King Alfonso and Tapas…
The Abacería L’Antiqua was full to overflowing and heaving with activity and just as we were pondering whether or not to stay a table became available and we made ourselves comfortable. The food looked good and the bar was doing brisk trade so we selected some items from the tapas menu and waited for our food to arrive.
Posted in El Cid, Food, Greek Taverna, History, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Alfonso VI, Culture, Food, Life, Pinchos, Spain, tapas, Travel
Beyond the Alleyway and the Door
As Fiskardo is the only place that escaped the damage it is consequently the only village to see examples of the old Venetian architecture. The buildings around the harbour however had had a very heavy makeover and didn’t feel especially genuine but those in the back streets leading off the harbour were much more authentic.
Posted in Beaches, Cathedrals, Europe, Food, Greece, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, History, Natural Environment, Travel
Tagged Assos Kefalonia, Captain Corelli, Fiskardo, Kefalonia, Life, Myrtos Kefalonia, Photography, postaday
WordPress seem to go to a lot of trouble to convince users that ‘Freshly Pressed’ is fair, impartial and based on critical selection.
Consider this then from a blog page I chanced upon…
It has been interesting to look back over 2012 to see which posts were the most popular. Bagni di Lucca and Beyond has been Freshly Pressed twice this year, which has been great fun. Thank you WordPress for choosing.
It is a nice blog but it isn’t brilliant (sorry).
I say no more…
Posted in Africa, Arts and Crafts, Athens, Austria, back packing, backpacking, Beaches, Bratislava, Budapest, Cantabria, Cathedrals, Childhood, Croatia, Cyclades, Czech Republic, dubrovnik, El Cid, Estonia, Europe, Food, France, Galicia, Germany, Grand Canyon, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, History, Hotels, Hungary, Iceland, island hopping, Italy, Krakow, Latvia, Literature, Malta, Marrakech, Morocco, Natural Environment, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Prague, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sorrento, Spain, Suez Canal, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Travel, Turkey, Uncategorized, United Kingdom, USA, Vikings, Wales, World Heritage
Tagged blogging, Culture, Favouritism, Freshly Pressed, Life
The coast road to Vathi wasn’t the most attractive I have ever driven but it swooped around the sides of the hills and gave good views out to sea and the neighbouring island of Pserimos until suddenly and without warning it turned inland and after climbing for a while we emerged into an unexpected fertile green valley full of citrus trees in neat rows in carefully cultivated fields which was in complete contrast to the barren appearance that we had become accustomed to. The road suddenly turned back on itself until it reached the village of Rena and reached the sea and could go no further.
Rena was a delightful place, quiet and unspoilt with a narrow natural harbour where a few boats were tied to the jetty, fishermen were fussing with their nets and rich yacht owners were sitting under the shade on their polished decks checking their emails with one eye and watching the girls with the other. After walking along the harbour we turned and strolled down the single road lined with houses and a few shops and we stopped to examine the sponges.
Kalymnos is famous for sponges. This was once the centre of the Aegean sponge fishing industry but it has all but gone now as a result of over fishing and synthetic competition but there were some genuine sea water sponges here so we bought a few and the shop owner seemed grateful for the trade.
I didn’t know this but sponges are living animals whereas I had always assumed that they were plants and sometimes you just have to marvel at man’s inventive nature because I have to seriously wonder who first came up with the idea of scooping an unpromising little black creature off the seabed and turning it into something really useful!
My guess is that the first inclination was to cook it and try and eat it because like the French, the Greeks will eat anything that swims, slips or slithers through the sea. It probably tasted awful (you never see sponge on a menu) but as they were about to throw them back in the sea I can see one man saying, “hang on a minute fellas, I’ve got another idea, if we leave it in the sun for a few days so the flesh rots off and then we rinse it several times in seawater to remove all the excrement, and then we tenderise it with a rock and then we bleach it and then we rinse it several times in fresh water and then we hang it out to dry and then dye it yellow, I think we could find a use for it”, and that’s possibly how a piece of aquatic life becomes a bathroom essential.
Actually, sponges have been used for all sorts of different things over the years, washing with, painting, for drinking from, medicine and under armour padding. The Romans used them for wiping their bottoms in the public lavatories and ancient Greek prostitutes began their use as a contraceptive pessary and hence the term sponge as a derogatory term for a woman of ill repute!
There was a relaxed and informal restaurant by the side of the harbour and although we only intended to have a drink the food looked so good that we stayed longer than planned and had an excellent lunch and then we left the charming village of Rena and headed back to Pothia. We didn’t stop this time but drove straight through and out the other side on the way to a mountain top monastery with commanding vies over all of the island. We stayed there for a while and looked inside the dazzling white churches and the bell towers and then continued to the tiny beach resort of Vlihadia Bay where we swam in the clear warm water and I managed to get stung on the ankle by a jellyfish!
It was getting late so we drove back now the way that we had come and took the main road back to Myrties but on the way I had to stop for some fuel. Being a self-confessed skinflint I didn’t want to put more petrol in than I needed to so at a garage I put an optimistically small amount in the tank and drove on. To my horror the needle on the gauge barely moved so I was obliged to find a second garage to top it up. This time I put too much in and then sulked all the way back on account of the fact that by trying to be too smart I swindled myself out of €5.
After returning the jeep to the car hire office we spent the rest of the daylight sitting on the balcony and waiting for another sunset moment. It was nice here, it was relaxing and quiet and we had both enjoyed it despite Kim’s wobbly start. Our plan for tomorrow was to take the late afternoon ferry back to Kos for the final time but with a morning to spare, over dinner, we made plans to visit the neighbouring islet of Telendos.
Posted in Beaches, Greece, Greek Taverna, History, World Heritage
Tagged Bathroom Sponge, Kalymnos, Kos, Life, Photography, Sponge Diving, Travel
A Boatafly…
There were some spectacular views from the top over to the other side of the harbour where tiers of multi coloured houses rise like a sheer cliff face above the narrow harbour and piled randomly one above the other with shutters folded back like the wings of a thousand butterflies basking in the sun.
Posted in Greece, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, History, Hotels, World Heritage
Tagged Ano Symi, Dodecanese Islands, Life, Photography, postaday, rhodes, Symi, Travel
Impatient to leave Kardamena we had an early start and after a rushed breakfast and check-out from the hotel we made our way to the busy village square where the buses irregularly leave for Kos town.
The journey was not by the most direct route and took about an hour through all the coastal villages and then through the unexpectedly green plains lying in the shadow of the mountain peaks. Farming remains a principal occupation of many people on the island, with themain crops being grapes, almonds, figs, olives, and tomatoes along with wheat and corn and although the harvest was long since past there were still fields of straw like a golden sea of waving champagne next to exhausted black stunted vines and golden melons ripening in the sun.
Arrival at the bus station presented an immediate problem because I was completely disorientated and could make no sense of the ‘You are here’ map and after some debate I marched us off in the wrong direction much to Kim’s annoyance which only increased in intensity when the mistake was realised. After correctional directions we turned around and this time walked the right way and found the Hotel Santa Marina without any difficulty. It was too early to check in so we left our bags and walked the hundred metres or so down a leafy street of Oleander trees and another with butterflyshaped leaves that floated on the breeze but which I couldn’t identify to the sea front and the road into the city.
At the seafront we walked around the horseshoe shaped bay with its thin strip of gritty grey beach towards the harbour and the castle which looked vaguely familiar but thirty years is a long time and since my first visit and in that time Greece and its islands have been on a Euro spending binge so generally the place was barely recognisable and I was struggling to remember very much about the place.
The main square where cars and scooters once sped through was now pedestrianised and tables and chairs spilled out onto the pavements and there were lots of other changes too. Greece and Turkey get along better now diplomatically so the once neglected minarets have been restored, the main church has a new coat of paint and is resplendent in pastel blue and pink, everywhere there are cycle lanes and in the harbour swanky yachts lay moored up with masts clinking, bows gleaming, decks shining and owners posing.
Then and now…
One of the biggest changes was the Plane Tree of Hippocrates which thirty years ago was supported by stone columns and bits of wood but these lay around discarded now because the tree has a more robust but rather unattractive metal frame to keep it upright and the branches from falling off.
Hippocrates was an ancient Greek physician and is considered one of the most important men in the history of medicine, so famous in fact that he is referred to as the father of western medicine in recognition of his contributions to the field as the founder of the Hippocratic School of Medicine. This intellectual movement revolutionized medicine in ancient Greece and established medicine as a profession. Hippocrates is credited with being the first person to believe that diseases were caused naturally, not because of superstition or the acts of deities. He separated the discipline of medicine from religion, believing and arguing that disease was not a punishment inflicted by the gods but rather the product of environmental factors. The Hippocratic Oath is still taken today by physicians swearing to practice medicine both ethically and honestly.
Using our tried and trusted method of selection criteria (the price of a Greek salad and a Mythos beer) we examined menus for later and then walked around the harbour looking at ferry boat schedules and prices because in three days we were due to cross into Bodrum in Turkey.
Back at the hotel the desk clerk apologised that there had been a mix-up over room bookings (my heart sank) and then explained that because they couldn’t give us the room we had booked then we they would give us an upgrade for the same price (my hopes soared). Justifiably as it turned out because our room turned out to be a top floor apartment for five people with full facilities and a balcony in the afternoon sun that suited us just fine.
The first job was to stock the fridge and over the road was a modern mini-market but with old customer service values and invited to sample the produce I purchased more food than we could possibly eat in three days including a monster melon and feta cheese that was so good that we ate it straight away and I immediately went back and bought some more.
After an afternoon on the balcony and a swim to cool down we prepared for an evening in Kos at the taverna that we had selected earlier. We took the same route into town along the sea front where the sea was now dark and mysterious instead of blue and inviting. In the busy streets we walked through narrow lanes lined with tavernas and bars each with swaying overhead lights which illuminated the place as though there were to be a festival. Along the way we repeatedly turned down invitations to sit down and dine and we made our way to the taverna that had caught our eye earlier and we were not disappointed because we enjoyed a simple but excellent meal.
Afterwards we walked a while through the busy shopping streets and the bright lights of the harbour and then returned to the hotel for a reflective ouzo on the balcony. It had been a good day and we had enjoyed it.
Posted in Greece, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, History
Tagged Dodecanese, Kardamena, Kos, Life, Photography, Travel
“But it has got something, Kos and can already claim a number of distinguished addicts: I know several people who come back for holidays year after year.” Lawrence Durrell
Kim was up early this morning and went off on her own to explore while I had a final hour of sleep. After she returned we had what turned out to be a very poor breakfast and then we set off to the village together to examine it in daylight.
We walked the parallel shopping streets lined with shops all selling the same things and now and again bumped into late night revellers only just setting off for beds and a wasted day ahead. It didn’t take long to confirm that this was not our sort of place as girls walked by in impossibly high heels clinging on to men with tattoos and ‘I love Kos’ T-shirts stopping every so often to watch big screen TVs and to examine the football fixtures that were being advertised and to apply more Hawaiian Tropic sun tan oil.
Kardamena was disappointing itself but to a certain extent I was expecting that. When I first visited in 1983 it was a small village but by the time I went there for a second time in 1990 it had transformed itself into a boozy tourist trap and it had clearly continued on that development journey ever since. It was a shame we weren’t leaving today but we had a full day here so having established that there was nothing in the town to interest us we decided to walk south along the coast and see if we could find driftwood to start the boat souvenir building materials collection.
Three pictures – Three Years – 1983, 1990 and 2012.
We walked for a kilometre or so along dark sandy beaches punctuated by sunbeds and pool bars where in the heat of the day with the sun as hot as a steel mill furnace serious solar worshippers were beginning to sizzle like suckling pork on a spit as they turned this way and that to get an even all over roasting.
Eventually the needle on Kim’s ‘walked far enough metre’ entered the red zone so after we visited a charming little blue domed church we turned back, I hid my stache of sticks to come back and collect later. I don’t know why I did that, I can’t imagine that there are that many sad people who take washed up wood home to make their own holiday souvenirs.
Back in the village we stopped for refreshment at the taverna where we had eaten the previous night and the owner was pleased to see us and started to ask us about our travel plans. We told him we were planning to stay on the nearby island of Kalymnos and he was delighted by this because, as it turned out, he was a Kalymnian himself and as we drank our mythos he wrote out a suggested itinerary of all the places that he recommended that we should visit.
It is amazing how a couple of bottles of mythos can improve the situation and back on the hotel room balcony I could ignore the unofficial land fill site, the derelict houses and the sun scorched scrub land to look beyond to the salt and pepper hills rising like a wall out of the turquoise, indigo and violet sea and disappearing in the distance behind a shimmering heat haze and although I was never going to fall in love with the place it began to get better. I spoke with several different people later none of whom would agree with me because almost all of them said that they liked this place so much that they come back every year
The remainder of the day just quietly slipped away and in the evening we had a pleasant night out at the same taverna and received some more travel tips for Kalymnos. At the end of the day I probably have to confess that we rather enjoyed it eventually but we weren’t desperately disappointed to be moving on the next day.
Posted in Greece, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, History
Tagged Greece beaches, Kardamena, Kos, Life, Photography, Travel
Early Morning Sunrise and Boat
We woke early to the most stunning sunrise that was pouring like liquid amber through the open shutters and into the room. The sun was only a few minutes old and was a ball of white light with a yellow halo rising through a fiery sky that was sizzling with anticipation for the new day. A bright yellow slash of solar reflection sliced through the surface of water and the whole bay was so intensely bronze that it was as though the sky had ignited and poured its flames into the sea. Slowly the orange sky retreated and was replaced by a reassuring blue and the sea turned from umber through purple to its more natural marine blue and everything was prepared and ready for another perfect day.
Posted in Cyclades, Greece, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, History, island hopping
Tagged Life, Nature, Photography, Sunrise, Travel
Life in the Slow Lane…
There was a welcoming bar in a little square with rattan cane tables and chairs under leafy trees with books and backgammon available for customers to sit and enjoy and idle some of the day away. As we were getting accustomed to this pace of life we drank coffee and ordered baklava and stayed a while until it was time to go back. Folegandros is a dreamy timeless sort of place in a sort of 1960s time warp and all around there were were lots of aging beardy hippies with ponytails, wearing white linen and flip-flops and carrying sketchpads. All that was missing was the joss sticks and the candles, the flowers and the guitars.
Posted in Greece, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, History
Tagged Everyday Life, Folegandros, Life, Photography, postaday, Travel
“Other countries may offer you discoveries in manners or lore or landscape; Greece offers you something harder – the discovery of yourself”
Lawrence Durrell – Prospero’s Cell.
Some claim that this is a Shakespearian island and the setting for what scholars believe to be his final play ‘The Tempest’ and the path took us through an olive grove with gnarled black trunks each with a knotted witch hiding in the branches and it was all rather like walking through Act 4, Scene 1 of Macbeth.
The children didn’t notice this as they made their way, and ours, to the sea past grand villas with rusting iron balconies, peeling stucco and creaking fading plaster once certainly crimson but now bleached and faded pink by the relentless and unforgiving summer weather and I was reminded of an observation from Durrell – ‘Corfu is All Venetian Blue and Gold – and utterly spoiled by the Sun’.
Through the narrow alleyways dainty butterflies were dancing, swallows were swooping in and out of their nests to feed their recently hatched young and nervous crickets were jumping as we alarmed them with our noisy approach until we walked through a taverna with green check tablecloths and onto a white pebble beach with a gentian blue sea and a daffodil yellow sun scattering diamond dust on the dazzling surface of the water that disappeared into a thousand shimmering shards immediately on impact that I am certain were valuable but were impossible to capture.
On the beach our feet crunched through fine shingle and clattered over polished pebbles as we walked past people sunbathing and whose length of stay could be assessed by the extent of their suntan – through various shades of bronze depending on how long they had been here lounging in the sun from deathly white (arrived yesterday) and then like walking through a Dulux paint chart through the full colour spectrum to tango orange (been here for quite some while). We walked a short way in that conspicuous pasty legged sort of way that new arrivals do and then we selected some beach furniture and settled down for the afternoon.
Now, I’m not much of a beach person I have to confess but with two small children to amuse I had reconciled myself to the prospect of long days of hard work but here was a place to be by the seashore listening to the sound of the sea frolicking at the water’s edge, teasing the shingle and constantly rearranging the pebbles and although I wasn’t absolutely looking forward to spending more time on a beach in a single day than I would normally do in a fortnight as I looked out over the picturesque bay I thought that it really might not be that bad after all.
Boats were gently swaying in the whispering breeze and resting on a multi coloured sea which was butter milk cream over the wave polished stones, vivid blue over the butterscotch sand and imperial purple over the swaying weed and all I needed was a Mythos to make this moment perfect so when everyone was settled I made my way to a nearby beach bar and made the essential purchase that would make the moment absolutely wonderful!
As I suspected it was a long stay at the beach as the two girls made friends and played in the water and at the shoreline but that provided an opportunity for a late lunch of Greek specialities consisting of deep fried courgettes, spinach pie and taramasalata and a couple more Mythos as the sunbeams danced on the water and the rasping shrill song of the agitated cicadas reached a mid afternoon crescendo. Apparently a single insect can achieve a sound level of one hundred and twenty decibels which is the equivalent of a lumberjack’s chain saw which, it has to be said, is a very impressive ratio of sound to body weight. A human shouting like that would probably sound like Krakatoa erupting and the only man who can get remotely close to this is probably Brian Blessed.
After everyone had tired of the beach we collected our belongings and took the short walk back to the apartments stopping for a while on the way to do more swimming but this time in the hotel complex pool and after an hour or so we returned to the room.
From the balcony the view was, if possible, even more magnificent, the green sweeping hills, the sea in its multi coloured splendour and the bleached beach, a crescent of sparkling shingle, decorated with white umbrellas like upturned scallop shells each sheltering a pale creature who had come here in search of the sun but now retreating from its remorseless intensity. As I surveyed the view over and over again, and even after only a few hours of being here, I was happy to declare it to be one of the best places that I have ever chosen to stay.
There were to be no sunset pictures here though because our view was to the east and eventually the sun began to slide away behind Mount Pantokrator to the west which at over nine-hundred metres is the highest mountain on the island and gradually the day slipped through twilight and dusk. The day visitors packed their belongings and left as darkness descended, the raucous chant of the cicadas was replaced by the spooky whistles of the Scops Owls and the twinkling lights of the sea front tavernas began to illuminate the edge of the beach inviting diners to drop by like candles attracting moths.
We returned to the place where we had enjoyed our lunch and chose plates of Greek traditional dishes and sat by the water’s edge next to the sea, lit up now by a copper moon, a bottomless ink black and silent but for the sound of the occasional wave.
As I looked across to the White House I imagined Lawrence Durrell sitting on his balcony and enjoying exactly the same view while searching for literary inspiration and discovering himself.
Posted in Beaches, Greece, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, History
Tagged Kalami, Lawrence Durrell, Life, Photography, Travel
