viola's people watching blog
I see women come out of the hairdresser’s with a spring in their gait, a toss of their head …a head full of shiny swinging tresses, looking all confident as if they could just take on the world and all its niggly fiddly problems. Well…I wonder why it’s never happened […]
As the summer buzz and dust are washed away by the first rains, I find myself slipping into the quiet pace and beauty of autumn…the rich hues of russet and gold of our vine leaves and the ripening of fruit, sweet and juicy…our pomegranates, apples and oranges. The skies are […]
It was a sunless autumn morning when we travelled through The Black Forest of Germany. The slopes on the right and left for miles and miles were heavily wooded with evergreens…conifers growing close together, tall and straight like sentries reaching for the sky, their conical tops piercing the clouds and […]
We needed to snatch up the lingering rays of summer and make a hasty getaway…but…we didn’t want to be the masters of our ship…no putting on our thinking caps and booking flights, hotels and renting cars and listening to muddly directions from the GPS…turn left turn right and then…silence. We […]
Balmy summer days conjure images of bare feet on cold marble floors indoors and in the streets, swinging, carefree, browned arms and legs in floral dresses and sandals strapped on carelessly. For the older folks like me, who want comfort but still yearning to look a little hip…some baggy Bermuda […]
So there we were, Yiannis and myself, once again, bleary eyed, hopping on the early morning flight to Athens with a hurried connection to Brussels. We were excited to see Louise…Burpy…as Annie and I have nicknamed her as she burps like a champion. She started this charming habit right from […]
It had been such a long drawn out cold winter. Our White Mountain range, running the length of Chania, appeared to be closing in on us as snow fell steadily lower and lower on its slopes, layers and layers building up… glazed and glaringly white almost blinding under a winter’s […]
When the leaves of the grape vines begin to take on shades of russet and gold and the autumn breezes skitter in, we know it’s time to harvest our cardinal grapes, hanging in heavy bunches of berry red and wine red and sometimes appearing a little cloudy with the first […]
Bright and breezy Alexandroupoli, some 114 km south of Oreistiada, bustling with honking cars, parallel roads with blocks and blocks of buildings, housing shops and apartments… with the occasional sea breezes rustling through the streets on a hot summer’s day… was a welcome sight for us, the two travellers, recently […]
Our newly acquired thirst for rivers took us right up north to Oreistiada, a town set up in 1923 by Greek refugees from Adrianople during the population exchange between Greece and Turkey. The River Evros runs some 203 km, forming a natural border between the two countries. We hit the […]