Rain Rain .......Enough!

 

A bit of a Rainy day 

Thanks Elli MoU for going out in this storm and Danae down on the harbour

Imagine all over the island, every set of steps has turned into a raging waterfall flowing down to the sea

Spying Out the Land

 I walk late afternoon with my phone on a strap around my neck, camera ready, trekking stick in hand. Sometimes I listen to music or a podcast.  I stop and stare through fences into empty yards.  I'm the neighbourhood spy, letting K know what's happening, who's out and about, which dogs barked at me. Nothing much happens around here. The same dogs bark at me and I tell them off.  They should know me by now. 

Finding something of interest to photograph is becoming increasingly difficult. Half the houses are empty.  Their owners only come for a few weeks in the summer

Olive harvest has begun. That's something different

Off street parking 

End of the pomegranate season

Out in the wop wops. Houses across the ravine, amongst olive groves and pine forest

Dead end? Road works?  The signs don't stop convoys of quad bikes roaring past

Walking with my marmalade friend. I have a handful of biscuits in my pocket if I'm walking his way. He'll follow me, complaining all the way if I forget them.

The other side of our wall. The grapevine needs pruning. After New Year 

Fertile plateau called Fousa with its small vineyard parcels turning from a dry brown to a lush green

Is it possible to get excited over a rubbish bin?  Yes, indeed.  This one is at the top of our road. We no longer have to load up the car and drive 2 kilometres with our rubbish.  Everytime I go for a walk I take a bag of rubbish with me.  We have to make sure the council knows it's used and appreciated.

Fattening the Fowl

 *'Christmas is Coming and the goose is getting fat' 

I know it's 2 months away but  this year we already feel a bit of Christmas cheer 

We've had our family Secret Santa draw and I think I've got my secret present sussed.  It was done with an online app this year as all the grandchildren are away in Athens.  Everyone but K and I sailed through the whole procedure.  It took me a whole load of head scratching, altering passwords, setting up accounts and all the usual online difficulties to get the app up and working.  Finally got Nana and Grandad in the draw. 

I made it easy for the Secret Santa who drew my name. I had a list of gift ideas ready and gave it to my daughters to pass on.....if asked.  It's not so 'Secret'. Some people are just down-right difficult to buy for.  I, for one, need 'hints'.  

K has turned on the lights of all our Greek Christmas 'sea vessels' 

They're all on timers and brighten up our lives from 7pm till 2am

*Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat

Please put a penny in the Old Man's hat

If you haven't got a penny a ha'penny will do

If you haven't got a ha'penny a farthing will do

If you haven't got a farthing 'God Bless you' 

Nursery Rhyme and Christmas Song from the 19thC 

Marathoners

 These two girls will be running the Authentic Athens Marathon on November 8th

The marathon takes 3-4 hours, running 42.195 kilometres (26.2 miles)  from the village of Marathon to the Marble Stadium in Central Athens

Athletic sisters, Nels and Poppi

Both are runners and rowers 

They have been training all summer 

Never mind the high temperatures or their busy summer jobs

Here they are running round Poros, training up hills and along the coast roads

Nels running a half marathon last year in Rhodes

And grinning all the way

The history of the Marathon began in 490BC.  A Greek soldier called

Pheithippides, 2,500 years ago, ran the same route these girls will run

The short story -

The Greeks defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon.  The Greeks were outnumbered and not expected to win.  Pheithippides ran the 42ks to deliver the news of the great victory.  He burst into the Athens Senate

'Nike, Nike....

Victory, victory

Rejoice

We conquer'

Then he collapsed from exhaustion and died

......So the story goes

These two girls have trained too long and hard to be overcome by exhaustion.  They'll wipe their brows, drink some water and pose for their  victory photos.

2 very determined, and fit, young women

Of course you'll be reading more

A victory blog

After their victorious run

Blue and White

The colours of Greece

One of the little churches dedicated to St John

Our blue shutters

Ks boat, now sold and floating in the Harbour of Chios Island

Downtown Dining

Souvenirs 

To the  Olympic rowing centre where Poppi trains

 Blue and white Greek flag

The view from my daughter's terrace

The church of St Demetrios

Whitewashed steps

Let Me Go Home

 I dislike Athens in the morning

By midday I hate it

Don't ever make me come into this big noisy, dirty overcrowded city ever again.

We disembarked from the early morning Catamaran around 9.30.  It took 20 minutes of pleading, arm waving and cursing to get a taxi to stop and take us up to the Navy Hospital in Central Athens.

Lots of taxis but they don't stop for 2 pensioners.  Those parked right on the harbour were looking for prey, long  rides to the airport with unknowing tourists paying inflated prices.

It took us half an hour through rush hour Athens traffic to reach the Naval Hospital.   I'd had enough well before that half hour was up.  The taxi driver was good, weaving in and out of bus lanes, taking side streets but he couldn't avoid the crush of traffic.  Sex shops, cabarets and Indian restaurants all the way up Syngrou Avenue. I could smell the curry even at this early hour.  High rise offices with people at desks behind ground floor windows.  How do they get there, where do they live.

Coffee shops every few yards, a tiny window selling coffee and sesame rolls  with 2 tables and chairs on the pavement right next to the endless cars and motorbikes.  All the tables full, friends and passersby hanging over for a chat and a fag.  It's always coffee time for some.

Then the scenery changed, Hadrian's Gate, the Pillars of Olympian Dios (Zeus) , the National gardens, Parliament buildings, tourists in short shorts, sandals, summer dresses, the Hop on Hop off bus, everyone with a small backpack and a phone poised to snap photos.

Up into the narrow streets of affluent Kolonaki, rows of trees , every spare space underneath filled by a motorbike.   Streets so constricted I was in awe, watching as we scraped past motorbike mirrors, goggling at the boutique dress shops and high priced opticians.  Plusher, comfortable cafeterias.

And finally the Naval Hospital . 

We couldn't take the metro . The nearest one has a long up hill walk to the hospital.  We no longer know which line to take, even how to buy a ticket. We have turned into country mice.  The buses are long snake-like, concertina-ed affairs. We've never been on a tram.  Their routes are a mystery.

Even the hospital has changed, updated,  more comfortable seating, but new rules too. Endless corridors, lifts and doors which need codes. The latter for Navy personnel, not for us.  

Hospital corridors.  The same all over the world.  Filled with anxious patients waiting to be seen by some glorified doctor

It took us 15 minutes to find the doctor's office and we were 2 hours late for Ks pre-op tests before his shoulder operation.  We were lucky, the doctor was still there to print out and stamp the tests and send us down to the labs, blood, x-rays, cardio. More stamps. 

Plenty of seating .  I watched the people, our bags and the papers while K traipsed from floor to floor.

Young sailors, girls and boys in Navy whites, retired officers, white haired, tired and mostly overweight. It was hard to reconcile them with stiff backed military officers they used to be.  'Those left behind' certainly do grow old .

Finally it's all over and we have half an hour to catch the return Catamaran. Did we make it? Of course not, even though it took 2 minutes to flag a taxi with a driver who'd driven rallies.  We missed that bloody Catamaran by one minute.

So it's a 4 hour wait till the next one. 2pm and all we'd had to eat was a half litre of water between us.  I found K a seat in the waterfront waiting area and trotted off to find coffee and a sandwich.  Oh boy did I feel like a little country mouse again.  

There are no longer little canteens offering only the traditional basics,  cheese and ham tost (toastie) and simple coffee. I had to dodge traffic and search across the road for a few hundred metres where I found a huge shop called Bread Factory.  I wandered in wondering what I would find. Everything from a loaf of bread to  huge varieties of those ubiquitous cheese pies, donuts and 10 different pizzas sold by the slice.   I went to one serving area which looked as though it served coffee.  It did but I had to pay for that further around at another counter. Then off to another area where they had endless rows of gourmet 'rounds' (no longer called sandwiches), sourdough  bread with salmon or chicken or salami and sauces which 'someone'  wouldn't eat.  Finally I found something plain with chicken and lettuce and some little spinach pies.  Acceptable and not too pricey.  I balanced all those in my hands, dodging pedestrians, scuttling quickly across crossings with lights holding up endless lines of cars and oversized lorries and offered my findings to K. 

I think I saved 2 lives. We were both happy-ier. Our first coffee of the day and a bite to eat

4 hours actually went by quite fast.

 Boarding time.  Damned if we could find our seats.  I finally went and asked for directions. We were looking at the seat numbers on the 2pm tickets. Our tickets had been changed for 6pm with different seating 

In line for the catamaran

Got the seats sorted. Donned jackets because the aircon was freezing.  Now we're off.  I'm finished. I hope.

One hour and we'll be back on Poros.  

Mission accomplished.

Next day..... 

Or maybe not. The cardiologist has asked for more tests. It looks as though we might have to have them done at a hospital in Piraeus, or Athens .  The mood is  dark

And it looks like rain

Two Islands

 Poros is often described as Little Venice?  And I always think 'Why?'  Because of the narrow Strait between the island and the mainland or because of the narrow canal dividing the 2 islands.  Or both? Neither of them make Poros into a Greek Venice. 

The canal... 

Canale Stretto

This is the 'narrow canal' dividing the small island with its main harbour and old town 

And the larger island with its pine forests, beaches and tourist hotels. 

Blink and you've missed it.

It gets stilted up in winter and has to be dredged.  Only small fishing boats can use it, the fishermen ducking down as they pass under the bridge. 

Looking towards the harbour for small fishing boats 

The Grande canale

Between the island on the left and mainland on the right

The orange arrow shows the position of the narrow canal dividing the 2 islands

Spheria... the island in the foreground with its harbour and old town

Kalavria is the larger but less populated island 

A Poros gondola plying the Grande Canale