Adventures in Santorini

So I took Joani on another adventure today. I'm glad she's my wife because I'm not sure there are really that many woman in the world who would put up with me.

 I picked up our rental car today and the first thing I noticed is that there was no onboard navigation system. No problem we had thought ahead and packed our trusty Garmin that has already helped us through France, Spain, Portugal and Amsterdam so I only had to get from the airport back to our house where Joani and I were staying. Have I mentioned yet that there are no addresses in the rural areas of Santorini? I turned what should have been a 15 minute drive into a one hour fiasco before I found the upper highway looking down on the church that I already sent you an email photo of. There I parked the car and walked on one of those paths I showed you, to our house where Joani was sitting wondering what had happened to me. We packed our bags, walked back up to the rental and plugged in the Garmin ready for a day of exploring.

 Hello Garmin do you recognize Pyrgos? ( the town we're staying in) NO. Do you recognize Fira? ( The capital city) NO. Do you recognize Santorini? (The island we're on) No. Nothing, Nada, Zilch.

 We have a car for twelve hours ( well actually eleven, since I've already been lost once) and we're going old school. No Onboard navigation, no TomTom, no Garmin. Just old fashioned paper maps. No problem I've got this?!?!?!

 Now one of the harder things for me to say is that Joani is not perfect. Almost perfect, yes, but she does have a few faults. One of them, is the fact that she can't read or look at a map while driving. She gets carsick. This means memorizing as much of a map as I can and then stopping to recheck if I'm not certain. Even that didn't really help because most of the roads in Santorini have no signs , the maps are not to scale, the mapmakers haven't updated the fact that some roads have been diverted due to construction and even though the construction workers do put up signs, they are in Greek!!! Oh and in case any of you reading this, haven't driven in Europe, I have to tell you, what is a two lane highway to them is a back alley to us in North America.

  We did mange to get to two different beaches, a fisherman's port for lunch, an excavation site with ruins dating all the way back to 5000 BC. Yep, that's right, 7000 years ago Santorini had a port town and started what became a very advanced civilization.

 Later in the day we drove to the far end of the island to see the famed sunset at Oia, but when we saw how many people were coming into to town, it seemed like a crazy rock concert so we left before the sun was fully set and made our way slowly back to the airport to return the car before we got charged for another day.

 End of adventure, right. Not so fast Kemosabe.

 We jumped in a taxi at the airport and told the driver the name of the church in front of our house because as I've said, where we stayed there was no address. Simple, right? Wrong. Seems there's a whole bunch of churches with the same name in Santorini. I paid him the money, got out of the car and immediately noticed that we weren't where we wanted to be. The taxi cab driver said, " you said Panagia church and there it is, I've got another fare" and left.

 Here's what's funny about this. When I was lost early in the day before I had picked up Joani, I had seen this other Church and thought I could find our way back to where we should be. Boy how wrong I was. Pretty soon we were wandering in dark backstreets, looking up cliffs on one side and over cliffs on the other, with no idea where we were. After about 1/2 hour I knew Joani was getting pretty tired and I was getting discouraged, so with my tail between my legs I flagged down the next car I saw. If you could believe my luck it turned out to be an off duty policeman. A very friendly young man who walked us back to a recognizable part of town, called our guide Aristotle who came on his scooter and ferried us, one by one back to our house. Both the policeman and Aristotle laughed when I told them how embarrassed I was. The young man said he has seen it lot's of times before and all Aristotle said when I thanked him was," that's what friends are for."

 What an adventure for our last full day in Santorini. Some photos for you.

The first one is the excavation site. 

The next two are the before and after photos of our seafood lunch that was looking at us

as we dismembered it. (Nothing but bones baby!)

  Then, two random shots of Oia,

and the last is almost a photo of the famous sunset.

 Garry

Santorini

Since we have been on this trip I have started every travel portion of the adventure sleepy. We flew out on a Thursday after work, so I was tired on the plane, the night before each new leg of our journey I would be so hyped up that it would be hard to sleep. It has made it seem like I went to sleep in Toronto and woke up in Amsterdam, went to sleep in Amsterdam and woke up in Athens and now I went to sleep in Athens and woke up on the island of Santorini. Kind of a cool way to travel, sleep through the planes, trains, boats, and automobiles and instead just concentrate on the sights you're seeing. 

 Speaking of sights, I'm getting off of Art and History and moving onto the cultural side of our vacation. When we booked our accommodations for Santorini we were looking at Airbnb, and when Joani saw a traditional cave house, she was over the moon. Now whenever we travel the only specifications I look for is a private bathroom and cleanliness. Everything else is negotiable. So Joani wants a cave house, I don't care, I'm in. From the moment we have got here though I have thought," what a stroke of genius!"  Yes it is obviously very clean and has a private bathroom, but we are basically staying in a finished cave with a stone façade front on it. It is one of the coolest places we have ever stayed and my only regret is that when we planned our trip we hadn't managed to squeeze out one more day for Santorini.

 Now before any of you start thinking about booking a place like this, keep in mind that we are staying in a rustic Greek town where almost nobody speaks English. We have walked around the town a bit and there are no bars and we will not see any beaches until we pick up our rental car tomorrow. This is Greece as the locals live. I was lucky enough to get our local  contact to drive me to the grocery store to get some food for tonight's supper. The same contact ( a very personable guy ) is going to pick me up on a scooter tomorrow morning and drive me to the airport to pick up our rental car.
 We will be driving around this smaller island, checking out some beaches, a very famous archaeological site, and then tomorrow evening before we return our car, we will see the renowned sunset in the town of Oia.

 Photos.. The first shot is our cave house from the front door looking past the kitchen, dining room, and living room.

The archway in the back is the doorway to our bedroom, completely inside the cave.

 The second shot is a lava tube that is being used as a skylight in our bedroom.... Come on, how cool is that?

 Third shot is of the church right outside our front door.

  Next two, are just shots we took while walking on these winding, hilly goat trails ( sorry, I meant paths) that meander around the town we are staying in.

They show the old and newly refurbished houses.

 If you look closely at the last shot you will see a cliff face with caves.

These caves apparently, were originally just used as storage and then over the years turned into, housing that stays warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Using local materials to supply easy housing. How novel.

Everything here has been very cool so far and seems to be getting better.

 Garry

Athens

Hello from Athens or as Joani puts it, part two of our vacation.

 Having reread my first two emails from this trip, I'm thinking that anyone who isn't into art is thinking, why am I getting these emails again? If that's the case I'm going to try to drum up some interest by writing about history. Now I'm sure that will be entertaining and exciting for everyone.

 Joani and I wandered around Athens Greece today. 

We visited the Acropolis,

The Temple of Hephaistos,

The Ancient Agora that was a meeting places for the ancient Greeks, and the Roman Agora that was used 5 or 6 hundred years later.  We saw ruins and relics that were from 3500,3000 and 2500 years old right up to walking among modern housing built only 500 years ago. I love putting that into context by thinking about how later this year, Joani and I might take a trip to Ottawa to celebrate Canada's 150 birthday.

 When Joani and I visited Rome we were amazed at the amount of history we were seeing, but it seemed that every historical sight we came across was cordoned off and protected from public damage. Here in Athens, the whole city seems to be one giant historical ruin and the people who live here seem to take it for granted. At one point in time we came across some ruins that looked like they could be 2000 to 2500 years old that were walled off on one side with a train track running alongside, and the wall on the other side was adorned with graffiti tags.

I'm thinking that if you could translate that graffiti it would read "The Greek gods were here".  Now, whether the Greek gods were a local street gang or Zeus and/or Athena swooped down and painted the graffiti themselves, your guess is as good as mine.  Besides that shot, I included some other historical shots that you might find more interesting.

Reporting live from Athens,

Garry

Kroller muller museum

Two days, two emails, keep your fingers near the delete button if you're bored, but Joani and I made our last day in Amsterdam memorable. (For any of you that have your mind in the gutter, it didn't include drugs and prostitutes, although we did spend our last hour, downtown in the red light district, but unlike last time we were here, we never saw any prostitutes and although we passed by a few drug shops we found that the smell of pot was clogging up our sinuses and we had to leave the area.)

 What was memorable about the day was; In the morning we went to the airport and rented a car. I find it so cool driving in these European countries, although at one point in time our Garmin completely lost the highway we were on and by the time we found it we had to make a fancy detour to get back on track. A second time, due to highway construction we couldn't go the route the Garmin was insisting we take and we had to ad lib for about 20 or 30 kilometers on a secondary route with the help of a very friendly road construction worker. All part of the fun of driving in a European country!

 Eventually we made our way to Otterlo where the Kroller Muller museum houses the second largest collection of Van Gogh paintings in the world. I try very hard to be a good husband but when we got inside, the first thing Joani had to do was find a bathroom and I'll tell you, not running ahead to see this Van Gogh collection was a supreme effort on my part. Honour and Chivalry prevailed and I waited but when Joani came out of the ladies room I insisted we rush past the first few rooms that contained paintings by lesser mortals and get to the heart of the matter, Vincent (did I tell you he was great) Van Gogh!!!

 I think Joani was again wondering whether or not, I had built this visit up so much in my mind, that the reality might not live up to my imagination. Fear not, mes amis. The Kroller Muller museum is simply one of the coolest museums I have ever been to and at the risk of you deleting this email right now, I'm going to drone on about why it's so cool.

 In case you're unaware the Kroller Muller museum is located in a large national park, so when we drove up to where we were buying our tickets, the first thing we saw is that there was an admission price for the park and a second price for the park and Museum. I said that we would just like museum tickets and was informed that since it was in the park, that was not possible. Why was that cool you ask? We bought the joint tickets (You knew it was too late to turn back now) and then were told we could either take a 1/2 hour stroll through the park or we could use the free park bicycles and take a 15 minute ride. Joani and I had already talked about renting bikes and they were giving them to us free to ride through pristine park land.

What a cool way to start our visit.

 Once we got to the actual paintings I was again completely amazed at how much I love Van Gogh. To a lot of people it probably makes no sense and I couldn't really tell you why I relate to his paintings so strongly but the fact remains that I can look at a large amount of Van Gogh canvases and feel that I know exactly what he was trying to say or express and, oh man do I find him expressive.

 There were as many strong canvases as there were at The Museum in Amsterdam but this Museum had, of course, the "Café Terrace a Nuit".  I've been waiting most of my life to stand in front of this canvas and it didn't disappoint. While it didn't have the movement of light that Van Gogh managed to create in some other works with his brushstrokes and colour, the ambiance and atmosphere he created gave it a an incredibly warm feeling and the people sitting at the Café and walking seemed to come alive with movement. It was simply beautiful.

Any Van Gogh fans reading this should make an effort to get to this park to see this painting and others by the man.

 Now if you've heard enough about Van Gogh, I'll take a shorter time to tell you that their were also some paintings by some other artists you might have heard of. Renoir, Cezanne, Monet. 

An exceptional Picasso.

A very wonderful Seurat.

(Yes Matthew, I do get the point of pointillism)

 We finished our visit with a walk through the sculpture garden.

 I was feeling extremely confident that I had sated my Van Gogh fixation for the time being.

 We drove to another City called Utrecht, visited a Dutch castle

and then drove back to Amsterdam where we returned our rental car and ended the day with the very quick trip through the red light district as previously mentioned. Another full exciting tiring day. I think we'll fly to Greece to rest from our Amsterdam adventures.

 Garry

Waking up in Amsterdam

Waking up in Amsterdam

So this is our most recent trip and when I finish copying and pasting this batch of stories and photos, our travel life up to this point will be out there for anyone or everyone to see. I have had lots of help from Joani and I think that for both of us, this had been a great trip down memory lane. We intend to take as many more trips as time, money and health will allow, but from now on, no more emails! Just this blog. I hope anyone who has been receiving my emails will continue to follow our adventures and if anyone new comes along, welcome aboard. This last batch of emails and photos is from a trip we took to the Netherlands and Greece. Hope you enjoy it. We did.

Hello All

It is Saturday morning in Amsterdam and I am overloaded with thoughts. Far more than I imagine you want to hear. But since I’m writing and you’re reading….Too bad for you.

 First and foremost, we had a wild overnight flight from Toronto. At least 2 straight hours of turbulence which the pilot informed us was everywhere. He couldn’t go up or down, or side to side to escape it and so we had to go through. Several of the passengers (including Joani) were very uncomfortable. Some, (including Joani) were also physically sick. Except for feeling bad for Joani, it didn’t really bother me. Sure there were some interesting swoops, dives and shakes going on, but once you’re up there I figure, “what the heck, enjoy the ride”. I tried to tell that to Joani a couple of times to no avail, and at one point in time when she seemed to feel her worst, I even tried to sing to her. Didn’t work to well!! She gave me a stern, “NO” and reeled to the bathroom to, as previously mentioned, get sick. I’m hoping that it was more a commentary on how she felt, than my singing voice!!

 We finally got to Amsterdam at 10:30 Friday morning and it was a beautiful sunny, warm day. We picked up our luggage, easy peasy and I thought, wow this is much better, right until we got into the main part of the airport and tried to sign on to the airport WiFi. Nothing!!! Not on my laptop or Joani’s Tablet. This was a problem as we were supposed to email our host in Amsterdam before we left the Airport.

 How we got a hold of our host is a story for another time but suffice it to say that we still haven’t solved the internet problem and until we do, this email will remain a word document that will not have photos attached or be sent to you all.

 Shades of China all over again. I need to become an I.T. guy.

Garry

 A long P.S.

It is now Saturday evening. We have been to two museums. One of course being Van Gogh's. Man was I keyed up for that. Joani was worried that it might not meet my expectations, but on the contrary it exceeded them. The museum is laid out in order according to his age, and I don't mind admitting I was feeling overwhelmed and very sad by the time we were coming to the last couple of exhibits. Joani said " I felt that before I knew about Van Gogh; now I feel I know Van Gogh." High praise from Joani, but I've always felt I knew, loved and just felt sad for him. To have such a genius be so tortured and die so young. We then visited the Rijksmuseum in the afternoon and saw some Rembrandts, Vermeers and other cool things and then headed downtown and went to Media Mart (their version of Best Buy) where one of their tech guys helped me to get my computer WiFI working, which is why you're receiving this long winded email.

 I'll try to keep the next one shorter, but in my defense we've had an interesting 60 hours.
Anyway some Van Gogh photos,

a Cafe street shot,

a canal shot,

and then a store window that contains my new life motto.

 Tomorrow we drive to Otterlo to see the Kroller Muller museum. More Van Gogh!!

 Good bye from Amsterdam

 Garry

Western Canada wildlife

   So this will be my last email from our western Canada trip. Just wanted to send a couple of photos of some of the animals we saw. I think both Joani and I were amazed at the amount of wild animals we saw on this trip. The most incredible was when we were driving down a divided highway in Jasper National Park.

We turned a corner and there was a family of goats walking down the side of the road.

  We stopped, along with many other cars, and the Papa goat stopped at our open car window and posed for a photograph. 

Joani thanked him, and then we went on our way.  When we took the Sky-tram to the top of Whistler mountain we came across incredibly fat squirrels

and marmots

who also posed for photos, although they may have actually been begging for food.  When we went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge park we were treated to the site of a baby Barred Owl

who had been separated from his parents and was being raised by the park staff until they could release him into the wild.  We didn't get pictures of the caribou and elk that we saw, or a deer that popped out of the woods 20 metres from our car. .  And unfortunately, although everyone else in our group saw grizzly and black bears, we did not.  We were disappointed but not sure in the long run if it was a good thing, in case we became bear breakfast.

Garry