταβέρνα Το Ρολόϊ, right near the clock tower, and ordered it along with a local beer. The plate came with the rooster falling off the bone, the sauce dark and glossy, the hilopites tasting of egg and butter. It was about fourteen euros, and worth every cent.
The taverna owner came out to chat, as they always do if you smile at them. He asked where I was from, and when I said I was living in Athens for a while, he nodded. He told me about the water situation, how the springs are drying up and the reservoirs are not refilling, and how the mayor is warning that late August and September will be hard. The municipality is exploring small dams, he said, to capture meltwater from the mountain. I'd read a little about it, but hearing it from him, I understood how close it feels. He pointed to the clock rock. 'We used to put the cheese there, in the old days, to age it in the cool air. Now we worry about water for the olives.'
I paid and thanked him, then walked down to the Folklore Museum for one last look. I'd been before, but I wanted to see the looms again, the handwoven flokati rugs that this town is famous for. The museum is in the old neoclassical school, and there's a particular quiet to it, a reverence for the things people made with their hands. I bought a small woven piece from the gift shop - a bag, not a rug, too small for that - as a reminder of Arachova's craft. It was twenty-five euros, and I don't regret it.
The afternoon had turned grey and still, and I walked back through the narrow alleys, past the Engarsios steps again, just to feel the stone under my feet. I stopped at Patron arachova for a coffee - the same place I'd had that single-origin pour-over earlier in the week - and the barista, a young woman who recognised me, asked if I was leaving tomorrow. I said yes, heading to Metsovo, and she laughed. 'You'll like it,' she said. 'They have even more cheese than we do.' It's true, I think, that the mountain towns of Greece share a certain character - they're all proud of their cold, their cheese, their way of doing things slowly.
For dinner, I went back to Kousoúlto, my de facto canteen this week. The owner, a man with a white moustache who seems to have known everyone who walks in for the last forty years, seated me at the same table I'd had twice before. I ordered the formaela cheese again, grilled and drizzled with Parnassus thyme honey, and it was as good as the first time, maybe better because I knew what was coming. The cheese is salty, the honey floral, and together they taste like this mountain - sharp and sweet, a little wild. It was eight euros, and I told him they should charge more. He laughed and poured me a tsipouro, on the house.
After dinner, I walked up to the Clock Tower one last time. The light was fading, and the village lights below were starting to come on, one by one. The day had been full of people, but up here it was just me and the rock and the sound of the wind in the pines. I thought about the week, about the oracle at Delphi, the monastery at Hosios Loukas, the long hikes to the Corycian Cave and the Livadi plateau. I thought about what it means to travel like this, not rushing, letting a place get into your bones. And I thought about the water, and what happens to a town when its springs run dry.
I made my way back to the hotel, taking the long way past the Ethnographic Museum and the Church of the Presentation, now dark and silent. The bells had been quiet since afternoon, but they still hung there, heavy with the day's meaning. A dog barked somewhere far off, and I could hear the last of the taverna music, an oud or a bouzouki, mixing with the night sounds. I stopped at the edge of the square and just listened, memorising it. Tomorrow I catch the bus to Metsovo, further into the Pindos, where the air will be even thinner and the August heat even more distant. But for now, this mountain village is mine for one more night.
Before I sleep, I want to tell you what a day like this costs, because I know that matters. My coffee this morning was three and a half euros, the freddo at Cafe Αρκούδα a bit more. Lunch at Ταβέρνα Το Ρολόϊ, with the rooster and the beer, came to about eighteen euros. The museum entry was a donation, but the woven bag was twenty-five. Dinner, with the formaela, was around fifteen. So a full day of eating well and having something to take home came to about sixty euros, which feels honest for a place that leans touristy. A night in a mid-range hotel here runs seventy to a hundred euros, and I've paid at the lower end because I booked early and stayed a week. Mountain towns like this aren't cheap, but they're not obscene either, and the food is better than anything you'd get for twice the price in a city.
There's one more thing I'll remember about this day, and it's not the food or the views. It's the water. The owner at the taverna told me that the springs are drying, and that the town is looking at building small dams to catch the meltwater next spring. It's a strange thing to hold, this awareness that the cool green mountain I've been walking is fragile, that its beauty depends on water that's running out. I don't have an answer, but I think it's part of travelling honestly - to see a place not just as a postcard, but as a system, a living thing with its own worries.
The church bells started again as I was turning off the light, a single clear note that hung in the air longer than you'd expect. It felt like a blessing, or maybe just a goodbye. I thought about you, listening somewhere, maybe planning your own trip up here. And I thought that if you come, come in August, when it's quiet, and bring your walking shoes, and be ready to drink coffee slowly and watch the light move across the rocks. Come before the water gets scarce, and when you sit in the square, raise a glass of tsipouro to the people who keep this mountain town alive. Yassou, Arachova.
Everything I've talked about today - the church, the taverna, the steps, the water story - is in the episode notes, along with practical details on getting here and where to stay. Check the notes for the bus times from Athens and the links to the hotels and the museum. Until Metsovo, then. Kalinychta.