More amazing things about Greece:
1. The swimming: In Matala, I swam around the cove and there were shafts of light like sword blades all the way down to the floor at least 100 feet down. Schools of small silvery fish glistened like hammered metal leaves. I did have to fight some current to get back around the cliffs. In Plakias, Adam and I also went for a sunset swim though we were only out for 25 minutes, half of which was spent treading water as we imagined hungry sharks chomping off our legs. We watched the sun descend into the sea, sliding right in as if it were a coin in the slot of a piggy bank. The sea was calm, like liquid opalescent glass that fluttered ever so slightly to make these beautiful slow ripples. We sang all the words we could remember of the Lion King's Hakuna Matata.
2. Runs: The Aussie owner of the hippie backpacker hostel in Plakias sent me up a veritable mountain -- 3 miles of steep switchbacks -- that climbed up from the beach to the monastery in Selia. Not a run for the fainthearted. When I got to the top, Greek people sitting at restaurants outside or on their front steps clapped and yelled out "Yassou! Yassou!" and waved. I don't think they've seen anyone attempt anything quite that stupid. The view was stunning though-- olive groves stretched out on the hillsides into the valley below, then the sea and mountains on the other side. Grecian paradise. A must do for anyone craving stunning panoramic views and a near heart attack from a strenuous workout.
3. Italian food: Adam and I found 2 Italian restaurants in Greece. Leave it to the italians to find sunny spots by the sea, settle down, and churn out delicious eats. Seriously, I don't know why (Janet gets this), when you're missing home, nothing tastes quite as comforting as a plateful of spaghetti and a glass of red wine. In Plakias, the best Italian food is at a place called Kri Kri (named after the nearly extinct Cretan mountain goat). Do not, however, under any circumstances, order the retsina, even if it is 2.5 Euros for the entire bottle while all the other wines range from 10-18 euros. Tastes exactly like fermented Pine-sol. As Adam so eloquently quipped, "The taste of retsina coats your palate the way dog shit sticks to the bottom of your shoe."
4. Chania: Chania's a Venetian port town built in the 15th century and the crumbly yellow stone remains of the old sea walls still hug the harbour. The narrow streets are made of big chunky stones cobbled together and worn smooth by age. Houses are painted a cheery yellow or soothing buttercream color with brown or blue wooden shuttered windows. Wooden doors open up onto ornate wrought iron terraces where masses of bouganvillea in the gaudiest shades of pink and violet spill over onto the streets below. Adam and I splurged 15 Euros per person to stay in the Casa del Amore, which was a 500 year old 3-story house owned by an old man who had lived in NYC for 42 years. We both loved it as soon as we stepped into the lofted pine alcove, with its own terrace overlooking the candlelit cafes of the street below. You could only get up to the alcove by climbing this handcut spiral wooden staircase.
|n the morning, I threw open the terrace doors to see the sun rise and the man across the street taking down the wooden chairs for his cafe, and a little old Greek woman further down the street diligently sweeping her patch of the sidewalk. I felt something akin to bliss and incredulity -- I can't believe this is my life right now. I'm really blessed.
5. All the really old stuff just hanging around: In Heraklion, Adam and I spent an afternoon at the archaeological museum which houses some of Greece's most treasured antiquities in a dimly lit, bunker style room that reminded us of the DMV. This is where they keep the famous disk of Phaestus, the 3,500 year old terracotta disk inscribed with hieroglyphic symbols of human beings, limbs, tools and animals. The inscriptions are believed to be the first ever human script. No one knows what it means, but archaeologists think that every 4 symbols are the equivalent of a sentence and it's a hymn to a goddess.
There's also a bunch of crazy art from the protogeometric period which came after the mysterious Greek dark ages following the splendor and decline of the Minoan civilization. One of my favorites was "clay model of a circular building with a female deity inside it, watched from the roof by two male figures and a dog. Archanes. 850-800 BC." Pretty accurate description of a round portajohn-like structure with elaborate swirls and a checkered design, the door lifted off, and a seated woman wearing something that looks like a prisoner's outfit, with her arms held up over her head. Above her there's a chimney with two guys peeping in and a dog chilling out on the roof. Good job, dead people, very artistic.
6. Greek mythology: We also saw a bunch of marble reliefs of the sexual exploits of Zeus, Greece's ultimate manwhore. I liked the marble relief of the union between Leda and the swan, one of the many myths about the affairs and metamorphoses of Zeus. Zeus fell for Leda, the wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta, and he transformed himself into a swan to have sex with her, which really irked Venus.One of their four kids ended up being Helen of Troy, who later started the Trojan War. Incredibly imaginative -- way better than 50 shades of grey.
7. Acropolis and Agora: Visiting these places gives you an eerie feeling of standing on the foundations of Western democracy. All my Thucydides came back to me and I could imagine Pericles' orations as well as Socrates, gadfly of Athens, stirring up the philosophers. Super cool.
8. New greek friends, Persa and George: Because of the strikes and protests, we had to walk 4.1 km with our 10 kg packs to the airport in Heraklion to fly to Athens. And when we got to Athens, the metro and buses were also on strike. At the airport metro station, I started talking to a couple, Persa and George, who drove us 40 minutes to the city center and put us in a cab to our hostel.
Last night we met up with them and they took us out. We started out at an avant-garde artsy little beergarden completely hidden in an alleyway between the tourist and souvenir shops in Plaka. The garden was this crowded, dimly lit stone square with high tables and stools in the middle. All along the crumbling walls of the ruins around it, were small rooms filled with modern art exhibitions like photos hung on crisscrossed wires, paintings on staticky tv screens, and piles of crumpled clothes heaped on the floor. The whole thing was surreal.
From the beer garden, we walked to the "anarchist part of town," a good 45 min walk that Persa had clearly underestimated. The streets were filled with Greek's alternative crowd (think 80s clothing-- like zebra patterned tights under a tattered denim miniskirt, lots of piercings, jet black hair, fringe bangs on the women...) gathered in sidewalk cafes drinking and smoking, live music pouring out of warmly lit, colorful restaurants, grafitti art spray painted on every building of the narrow alleyways.
We ended up at a crowded restaurant on a corner with two guys playing traditional Greek songs, singing and strumming on bazookies, instruments that look like fat bellied banjos. One of the musicians had the whitest shock of hair I've ever seen, with matching white beard and shocking white brows. I never saw him open his eyes once while playing. The food was the best I've had this trip and George kept the food coming and raki flowing (I lost count by the 7th round...) We had stuffed zucchini with mincemeat, meatballs with spearmint, tatziki, spinach stewed in tomatoes and onions, fried cheese with freshly squeezed lemon, greek salad with olives, feta, cucumbers and tomato, stuffed tomatoes and peppers, orzo in a tomato sauce, slow cooked pork that was so tender it fell off the bone in buttery mouthfuls....it was a feast and the company was wonderful.
For our final stop of the night, we had caipirinhas at a quiet, artsy cafe down the street with Frieda Kahlo-esque murals on the dark blue walls and dangling pendant lamps wrapped in patterns with brightly colored string. A truly lovely night.
Adam's still sleeping off the raki and I've been up for hours. Not sure what's up for today but tomorrow's my last day in Greece and I'll be flying out to Delhi in the afternoon. I feel like I've been gone forever...
1. The swimming: In Matala, I swam around the cove and there were shafts of light like sword blades all the way down to the floor at least 100 feet down. Schools of small silvery fish glistened like hammered metal leaves. I did have to fight some current to get back around the cliffs. In Plakias, Adam and I also went for a sunset swim though we were only out for 25 minutes, half of which was spent treading water as we imagined hungry sharks chomping off our legs. We watched the sun descend into the sea, sliding right in as if it were a coin in the slot of a piggy bank. The sea was calm, like liquid opalescent glass that fluttered ever so slightly to make these beautiful slow ripples. We sang all the words we could remember of the Lion King's Hakuna Matata.
2. Runs: The Aussie owner of the hippie backpacker hostel in Plakias sent me up a veritable mountain -- 3 miles of steep switchbacks -- that climbed up from the beach to the monastery in Selia. Not a run for the fainthearted. When I got to the top, Greek people sitting at restaurants outside or on their front steps clapped and yelled out "Yassou! Yassou!" and waved. I don't think they've seen anyone attempt anything quite that stupid. The view was stunning though-- olive groves stretched out on the hillsides into the valley below, then the sea and mountains on the other side. Grecian paradise. A must do for anyone craving stunning panoramic views and a near heart attack from a strenuous workout.
3. Italian food: Adam and I found 2 Italian restaurants in Greece. Leave it to the italians to find sunny spots by the sea, settle down, and churn out delicious eats. Seriously, I don't know why (Janet gets this), when you're missing home, nothing tastes quite as comforting as a plateful of spaghetti and a glass of red wine. In Plakias, the best Italian food is at a place called Kri Kri (named after the nearly extinct Cretan mountain goat). Do not, however, under any circumstances, order the retsina, even if it is 2.5 Euros for the entire bottle while all the other wines range from 10-18 euros. Tastes exactly like fermented Pine-sol. As Adam so eloquently quipped, "The taste of retsina coats your palate the way dog shit sticks to the bottom of your shoe."
4. Chania: Chania's a Venetian port town built in the 15th century and the crumbly yellow stone remains of the old sea walls still hug the harbour. The narrow streets are made of big chunky stones cobbled together and worn smooth by age. Houses are painted a cheery yellow or soothing buttercream color with brown or blue wooden shuttered windows. Wooden doors open up onto ornate wrought iron terraces where masses of bouganvillea in the gaudiest shades of pink and violet spill over onto the streets below. Adam and I splurged 15 Euros per person to stay in the Casa del Amore, which was a 500 year old 3-story house owned by an old man who had lived in NYC for 42 years. We both loved it as soon as we stepped into the lofted pine alcove, with its own terrace overlooking the candlelit cafes of the street below. You could only get up to the alcove by climbing this handcut spiral wooden staircase.
|n the morning, I threw open the terrace doors to see the sun rise and the man across the street taking down the wooden chairs for his cafe, and a little old Greek woman further down the street diligently sweeping her patch of the sidewalk. I felt something akin to bliss and incredulity -- I can't believe this is my life right now. I'm really blessed.5. All the really old stuff just hanging around: In Heraklion, Adam and I spent an afternoon at the archaeological museum which houses some of Greece's most treasured antiquities in a dimly lit, bunker style room that reminded us of the DMV. This is where they keep the famous disk of Phaestus, the 3,500 year old terracotta disk inscribed with hieroglyphic symbols of human beings, limbs, tools and animals. The inscriptions are believed to be the first ever human script. No one knows what it means, but archaeologists think that every 4 symbols are the equivalent of a sentence and it's a hymn to a goddess.
There's also a bunch of crazy art from the protogeometric period which came after the mysterious Greek dark ages following the splendor and decline of the Minoan civilization. One of my favorites was "clay model of a circular building with a female deity inside it, watched from the roof by two male figures and a dog. Archanes. 850-800 BC." Pretty accurate description of a round portajohn-like structure with elaborate swirls and a checkered design, the door lifted off, and a seated woman wearing something that looks like a prisoner's outfit, with her arms held up over her head. Above her there's a chimney with two guys peeping in and a dog chilling out on the roof. Good job, dead people, very artistic.
7. Acropolis and Agora: Visiting these places gives you an eerie feeling of standing on the foundations of Western democracy. All my Thucydides came back to me and I could imagine Pericles' orations as well as Socrates, gadfly of Athens, stirring up the philosophers. Super cool.8. New greek friends, Persa and George: Because of the strikes and protests, we had to walk 4.1 km with our 10 kg packs to the airport in Heraklion to fly to Athens. And when we got to Athens, the metro and buses were also on strike. At the airport metro station, I started talking to a couple, Persa and George, who drove us 40 minutes to the city center and put us in a cab to our hostel.
Last night we met up with them and they took us out. We started out at an avant-garde artsy little beergarden completely hidden in an alleyway between the tourist and souvenir shops in Plaka. The garden was this crowded, dimly lit stone square with high tables and stools in the middle. All along the crumbling walls of the ruins around it, were small rooms filled with modern art exhibitions like photos hung on crisscrossed wires, paintings on staticky tv screens, and piles of crumpled clothes heaped on the floor. The whole thing was surreal. 
From the beer garden, we walked to the "anarchist part of town," a good 45 min walk that Persa had clearly underestimated. The streets were filled with Greek's alternative crowd (think 80s clothing-- like zebra patterned tights under a tattered denim miniskirt, lots of piercings, jet black hair, fringe bangs on the women...) gathered in sidewalk cafes drinking and smoking, live music pouring out of warmly lit, colorful restaurants, grafitti art spray painted on every building of the narrow alleyways.We ended up at a crowded restaurant on a corner with two guys playing traditional Greek songs, singing and strumming on bazookies, instruments that look like fat bellied banjos. One of the musicians had the whitest shock of hair I've ever seen, with matching white beard and shocking white brows. I never saw him open his eyes once while playing. The food was the best I've had this trip and George kept the food coming and raki flowing (I lost count by the 7th round...) We had stuffed zucchini with mincemeat, meatballs with spearmint, tatziki, spinach stewed in tomatoes and onions, fried cheese with freshly squeezed lemon, greek salad with olives, feta, cucumbers and tomato, stuffed tomatoes and peppers, orzo in a tomato sauce, slow cooked pork that was so tender it fell off the bone in buttery mouthfuls....it was a feast and the company was wonderful.
For our final stop of the night, we had caipirinhas at a quiet, artsy cafe down the street with Frieda Kahlo-esque murals on the dark blue walls and dangling pendant lamps wrapped in patterns with brightly colored string. A truly lovely night.
Adam's still sleeping off the raki and I've been up for hours. Not sure what's up for today but tomorrow's my last day in Greece and I'll be flying out to Delhi in the afternoon. I feel like I've been gone forever...
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