Last Thoughts on Greece

Another vacation over. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'd love to be a vagabond, a world traveler, just going from city to city, country to country with no set agenda. Going where the wind or whim takes me. It's nice to have a home to come back to, but seeing new things in new places is, for me a great education. It allows you a window into world history and culture in a way that I don't think you'd ever get out of a book.

 The Netherlands and Greece are an odd combination in a lot of ways, but in other ways have a lot in common. Both of their economies seem to rely heavily on tourism. Netherlands offers tourists extreme partying in the form of drugs and, ahem!! Ladies of the night. Greece offers again, extreme partying with beaches, booze and a hedonistic culture. I think both countries aim towards a younger crowd than me and Joani, but we found a lot of things to love anyway, or if not love at least like a lot. In Netherlands we were visiting the land of Van Gogh. I know I don't have to say any more than that so I won't. Greece on the other hand  was for us an extreme land of contrasts. We drove through incredible beauty, both in the mountains and the coastal regions. At the same point in each area, signs of poverty and unrest were always popping up. We could stop in a trendy café, clothing store or souvenir shop that would be lovely and them walk by an abandoned building right next door. Graffiti was everywhere, be it in Athens or any small towns we drove through. Sometimes while driving through the countryside we would be driving blindly, not sure where we were and looking for a sign that would tell us what town, region, or road we were on, and when we'd finally see one it would be covered in Graffiti!

 Speaking of driving, I'm going to talk a little more on that. In the other European countries we've driven through, I've always had the benefit of onboard navigation or the use of our own personal Garmin. Here in Greece we, at all points in time were free lancing. The cars had no onboard systems and our Garmin chose an extremely inopportune time to die. It had taken us through Spain, Portugal, France, Monaco, Western Canada and some parts of the U.S., but it was old and passed away. So we depended on instinct, a road map that in each stop along the way, the car rental company gave us and road signs that were mostly written in Greece and sometimes as I said covered in Graffiti. It was totally awesome!!!!!!!

 I feel extremely alive when I'm hanging out on the edge and when I'm driving in a European country and feeling lost most of the time, that qualifies as being on the edge. Joani was a little (sometimes a lot) nervous and a couple of times pointed out that we could just hang out around our hotel, but hey, we're Canadians, a land of explorers and adventurers.

 In the last two days, we drove up into the mountains to see the temple of Delphi, passing through several small towns including one Ski resort. We not only visited the Oracle of Delphi on our 2nd last day but the mountainous scenery was amazing and reminiscent of some parts of Spain. On our last full day we drove down to the southern tip of the Greek peninsula, completely by instinct and again at one point in time Joani suggested that we could backtrack, find our car rental place, get a hotel nearby and wait out the day. Get up the next morning return the car and head for the airport.

 But I am stubborn. I kept pointing to the next corner telling her we were heading south and eventually had to come to the sea. First we saw boats, then we saw the sea, and then we came around a corner and the Temple of Poseidon came into view. It was beautiful in every way and as soon as Joani saw it I know she forgot all her nervousness and just got in the moment. And what a moment!!

 Now I want to make something very clear. Earlier on, in one of my emails I stated that Joani couldn't look at maps while in a moving vehicle, but while we were driving in mainland Greece with no navigation devices and all the other impediments, she handled herself like a pro. As often as her stomach would allow, she would sneak peaks at the map and try to match up town names we were driving through, with names on the map. The whole adventure was a team effort and a wild time.

 Two countries and four Islands. We drove everywhere but Delos and I loved every moment of it.

 If sometimes I talk or write to much it's just as I've said before, my way of ingraining some of the best memories and I hope you enjoyed our trip through the Netherlands and Greece.

  So some last photos for you to look at.

 1st) is the Temple of Poseidon, and if it looks awesome here, you should see it up close.

 Then Joani to put into perspective, the size of the monument

 One that I'm just calling, " The sea and me"

 Thens there's the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

Delphi is a whole complex and the six columns you see in the middle of the photo are the remnants of the Temple of Apollo where the Oracle hung out.

 I took a photo of one Greek artist's interpretation of what the Oracle looked like, and here it is.

 Last, the obligatory sunset shot for the sunset of this trip.

 Garry
 P.S.
 In late June of 2018 we are leaving for Arizona to hike the Grand Canyon. We will take a whole day to hike down the North rim, spend two nights at the bottom by the Colorado River, and then spend another day hiking back up the South Rim. Hope you come along for the ride.
 Garry

Last Day in the Greek Islands

 It's been quite a whirlwind this time. Amsterdam, Athens, Santorini, Naxos, Delos and Mykonos combined, and now tomorrow morning we're heading back to mainland Greece for a couple more days and then we'll be heading home. I'm always amazed at how fast the time flies when you go on vacation. Blink and you'd miss all the sights.

 On our last evening in Mykonos I thought I'd send a little discourse/tutorial on driving in the Greek islands. I've driven, and enjoyed driving in Hawaii and the mainland U.S. as well as France, Spain, Portugal and The Netherlands, but I'll tell you, driving in the Greek islands is something that has to be attempted to be believed.

 The roads are either dirt or if paved, in various states of disrepair, and extremely narrow.

 The locals drive like either like seniors who don't want to go over 30 kilometres an hour or if younger, like kamikaze pilots who begrudge tourists being on their roads, so are constantly trying to play chicken with you.

 The other local driving hazard to contend with is the animals! At any point in time you can come across dogs,( they love their dogs here ) cats, donkeys, or goats, in the middle of the road, and just to provide you with a laugh, I even swerved once to avoid an Iguana.
 If you're like me you would never want to hurt an animal.

 The tourists are also either fast or slow depending on if they seem scared because they regret the decision of renting a vehicle in the first place, or in the case of the fast ones perhaps they've bolstered their courage with a few drinks and decide to drive kamikaze like the young locals.

 There are no sidewalks.  The roads seem too narrow to accommodate two lane traffic as it is, so as a pedestrian you walk along either in fear of your life or brazenly inject yourself right out into an oncoming lanes of traffic assuming, I guess, that people driving along will just avoid you.

 At all points in time, it is mayhem and chaos and not to be attempted by the faint of heart.

 So of course, I have rented cars and driven on all three islands. Joani at points in time has stated that I am a madman behind the wheel and after this adventure I'm not sure that I could argue the point. But I still maintain that having our own vehicle allows us to see and do things that you couldn't see or do on a guided bus tour. Besides, there is a little cache in being able to say that I have driven in all of these countries. So perhaps I am a vain madman!!

  I have attached some photos in warning of what you would be taking on, if you ever do attempt to be a madman like me and drive over here.

 The first photo is of Joani showing the width of the little side road leading to our apartment in Mykonos.

Yes this is a two lane road. Photo number two is of two trucks passing each other on a secondary highway.

You can see the paint stripe down the centre but even so, the bigger truck is sharing the smaller truck's lane as you can see. You should see when a big truck and a bus come across each other. SCARY!! The third shot is of a four way intersection. There is no right of way.

If you look closely, you can see bikes, Atvs, and cars all sharing the intersection and all going in separate directions. There are no such things as lanes in an intersection and if a driver behind you, feels you're not moving fast enough, he will pull out into oncoming traffic to cut you off and go ahead. If you are meek you will never get a turn done in these intersections. It's best to keep your hand near the horn and plow ahead!!

 Then of course there's the animals. I have again sent you the photo of my donkey because A) it fits the email, he was in the middle of the main street, and B) I love the shot.

 The next two are both of goats. If you take a close look you'll see that they are two different herds of goats. The mountains goats looked, and were, much wilder, and were just running willy nilly down either side of a mountain road with their herder walking along behind shouting at them.

The town goats looked well groomed, almost like pets and were actually all pleasantly following a man in a truck who waved nicely at us as he drove by.

The point being, you never know when you're at a goat crossing in the Greek islands.

 Please don't let me scare anyone off. If you can do it without having a heart attack, driving here is an incredible experience and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. ( That is, if Joani would get in a car with me again.)

 More live traffic reports from the Greek Islands

  Garry

Mykonos

We are in the home stretch of our latest adventure and as always, I'm starting to feel a little melancholy. I love traveling and I do not like the concept of going back to work, so as our vacation winds down, it feels like a double whammy.

 What has that got to do with the fact that we are now staying in Mykonos? Nothing really but I can make a logical connection to the fact that today we took a ferry ride and spent the better part of the day on one of the smallest Greek islands, Delos. For any of you reading this, that are history nuts, I recommend you do a little research on Delos. At one point in time it was at the centre of the Greek universe. Now we are talking about 2500 to 3000 years ago or more but way back in history it was the religious, cultural, and economical capital of the area. Not bad for an island that is only about 1600 metres wide and about 5 kilometres long.

 So now the melancholy connection. If you have ever visited any serious archaeological sites you almost always see these things cordoned off and tended to with vigor. But here in Greece, time and time again we have seen these major sites, some of the oldest sites in the world, left in a state of disrepair. We saw people walking over items ( pillars and parts of statues) that in a country in better financial state would have been completely inaccessible. Ancient mosaics covered in dirt and dust, and even the onsite museum was closed with a handwritten sign stating, " work in progress" but it was the middle of a weekday and there was very little work going on.

 I feel very sorry for Greece and the turmoil the country is going through, but I also feel incredibly terrible for the damage being done to this wondrous site, just because of inattention.

 Think about this just for a second. The ruins we saw today are older than Pompei!! That blows my mind and while I'm unsure of what can be done in today's political climate, I will say this to any of you reading this. If you have any interest in history and archaeology, get over here and see this soon, because I'm afraid if something doesn't change it won't be around for a lot longer.

 A little heavier than I usually write but I started off by saying that I was feeling a little melancholy and seeing things that I consider invaluable being allowed to turn to dust, is disheartening.

  On that somber note I will tell you about the photos.

1st is Joani in front of, "The terrace of Lions",

next is me doing my Shakespeare imitation in front of a 3000 year old home.

(property values are down).

The third shot is of a giant Theatre,

one of the few places they took strict measures to protect.

Then. there's my friend the lizard.

The site is full of various species of lizards and I took tons of shots trying to get one of them. This is my best result so I threw in in here just out of pride?! Then there is a shot of one of the unattended mosaics.

I think they would have been beautiful if they weren't covered in dust and dirt as I already said.

 The last shot is my favourite of the day. We climbed to the highest point on the island. It is called,"The Sanctuary of Zeus and Athena". When we got to the top, Joani used all her charm to get us a table and there we ate our lunch.

 TOP OF THE WORLD,MA.

 Winding down in Mykonos

 Garry

Naxos

 Hello from Naxos

 I know that different people have different ideas of what constitutes an adventurous vacation. For some it's scuba diving, hang gliding, cliff diving. Those types of things are not really my cup of Java. There is enough danger in every day life without adding to it when I'm on vacation. Now you might think that driving in these European countries with the narrow roads and crazy drivers (foreign and domestic) belies that statement, but honestly I have very rarely felt in any more peril driving over here than I feel every morning on my 401 commute to work. So with that said, I'll tell you what I think of as an adventurous vacation.

 I love coming to these other countries in South America, Australia, Europe and even Asia, and getting off the beaten path. Not just following the tourist trail. Again I'll say, I'm lucky that Joani not only goes along with me on these diversionary treks but also seems to enjoy them very much.

 This morning we woke up in Naxos in a farmer's cottage in the middle of nowhere!

We are 10 kilometres outside of the main town of Chora which is the capital of Naxos. The owner of our farmer's cottage has built a newer house where he and his family live on the same property but he isn't even here! He had a friend greet us when we arrived as he has taken his family on a mini vacation, so the ten acre spread is ours. It's a mini farm with grapes, peppers, tomatoes, and other vegetables we can't even identify and our back yard is overlooking the Aegean  Sea.

We had breakfast this morning to the sound of crickets and birds with a cross harmony of waves hitting the beach.  Oh yes, and the owner asked, if we had time, could we water some of his vegetables.  I feel like I'm share-cropping on a farm in the Greek Islands, and I'm in my glory!

 Naxos part 2

 Spent the day driving around Naxos. Little bit better roads than Santorini but still very interesting. Passing through small towns you quite often come to sections where you encounter a driver coming in the other direction and what happens usually is that someone has to back up until you come to a wide enough portion to get two abreast. If you both get stubborn, the stalemate can last a little bit. Being as we have a rental and don't want to screw up our insurance we seem to give away 60 to 70 % of the time but I'm in no rush.

  Anyway besides that Naxos is quite beautiful but in a very different way from Santorini. It's much bigger with large patchs of farmland interspersed with the occasional small town. Besides the main town of Chora they really seem to be oblivious to the concept of tourism which is okay by me.

 As we were driving through the countryside what remained similar to Santorini was the fact that there were very few destination signs on some very twisty roads, so getting lost was an easy process, but finding out where you were was not. Two or three times we stopped at service stations to ask directions. These stations would have one attendant, usually an elderly male attendant but once a female. None of these attendants spoke English, so I would take out my road map and point to where I wanted to go and then wouldn't understand a word they would say back to me. I'm sure every time they were trying to be helpful but have you ever heard the expression? " It's all Greek to me"........ Come on folks, there's a punch line in there.

 Anyway we spent half a day wondering around the main part of old Chora and a half a day lost in the countryside where we did find the temple of Demeter but couldn't find the temple of Dionysyus.  Nevertheless we had tons of fun and will head back out tomorrow for more of the same.

 So if you haven't nodded off and are still reading this I'll tell you about the photos. The first two are of our lodgings I spoke about. Inside and outside. I did mention that it was a farmer's cottage and before you ask, yes we do share our bedroom with casks of wine and those casks do have freshly made wine in them.

 Two shots taken during our daily travels, one of Joani in old Chora

and one of me taken at the temple of Demeter.

The last shot is one of the other things that I forgot to mention might crop up when you drive in the Greek Islands. This old fella was leading his donkey down the middle of the main street in one of the towns we were driving through and it was quite a process between me, him, and the oncoming traffic figuring out the right of way.

 Reporting on live traffic congestion in the Greek islands.

 Garry