At around mid morning we joined about thirty other holiday makers when we arrived at the concrete quayside opposite the hotel and were welcomed on board by George himself, a man with a big flashing smile and a flamboyant sense of humour who worked hard to get us all to enjoy ourselves before casting off and steering the brightly coloured boat with the steady rhythm of its chugging diesel engine away from Corfu, out into the Ionian Sea
Posted in Arts and Crafts, backpacking, Beaches, Europe, Food, Greece, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, Natural Environment, Postcards, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Corfu, Culture, George's Boat Corfu, Greece, Holidays, Life, Travel
The top of the Acropolis is huge but there isn’t really a lot to see, no statues, no paintings, no exhibits, but a rather barren archaeological site in the thirtieth year of its restoration with tens of thousands of pieces lying strewn in the dust and long since stripped of its treasures, a stark marble ruin surrounded by ancient brick and concrete, so once a full circuit has been completed, although it felt as though I should stay longer the truth is there is not a lot to stay around for.
Click on an image to scroll through the Gallery…
Posted in Arts and Crafts, Athens, backpacking, Cyclades, Europe, Greece, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, History, Literature, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Acropolis, Culture, Greece, Greece UNESCO, History, Life, Photography, Postcards, Travel
“A product of empire, originally built on racial hierarchies, cultural hierarchies, social Darwinism”.
Stephen Welsh, curator of Living Cultures at Manchester Museum
Just to close things off:
Posted in Arts and Crafts, Athens, Europe, History, Literature, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Acropolis, Archaeology, British Museum, Byron, Elgin Marbles, Greece, Parthenon, The Louvre Paris
The odd one out is the only door with an even number…
Posted in Arts and Crafts, backpacking, Beaches, Europe, Greece, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, History, Literature, Postcards, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Amorgos, Athens, challenge, Corfu, Greece, Kimolos, Odd One Out
The following day we went on another coach trip. Were we mad? I am a believer that the mind cancels out unpleasant events, like bad dreams for example and despite the fact that we had endured a nightmare coach ride to Nicosia only three days previously with blank memories we set off again, this time to the Troodos Mountains.
This time it didn’t work and after only twenty minutes I remembered why I had said that I would never do this again as we went through the same tedious routine of picking people up from all over the holiday resort of Paphos.
After an hour or so we arrived at our first stop – the village of Omodos which turned out to be one of those tourist trap villages where all coaches make a stop-over and the local people pester the life out of you to buy souvenirs that you really do not want or need. We successfully ignored them all and made our way the centre of the village and the Timios Stavros monastery that we had come to see.
The monastery itself was mildly interesting, mostly icons and incense as you can probably imagine but it was other exhibits on the site which made it really worth going to see. First of all a room of precious Byzantine icons several hundred of years old; I am not especially interested in Byzantine icons I have to confess but what fascinated me was the fact that they were just decorating the walls without any protection or security and looking quite vulnerable. I suspect that there was most likely some CCTV somewhere in the room or maybe they are just not especially valuable. Who knows?
Even more interesting was a discreet little museum tucked into a corner room that wasn’t especially well signposted.
It was about the struggle for Cyprus independence which was a bad tempered little spat that took place between 1955 and 1959 between Greek Cypriot freedom fighters in an underground organisation called EOKA (Ethnikí Orgánosis Kypríon Agonistón or roughly translated National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters) and the outdated colonial rule of the British.
Discreet because although Cypriots celebrate independence and consider the terrorist fighters to be resistance heroes I suspect that they don’t really want to offend the hundreds of thousands of British visitors to the country because the reality is that the Cyprus relies heavily on three things – Russian gangsters and money launderers, wealthy Chinese émigrés escaping the communist regime in Beijing and British visitors with more money than sense to support its economy. Specifically here in the tourist shops in Omodos.
I try to be objective in matters like this but the bottom line is that EOKA were terrorists, much like the IRA in Northern Ireland and the Mau Mau in Kenya and they killed three times as many British soldiers as British soldiers killed Greek Cypriots. They employed guerilla warfare tactics including sabotage, civil disobedience, civic disruption, cowardly assassinations, ambush and unjustified attacks against police stations, military installations and the homes of army officers and senior officials including civilians and families of army personnel.
The museum consisted of display cases honouring each of the freedom fighter heroes who died in the struggle and who came from nearby. Each case set out details of their lives and the circumstances of their deaths and contained their clothes and other personal items – sometimes blood stained for effect.
There are no memorials here (or elsewhere in Cyprus) to the British soldiers who died.
Regardless of the rights and wrongs I found this little museum rather interesting and was glad to come across it because two days earlier I had avoided the Independence museum in Nicosia on the advice of the guide book which said that it was especially anti-British and we might not be all that welcome.
Cyprus celebrates Independence Day on 1st October each year. Worldwide there are one hundred and sixty countries that celebrate an Independence Day. This sort of thing is quite difficult for us British to understand, we don’t have an Independence Day to celebrate. England hasn’t been successfully invaded since 1066 and whilst we were glad to previously see the backs of the Romans and the Vikings the Norman Invasion has never really been seen as occupation or subjugation but instead something to be proud of.
France doesn’t have an independence day but it does have the 14th July (Bastille Day) to celebrate the end of the Divine Right of Kings. Germany has a Unity Day on 3rd October to celebrate reunification in 1990 and Spain has a National Day on 12th October which celebrates Christopher Columbus reaching the New World and the subjugation of an entire continent, a sort of Independence Day in reverse. Similarly Australia whose National Day is 26th January and celebrates not the departure of colonialists but the arrival of the first British Fleet in Sydney Cove in 1788.
Latvia has two Independence Days both from the same oppressor, November 18th (1918) from the Russian Empire and May 4th (1990) from the Soviet Union.
Another interesting fact is that of the one hundred and sixty Worldwide Independence Days fifty-seven (35% of the total) celebrate independence from the British. Whoops! France is second with twenty-eight and Spain third with twenty-one.
Let’s hope for all of us that the Brexit Nationalist dimwits don’t start cheering January 1st as UK Independence Day because I for one won’t be joining in to celebrate a day of National self harm.
Even though travel restrictions are easing I am not yet minded to risk it so I still have no new stories to post so I continue to go through my picture archives and see where I was on this day at any time in the last few travelling years.
On 25th September 2014 I was on a coach excursion visiting Ancient historical sites in Turkey…
The problem with bus trips is that you cannot choose your travelling companions – it is a game of chance!
I imagined that we would be accompanied on this trip by middle aged historians in crumpled linen suits and battered panama hats, archaeologists carrying trowels and leather bound notebooks and the entire cast of a Merchant Ivory film but at the first pick up we were joined by a Geordie and boisterous Lithuanian family and then horror of horrors by a noisy bunch of women who looked as though they should really be going to a market rather than one of the World’s finest archaeological sites.
Posted in Arts and Crafts, Cathedrals, Europe, History, Hotels, Natural Environment, Postcards, Turkey, World Heritage
Tagged Cathedrals, Culture, Darts Team on Tour, Didim Turkey, Ephesus, Europe, Food, Greece, History, Hotels, Life, Literature, Natural Environment, Roman Empire, Travel, Turkey, World Heritage and tagged Altinkum Turkey
The following day we went on another coach trip. Were we mad? I am a believer that the mind cancels out bad things and despite the fact that we had endured a nightmare coach ride to Nicosia only three days previously we set off again, this time to the Troodos Mountains.
After twenty minutes or so I remembered why I had said that I would never do this again as we went through the same tedious routine of picking people up from all over the holiday resort of Paphos.
Just as my head was about to explode we finally we left the city and headed for the mountains first of all through surprisingly green and fertile fields, potatoes, peppers, grapes vines, almonds and olives. I was expecting a barren landscape similar to that of Malta for example but it turns out the Troodos Mountains provide abundant water and mountain streams and rivers deliver adequate water to the valleys below to support arable farming on a very large scale. I was surprised by that. I learn something new every day.
After an hour or so we arrived at our first stop – the village of Omodos which turned out to be one of those tourist trap villages where all coaches make a stop-over and the local people pester the life out of you to buy souvenirs that you really do not want or need. We successfully ignored them all and made our way the centre of the village and the Timios Stavros monastery that we had come to see.
The monastery itself was mildly interesting, mostly icons and incense as you can probably imagine but it was other exhibits on the site which made it really worth going to see. First of all a room of precious Byzantine icons several hundred of years old; I am not especially interested in Byzantine icons I have to confess but what fascinated me was the fact that they were just decorating the walls without any protection or security and looking quite vulnerable. I suspect that there was most likely some CCTV somewhere in the room or maybe they are just not especially valuable. Who knows?
Even more interesting was a discreet little museum tucked into a corner room that wasn’t especially well signposted. It was about the struggle for Cyprus independence which was a bad tempered little spat that took place between 1955 and 1959 between Greek Cypriot freedom fighters in an underground organisation called EOKA (Ethnikí Orgánosis Kypríon Agonistón or roughly translated National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters) and the colonial rule of the British.
Discreet because although Cypriots celebrate independence and consider the terrorist fighters to be resistance heroes I suspect that they don’t really want to offend the hundreds of thousands of British visitors to the country because the reality is that Cyprus relies heavily on British tourism to support its economy and specifically here the tourist shops in Omodos.
I try to be objective in matters like this but the bottom line is that EOKA were terrorists, much like the IRA in Northern Ireland and the Mau Mau in Kenya, and they killed three times as many British soldiers as British soldiers killed Greek Cypriots. They employed guerilla warfare tactics including sabotage, civil disobedience, civic disruption, cowardly assassinations, ambush and unjustified attacks against police stations, military installations and the homes of army officers and senior officials including civilians and families of army personnel.
The museum consisted of display cases honouring each of the freedom fighter heroes who died in the struggle and who came from nearby. Each case set out details of their lives and deaths and contained their clothes and other personal items. Regardless of the rights and wrongs I found it to be an interesting little museum.
There are no memorials here to the British soldiers who died.
Cyprus celebrates Independence Day on 1st October each year. Worldwide there are one hundred and sixty countries that celebrate an Independence Day. This sort of thing is quite difficult for us British to understand, we don’t have an Independence Day to celebrate. Uniquely (I think) we celebrate a day in history when we were conquered and lost our independence and that says something about the British character, that day was the The Battle of Hastings in 1066.
France has a sort of independence day on the 14th July (Bastille Day) to celebrate the end of the Divine Right of Kings. Germany has a Unity Day on 3rd October to celebrate reunification in 1990 and Spain has a National Day on 12th October which celebrates Christopher Columbus reaching the New World and the subjugation of an entire continent, a sort of Independence Day in reverse!
Another interesting fact is that of the one hundred and sixty Worldwide Independence Days fifty-five celebrate independence from the British. Whoops!
We stopped for a while for a drink in the sunny main square of Omodos and then ran the gauntlet of the souvenir shops for a second time and made our way back to the coach for the next leg of the tour.
Click on an image to scroll through the Gallery…
Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favourite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments’ on Norm’s site, anytime between Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American Eastern Time).
Posted in Arts and Crafts, back packing, Europe, Greece, Greek islands, History, Literature, Postcards, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Amorgos, Blue Doors of Greece, Cyclades, Greece, Greek doors, Greek Windows, Green Doors, Little Cyclades
The ruins at Knossos were first discovered in 1878 by a local man, Minos Kalokairinos, and the earliest excavations were made. After that several Cretans attempted to continue the dig but it was not until 1900 that the English archeologist Arthur Evans purchased the entire site and carried out massive excavations and reconstructions.
These days archaeology is carefully regulated and supervised by academics who apply scientific rigour (except for Tony Robinson and the Time Team of course) to make sure that history isn’t compromised but it was very different a hundred years ago when wealthy amateurs could pretty much do as they pleased and went around digging up anything that they could find of interest and aggressively reinterpreting it.
Click on an image to scroll through the gallery…
“The sea’s curious workmanship: bottle green glass sucked smooth and porous by the waves: wood stripped and cleaned and bark swollen with salt…gnawed and rubbed: amber: bone: the sea” Lawrence Durrell – Propero’s Cell
Posted in Arts and Crafts, Beaches, Childhood, Europe, Greece, Greek islands, Literature, Natural Environment, Postcards, Travel, United Kingdom, World Heritage
Tagged Boat Rides, Driftwood Boats, Fishing Boats, Greece, Suffolk
Have Bag, Will Travel 
1. Winged Victory, in possession of the French and claimed by Greece
2. Rosetta Stone, in possession of the British and claimed by Egypt
3. Samsat Stele, in possession of the British and claimed by the Turkey
4. Bust of Nefertiti, in possession of the Germans and claimed by the Egypt
5. Venus de Milo, in possession of the French and claimed by Greece
One final piece of trivia; the Samsat Stele is claimed by Turkey, the hole in the middle of it is because sometime in the past someone made alterations to use it as a vine press. No wonder the British Museum thinks they should continue to look after it!