viola's people watching blog
The moon had been waxing and waning in nebulous March skies…sometimes a shining crescent, hanging like a pendant and other times, lying like a cradle, suspended in the darkness, only to vanish behind an inky haze. But there was this one night when Yiannis walked in after concluding his business […]
ARTON, OINON KAI THEAMATA…OF BREAD, WINE AND SPECTACLE. It is what this nation of gods and philosophers is about and if you rub shoulders with them, you will inevitably be drawn into these pleasures of the flesh. We’ve just had…two weeks ago… `Apokries’…the last Sunday before Lent… when after the […]
A teeth chattering cold swept in and painted the landscape swiftly with its winter hues. The mountains encroaching the villages were layered with snow, gleaming and white and the sea with waves, sunless and grey, rushed towards the shoreline, frothing and foaming. The winds picked up and buffeted the seagulls […]
We’ve had buckets of sunshine the last few days on these…`Alkionides Meres’ or Halcyon Days. Halycon is a kind of kingfisher that nests by the sea and lays its eggs in the frosty month of January. But nature in its mysterious ways, calms the icy winds and cracks open the […]
The whole town was sparkling with festive lights, quivering in anticipation of the New Year. Even the sailing boats and creaky fishing boats in the old port were strung up with twinkling lights right up to the top of their masts, shimmering in the dark waters. The Old Market building, […]
There we were once again on the early morning flight to Brussels. It was a Saturday before the crack of dawn when we left Chania. I got this déjà vu feeling when we dragged our suitcases behind us, rumbling all the way to Yiannis’ jeep parked outside on the road, […]
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 […]