viola's people watching blog
Brussels was cold and teeth chattering and we walked around with frozen faces and numb noses and other frigid extremities. But the city was busy and bustling…streets strung with Christmas lights, shops windows displaying sleek tailored garments on long-legged mannequins and coffee shops, jam-packed and bursting at the seams. Brussels […]
I know avid planners, people who research and plan their holidays, months or even a year in advance…and when the holiday is over, before they can even unpack or wriggle and stretch their tired toes, they’re already talking about the next holiday. I would say to these breed of individuals…`Good […]
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 […]
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 […]
The week before last, we resumed our long awaited Saturday night outings. But before that, I once again had to do the dreaded deed… descend the stairs into the basement and rummage through those bags stashed with my summer clothes. I had taken a peek into them a week ago […]
Mid week, sometime in the late afternoon, when I was lounging around the house wondering whether to take on the all consuming job of soaking the roots of my orchids in water, the phone rang. It was my Kung Fu friend. She was in the neighbourhood and wanted pop in […]
Last Sunday marked the picking up of where we had left off, the revisiting of old habits missed so dearly. We were resuming our Sunday lunches out, now that restaurants have been given the green light to serve meals outdoors. No more cooking at home on Sundays or ordering a […]