Crete, Greece

Crete is a long Island with a mountain range down the middle. We took a bus ride to the top of the mountain where there was an old castle. The first photo is looking over one side of the mountain and the second photo is looking at the other side.

We took a walk through a small village.

The roads go straight up. No curves here.

The mountains are called 'the white mountains' because the mountain tops stay white with snow year round.

And the beaches are sandy and long.

The drive up the mountain is full of pintail curves.

Again here are the white mountains. Almost every spot on the island is terraced  and used for olive orchards or  some kind of garden. The drive was amazing and beautiful.

Love,

Wyona

Mykonos, Greece

Here we have breakfast in our room. A friend sent us chocolate covered strawberries and we happened to have oranges in our room. The donkey purse is from Santorini.

And another day we came back to the room with a ship folded up o our bed so I added the gelato, nuts and cookies. Oh yes, and then a couple of necklaces from Turkey and look at the ear on the donkey.

Mykonos from the ship.

And the ship, Constellation from the boat tender.

 All the buildings in Mykonos are painted with limestone white. It is the law. Even the pathways are painted white between the stones.

No cars, taxis or buses are allowed in Mykonos. Only small vehicles or scooters are allowed on the streets when they are delivering goods to the shops.

Love,

Wyona

Two Layers of Shoppers

Times have changed, said the shop keeper. There are now only 2 layers of travellers.  Those who have so much money that they can come into a store and buy anything they want, and those who buy the usual cheap tourist souvenirs.  The class of people who had two or three hundred dollars to spend is gone.  They were the middle class and they don’t exist in Europe anymore.  Some Canadians, Americans and Brits, but rarely do the European cruisers have that kind of money any more.

Wyona and I always look at bags, scarves and jewellery.  When Margaret’s husband said good-bye to her as she left for this holiday, one of his last words to her was, “I hope you don’t pick up any bad habits while you are gone.”  She hasn’t.  She picked up 2 scarves in Santorini and one on the boat – and that hardly counts as shopping.

“Holy Doodle”, she said when she saw the ring Wyona had purchased but and then offered to let me buy from her. Picking up a piece of jewellery is a significant investment of time; I was glad to be on the receiving end of that deal.   I just say yes. Yesterday at the end of a long day in Santorini, we stopped by some merchants who had 35 % or 50 % off of their rings and necklaces – the end of the season sale. 

Easy to tell it was the end of the season.  Many of the villas and hotels are already closed – really closed.  Plywood is nailed over their windows, no deck chairs are out, and their pools are empty. We didn’t take a ship excursion into town.  Wyona had read that if you go into the village at the other end of Fia, take the cable car to the top of the cliffs and then ride a local bus That way you can go to Oia (EE-yah) for €1.6: 4 euros up in the cable car, 4 down and 1.6 each way into town and out – a grand total of 11.2 euros for the day instead of 89 on a boat excursion.  Another significant saving would have been to walk to the top of the cliffs on the same trail that a donkey ride can also transport you to the top, the donkey ride being 4 euros – the same price as the cable car.

I can’t remember the last bus I rode where the bus fare is taken on the ride – except for those trips I take home from Sicamous and haven’t purchased a pre-paid ticket. Then I am all the way to Golden before I have to pay. Here the local ticket taker walks down the crowded isle, bills stuffed in one hand, a set of tickets he tears off in another and clenched between his hands is a set of 5 metals columns out of which he dispenses the correct change, should people give him bills.  “What do I want 30 centimes back from 3.50” said Wyona, “so I just whispered to him, ‘Keep the change.’  That is how my hand got an extra squeeze and a large smile from him.”

She did the same thing with her money to a clerk in a jewellery store in Athens.  A young 19 year old shopkeeper said to her on the street, “Come in.  I give you no hassle.” 

“No hassle?” she confirmed. 

“None ,” he said and he was true to her word.  He let her look around for more than an hour, just left her alone, though she had gathered information along the way that it was his brother’s shop (aged 32) and his uncle was somehow in the family business. 

When the bill was finally totaled up, for her it was tip time – to the younger shop keeper, even though the older brother and uncle had tried to hover around making the sale.  When he saw the size of the tip he ran to get her another “free” gift.  The tip may have been too much for him to comprehend.

Arta

Corfu, Greece

We walked through the square, through the local church, stopped to take pictures at a typical square surrounded by dining establishments, and then we walked through the streets of markets, looking at the precious gems, the gold, the shawls, the wooden salad tongs and the toys. I tried on a one-armed black shawl, well worth the price of 40 euros and though, “If I only wear this to the Ward Christmas Party, it will be well worth the price.” When I walked away and left it in the shop, Wyona asked, “What happened there.”

“The handsome Greek clerk insisted on helping me with shawl. I knew I could do it alone, but he was insistent, I slipped the sleeve on and then went to wrap the rest of the shawl wrapped around me. But he stood a little too close to me. And when I had the sleeve on, he took his hand and smoothed out the rest of the material on the left side of my body and around my hip, giving me a massage along the way that was just a tidge too familiar. Am I imagining this, I thought. But no, he wrapped the other side of the scarf through my midriff and over my shoulder the same way. All that went through my mind was – I am used to getting a massage like this for free. It is not going to help him sell me this scarf this way, even though I really want it I am going to leave it here.” So I scarified and and went away empty handed. “You should have told him, You would have bought it, without the familiarity.” ” said Wyona when I told her. “I know. I know. But I am not quick enough and besides, I am on holidays and so I will find that scarf somewhere else on this trip.

At a Venetian Well

“Go that way, if you want to see a real local sight,” a local said to me as I was waiting outside of a grocery store for Greg and Wyona who needed some cool refreshment. The Donair Shop had offered her a coke for 2 ½ Euros. Too expensive. In the grocery store it was only one euro. So with a Fanta Orange her hand, we climbed some stairs to an empty courtyard where the well was a two step platform of white marble and inscribed 1693. I wondered how many families had drawn their water there.

A bougainvillaea tree was splayed against one of the apartment walls. A grape vine rose two stories and then branched its vines out over the windows. A woman sat on a balcony hanging her laundry out over the street. School boys came running by, empty handed, hiding in the niches of the wells so they could scare the girls whom they knew would be coming after them. The girls walked by, shrugging their shoulders with disdain at the silliness of the boys who were trying to attract their attention. Their mothers all followed behind them in a few minutes, backpacks over their shoulders. “Did you notice,” said Wyona, “things are the same all over the world. The girls all carried their own back packs and the mothers were carrying the backpacks of the boys, one of them having 3 sets of shoulder straps slung over her shoulder.”

So nice to see down so many streets in Corfu.

Arta