Kalispera

Kalispera, my friends! I’ve been away but now I’m back in business. A bit more tanned, a bit more relaxed and richer by some moments and experiences.

Last week took me to the beautiful Greek island Crete. When we first got there, I must say I was not taken aback by the beauty, but hey, all the tourist resorts are supposed to look rather ugly, aren’t they. The sea and the mountains on the background, however, left some room for hope. And it really was only getting better.

First and foremost, I can never get enough of the beauties of Mediterranean Sea. If you take the bright blue (or sometimes bright green) water, add to that white sand (or sometimes pink sand, as seen at Elafonissi) the blue of the sky and the grey, green, brown or yellow of the mountains, you get numerous picture perfect moments. The best of these kinds of moments was on the last day when we rented a car and drove off to the most north-western peninsula. The distance from our hotel was not really long but the last leg of our drive was on a mountain road where we could literally go only ca 10 km per hour and it took us approximately 50 minutes to get through the 7 kilometers when the road ended and we had to walk across the mountain by foot. The view that presented to us when we reached the other side was breathtaking – bright blue lagoon, white sand, huge rocks in the water and perfectly blue sky.
Another location with picture perfect sights is the Santorini island, located north from Crete. To get there we had to get up at 4 am (and this on my holiday!!), take a bus for an hour or so and a boat for 5 hours just to spend half a day on a small island, where the little towns are filled with tourists, like Venice in August. However, as it was almost the end of tourist season, it was not so bad for us, and when staying away from the main streets, it was possible to wander around all alone and photograph the gorgeous white houses with their blue doors and the mountains and the sea and the lazy cats and dogs lying in the sun.
The most tiresome (but yet so rewarding) part of our trip was the 16 km walk through the Samaria Gorge (kuru) (supposedly the longest mountain gorge in Europe). For Samaria, we had to get up at 5 am (and this on my holiday!), in order to start earlier and get through the gorge before the hottest time of the day. The next evening after the “walk”, when I was putting on my dancing shoes, my calves were protesting rather loudly but I still won the argument, beauty demands sacrifice (and pain:)
When speaking about dancing, I have no idea how I always happen to get into the middle of “situations”. One evening there was a cabaret group performing in our hotel. 3 girls and a guy, and they were rather good I might add, doing all the different dances from belly dancing to salsa and classical ball-room dancing. At some point the guy asked a woman to dance from the audience and that was a sad sight, for she had no rhythm whatsoever. I was just sitting there, minding my own business, keeping a low profile, for I had just eaten, had not showered after a long day and I was not wearing my dancing shoes, when all of a sudden the guy was in front of me, grabbing me by the hand. Do I ever say no to dancing? Of course not! So, off went the flip-flops and there I was, dancing with the star of the evening, in front of all those people. He was so relieved to have a better dancer than the previous woman that he didn’t wanna let me go. Now, these situations make nice memories but it’s better if they were just memories, this time however, one of our group members filmed every last bit of my “performance”….i sure hope my micro mini skirt managed to cover my ass during all the twisting and turning.

A couple of more things in a nutshell – Greek cuisine is good and fresh, the wines are tasty, though rather unknown in the world, the people are friendly and the nature is stunning. The weather was pleasant and I think I managed to recharge my solar batteries for a while being.