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SEPTEMBER
WEATHER ...
Some very nice days - certainly warm enough for walking; wild flower
hunting; swimming and the like. But the thunderstorms are here heralding
the gradual approach of winter. 30o+ in the day can become 18o+
very quickly at night....
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NEW Name on the Cretan Book Scene
KLAUS-DIETER THILL
Photographer/Author: Klaus-Dieter
Thill comes from Dusseldorf, Germany. He has created a new book of photographs
about those small chapels you find almost everywhere in Crete - mainly by the
roadsides, Minaturkapellen auf Kreta. Klause has kindly agreed to
allow us to place a photo-gallery on Cretanvista/s. Coming soon.... Village Life...in
the Big City!!
Athens, Greece. Home of the home of modern civilization. The
Olympics. European football cup winning football teams. Dimas - maybe the
greatest weight lifter of all time. The Parthenon. Monastiraki. Plaka (Byzantino
and To Palio Taverna).. The meat market (and Papandreou's Taverna - right
inside). The fruit and vegetable markets. The Acropolis View Hotel and
Metropolis cafe - patisserie - zaxaroplasteio. And taxi
drivers.... Make no mistake, there may well be a superb Metro, an urban
railway and modern tramcar system - but taxi drivers still drive taxis - this
is the big city!...
En-route from the UK again we arrived right on time at El Venizelos - the
continuously award winning Athens airport (really). We engaged our allotted
taxi driver - strictly allocated on a queue basis. After a brief argument
with our aged (older than me) driver over prices, (he won hands down), we spent
an interesting 45 minutes hearing about his 25 years in America - at a
reasonably safe speed, before alighting at the Acropolis View.
All was well. A quick brush and polish and we were away on the town.
Down past the floodlit Parthenon (Acropolis) into Plaka and a very superb meal,
to the accompaniment of a live Greek popular folk group (the bouzoukis are
magic), at To Palio Taverna - surrounded by Greeks in the outdoor garden.
Every so often people would get onto the floor before the musicians and
perform those utterly bewitching Greek dancing circles.. A beautiful evening -
which didn't end until well after midnight. Back at the hotel I finished my
night sat outside on our balcony savouring a cigar I had bought on impulse
from a Kiosk - and I don't smoke... Utter, total. complete magic..
The next day was nothing more than more cream on an already laden cake.
Plaka; The Mitropolis cafe; Monastiraki... Even the sudden rain didn't dampen our
spirits. A great trip, once again...
But wait. Did I say that I didn't smoke? Well, after our return taxi ride to
the airport, I should. If I could stop my hands shaking maybe I
would..... Our carriage awaited, bang on time, at the hotel - 5pm. Greek get back to work
time. Let rush hour commence....
Our driver was Ioannina (a lot of war there once). Nice name for a lady driver.
Bags in the boot. Off we go. After only 90 seconds or so we overtook a
police car. It ignored us. Thank you God. At around 2.5 minutes we hit
the main route to Glyfada - minimum three lanes, often four - and sometimes slip
lanes to the right and left. Longish very fast stretches between very
large sets of traffic lights, with a tendency to turn suddenly red at our approach.
The traffic was sardined, but all moving very quickly. I remember the number
of lanes well - we used all of them. Tailgating the vehicle in front before
dodging into the next space to appear - whichever lane it happened to be in.
The red lights were just starting points for some very serious acceleration.
Space shuttle speak...
Once I saw a police motorcyclist talking to the driver of a stationary car,
but Ioannina caught my jaw reflex and before I could shout for help said
"Don't worry, we know where the police are"!...
'Talk
to her', I thought - slow her down.. Just then her mobile chirped a tune similar to the one played
when the Spartans went into battle. 'It's my daughter' our Pilot stated, picking
up her mobile in her left hand whilst changing down with her right and accelerating
hard into the next vacant space opposite - tailgating a coach which seemed
to be about to stop... But our speed did not exceed 120Km/hr. Until we
hit the motorway for the airport - then it did not exceed 160. At any time!
In between remonstrating with a variety of other drivers for a variety of sins
against her, Ioannina managed to share some of her family with us. Two
young grandchildren (Boy 12, girl 8) their smiling photographs on the sun
visor; her daughter now 29 years old and obviously a sincerely cherished
entity. Wait a moment - daughter 29 years old - so how old was Ioannina?!
"6am this morning" shouted our pilot "I started work at
6am"
I used to ride large, very fast motorcycles - and enjoyed every minute of it
- now I just shake......
Kalos Ilthate - welcome to Athens. |
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A
Little More Site News.
How about that?....
Since we first published our site in 2001 it has
grown slowly but surely to its present size. Cretanvista contains more than
1500 files; supported by over 1000 photographs (mostly high quality). To
keep it all together there are more than 4,000 links between the files.
If you read our news page you may notice some of the links to other sites,
all of which have to be replaced with an updated set for each edition - once a
month... As does the news page itself.
Finding us ......
Don't forget you
can access this website via several different spellings of our site name. So
if your typing skills are a bit 'iffy' you can still find us. We also
use different ISP's and domain endings to make it as easy as possible for you to
find us. Try it: www.cretanvista.co.uk
really is no different to www.cretanvista.gr
- except that you receive them from different parts of the world.
Did you want one and didn't get one?!
The publishers have agreed to support our Christmas/New Year news with a
few more copies of Carol Paliodakis' The Cool Guide to Living
in Crete (Cool Publications).
You can of course buy one yourself if you can't wait, but Christmas isn't far
away if you can...
Last Competition Winners:
Ann S - Yorkshire, UK.
Niall B - Birmingham, UK.
Alan P - Lincolnshire, UK.
A. Davies - Nomos Chanion, GR.
Books & Good Reading - NEW REVIEW.
Since the last news our book reviews have increased by one:-
Collins Complete Mediterranean Wildlife.
Dr Paul
Sterry. HarperCollins.
The people behind the books:
Every book review has an
introductory paragraph about the author/s. We have decided to go a little
further and where possible, include profiles of not only these talented
authors but also, where we can, of people behind them.
Good examples are
'Patouchas' - Ioannis Kondylakis (Read the review)
and 'Who Pays The Ferryman' - Michael J. Bird (Read the review)
These profiles will be attached to relevant book reviews. Watch this
space...
Photo Galleries
Wild Flowers: Up from 96 to 144 different wild flowers. 99% have been taken right
here at the base of the Rodopos peninsula. We are continually working on
these galleries and will soon been adding further pages including detailed reference pages and more
photos of each specimen. There are now more than 3,600 flower photographs in our
databases.
Bird Galleries. Building on...
Athanasios Sakoulis, who contributed the
magnificent gallery from his book on Cretan wildlife to our site has now contributed
18 pictures of birds for addition to a gallery. We will attach this to Paul
Smith's bird-watching page in the near future. Something worth waiting
for..
Insects..
We have built up an extensive collection of photographs from which
we are producing galleries for our wild life page. The next of these
will be insects - about which we have received few queries, but many of which
are supremely photogenic. We have some beautiful reptiles too...
GENERAL: There are now 13 galleries featuring aspects of Cretan life, including sunrise and sunset pictures;
Souda Bay War Cemetery; and the gallery of magnificent wild-life pictures by Anastasios Sakoulis, author of "Stigmotipa Tis Kritikis Freesis"
(Moments of Cretan Nature) - (Links below - bottom right column); our infant gallery about house renovation; and of course our annual calendar galleries
containing 60 or so pictures of north western Crete.
There are of course many other areas being developed all the time - including new ones
in the pipeline.... Continued progress with additions to our weaving page for example, is
being built upon to match the practice which has taken place since the page was
first added.
NEW Gallery planned. Klause-Dieter Thill author of Minaturkapellen auf Kreta,
detailing some of those enigmatic roadside shrines of Crete has agreed to a
gallery, and of course review the book... Watch this space...
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Are we listening, do we hear?
We are and we do. The continuously increasing numbers of visitors and complimentary e-mails seem to show that our visitors - 21,000 plus individual visits in our best month last year - appreciate our efforts.
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GUEST BOOK LINK
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cretanvista.gr |
