viola's people watching blog
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 […]
We set off on the road to Stavroupolis, which is about some 27 km north west from the city of Xanthi, after a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, one we would indulge in only on holidays… eggs sunny side up, cheese, bacon and toast, nice and buttery and dripping with […]
` BORN FREE… AS FREE AS THE WIND BLOWS…BORN FREE TO FOLLOW YOUR HEART…’ I think the song captures the first few years of my life in Crete. When we started out in the old house where his grandparents used to live in, the skipper and I…I’m calling him that […]
My first dip into the sea was a very long time ago, in a different country and what seems to me a different lifetime. I was in Standard One and the nuns took us on a trip to the seaside, to a place called Morib. They might as well have […]