viola's people watching blog
All my life I’ve been after the swells, more the glassy blue combers that rise and curl. I was never after the massive waves, like those intrepid surfers who scan the horizon for them and jump into the water with their boards and ride them fearlessly. What I’m really alluding […]
When I was a child in a very Catholic home and a very Catholic school, everything was forbidden…lies were forbidden but I told them anyway and lied about that. In fact every rule was broken but I never worried about it because there was always confession where you were cleansed […]
On Sunday we plucked some of our winter oranges…the ones that had peeped through the thick green foliage and soaked in the rays of the autumn sun and ripened before the others. I pointed to the ripe oranges with a broomstick and Yiannis hunched under the tree, craned his neck […]
The autumn rains swept in…first a few scuttling black clouds drizzling the trees and plants and the heads of unwary pedestrians and then the showers, heavy and persistent. Today is Monday and the sky is grey and watery. I put on my hoodie and went out in the rain and […]
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 […]
Wring out every drop … not really my guiding principle in life… but on the last day of our trip, we wanted to see whatever Alexandroupoli could offer us, winkle out all her hidden secrets. Mid-morning saw us driving out of the city towards the east. All along on the […]
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 […]
We have never been great planners, especially when making a quick summer getaway. Our young visitors had left and we had less than two weeks to take off somewhere and soak in new experiences. We felt the urgency to take flight and leave Crete before the autumn gusts rushed in […]