having more fun

Tesekkur ederim

2009-11-14T18:59:00.000-08:00

We've found that, given how we've mostly been in larger cities, and had very simple needs (ice-cream, wine, coffee and occasionally directions to the nearest tourist attraction), and given how we keep encountering kindness and assistance, we've only needed one word of Greek, Italian, Croatian and Turkish to get by: efharisto; grazie; hvala; and tesekkur ederim.

Everybody understands 'thank you' in English, of course -- but we felt the sentiment seemed a little more genuine if we made the effort to express it in the local tongue.

Tesekkur ederim (tea-se-cur eh-de-ray) is quite tricky – tricky enough that, apparently, most tourists don't take the trouble to learn it. People in cafes and hotels, on trams and in shops stared and smiled when we thanked them in Turkish for the small services they rendered us. Several asked me if I spoke Turkish -- at which point I had to admit sheepishly that I had now exhausted my full store.

Everywhere in Istanbul the question to a wandering blonde girl is the same – where are you from? Everyone knows New Zealand: 'kiwi, kiwi, kia ora' and one man in the Grand Bazaar even ventured on 'Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa'. He blushed when I said 'Kei te pehea koe?' and cried 'No more Maori, no more Maori!' - but he has more Maori than I have Turkish.

Metal goods shop in the Grand Bazaar

***

Blonde women exert a distinct fascination for Turkish men – where are you from, was, in my case, usually followed up by 'are you married?' and a moue of exaggerated disappointment when I nodded my head and pointed at my ring. The next question, if I was still nearby, was 'how long?'. 'Nine years – too long!' said the man who sold me my second rug of the trip (beautiful, although who knows if I paid a good or bad price – either way, I am happy with it) - 'too long, nine years eat the same kebab, get bored!'.

'Oh well,' I said, 'sometimes I have a different sauce'.*

The (cute) receptionist in the hostel asked the series of questions about nationality and wedded status, and then asked: 'how many kids?'.

'None,' I said to him.

'No! Nine years and no kids? Why?' He was genuinely shocked. 'Why?' he said again. I'm not sure my answer ('it's called contraception') was either fully understood, or truly answered this imponderable mystery for him.

Later, as we left for Kiyikoy, he claimed a broken heart, and nearly dissolved with rueful laughter when, in answer to his protestations of devotion, I handed him an empty water bottle to throw away.**

In conclusion to this story – I found Turkish men optimistic and persistent, but not unpleasantly explicit. The younger men, in particular, seemed to have better boundaries – in the few instances that we encountered them, wandering hands belonged to older men. Still, while not unmanageable, life in Istanbul was a little... edgy.

Selection of Turkish men on an Istanbul street

***
Istanbul sits on the shores of two continents. From Topkapi Palace, on the European side, the Ottoman Sultans ruled their Empire. In the deeper past, Emperor Constatine moved from Rome to Byzantium (renaming it Constantinople); before even him, 'Alexander the Big' (as Mehemet charmingly translated him) crossed here from Europe into Asia.

Fireplace in Topkapi Palace

Many of the beautiful religious buildings of Istanbul have seen varied service, shifting from churches to mosques, and occasionally back the other way. In the Ayia Sophia, the splendidly rising dome has taken up Christian and Muslim prayer. It is now a museum, no longer a true place of worship.

Ayia Sophia

Across the square from this jumbled but magnificent pink and golden building, the blue mosque is more perfect and ordered, the smooth rounded bulk of its domes set off by the needling minarets. It reminded me (respectfully) of a large and very carefully constructed ice-cream sundae.

Inside, the building had a very different feel to the cool and quiet sense of past glory in the Ayia Sophia. There was new carpet on the floor and most of the area under the dome itself was roped off for the use of worshippers. At the far side of the prayer space, a group of young men was sitting listening to an older man. The building is beautiful, and tourists are lucky to see it – but it is also clearly the centre of an active and energetic community, not, like almost every church we visited, designated as a museum, or kept by a lone elderly custodian, exchanging candles for small coins.

***

As I understand, Turkish politics still reflect the multiple possible identities for a country that covers two continents. On the one hand, Turkey is striving to be part of the European union. On the other, as I understand, there are growing nationalist and islamist movements, which meet and mix at some points. The press, I understand, is not as entirely free as some may wish, and it is a crime to make light of the Turiskish flag, or to speak against Turkey.

As well as the buildings and the food, the partying and the charm, the pomegranates and the nargileh, Istanbul has beggars: some young women with children on their hips; some palsied and shaking older men, their shaking bodies folded in on themselves, a hand, clawed into a a begging bowl, protruding from the knot of flesh and bone. And there are other, more picturesque signs of poverty – the men fishing from the Galanta Bridge – yes they might enjoy it, but I was told most of them are there to try and feed their families – the men carrying great loads of rubbish on their backs through the streets, stopping to shift through other piles of refuse and find what might be re-cycled or resold; the laughter from the men in the bazaar at the idea of spending all that money when I ask them if they would like to go to New Zealand.

The Lonely Planet says Turkey is growing, that Istanbul is a city of young people, coming alive and enjoying themselves, newly confident – in parts, it certainly looked like this. On the other hand, Orhan Pamuk had this to say in 2005:

Flaubert, who visited Istanbul a hundred and two years before my birth,*** was struck by the variety of life in its teeming streets; in one of his letters he predicted that in a century's time it would be the capital of the world. The reverse came true: after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the world almost forgot that Istanbul existed. The city into which I was born was poorer, shabbier, and more isolated than it has ever been in its two-thousand-year history. For me it has always been a city of ruins and end-of-empire melancholy. I've spent my life either battling this melancholy, or (like all Istanbullus) making it my own.

***

Cemberlitas and Cagaloglu: Istanbul's two most famous hamam (turkish baths). The procedure for a Turkish bath differs slightly depending on the facilities of the building.

At Cemberlitas, which OT and I visited together on her last day, you get undressed in communal locker rooms, warp yourself in a red, orange and brown woven cotton towel, slip your feet into rubber slippers and are then directed through the foyer-like 'cool room' (sogukluk) and into the 'hot room' (hararet).****

The hot room is an octagonal, domed space, with a low marble platform in the centre, little set-back washing niches and stone basins at waist height around the walls. The temperature is enough to bring an instant sweat out over the body, but not enough to stifle the breath.

We lay on the heated marble platform. After a time, one of the olive-skinned, loose-fleshed women came to wash us: first a thorough rub with a rough mitt, then an all over soaping, then we were taken to one of the basins (our attendant holding our arm to prevent us slipping), and rinsed, and our hair washed. Then back to the platform for a body-rub. Finally, into the deep hot pool and then out of the hot room for a western-style 'oil massage'.

Afterwards we were as limp as sleepy kittens.

Cagaloglu, where I went by myself on the evening of my last day in Istanbul, was perhaps even more beautiful, with traditional wooden clogs, a private dressing room with a little bed for relaxing on and after the bath, an open fire to sit beside and drink apple tea.

At Cagaloglu, my attendant sang in Turkish as she soaped and rubbed me: low, sweet, undulating, and totally foreign.

And so home... this blog is now closed for business.

* This rug seller, and then his older brother, both complimented me on my eyes... This is a theme in rug sellers, starting with Theo in Athens. Although this time I did have my sunglasses in my bag rather than on, so there was a least the theoretical possibility they were actually responding to my eyes, as opposed to spinning a line... which, surely not?!

** We came back to the hostel two nights later and I bought him a pack of Marlboro Lights to make up for my callous behavior. I think he thought he did alright out of the deal.

*** Pamuk was born in 1952.

**** There is a tricky etiquette issue, which is not clear from any signs or instructions – whether to keep your underpants on under the towel or not. In Cemberlitas this seemed to be the done thing; in Cagaloglu, full nudity was the order of the day.

Food and Drink #5

2009-11-13T03:01:00.000-08:00

There is a cheese maturing inside this goatskin - we tried some - pungent.

This neat machine peeled and sliced apples and quinces...

like so. I was surprised to find the quince sweet enough to eat raw.

Fried fish stall on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus.

Random appreciator of fried fish sandwich, found nearby.

Taksim area includes a lot of open air bars - you stand on the street, a waiter finds you and takes your order, some time later he re-appears with your drink (in this case, Turkish Raki, which I may have mentioned and which, in my humble opinion, is NOT GOOD. So much so that I distracted Bid for a moment and poured most of mine into her plastic cup... she waded through it, brave and stalwart mite), and then, some time later again, to get the money. Complicated but seems to work. Meanwhile, elderly men sell popcorn from barrows, popping the corn over a brazier of coals as they trundle. There is also a lot of smoking.*

The far-famed Turbot of Kiyikoy, in preparation in the kitchen at Hotel Edorfina.

And halfway through its destruction. Mehemet instructed us that with fish, one has "only a salad. Order fish and a salad, and then in the restaurant, they will know you are serious".

Turbot creates happiness (yes we were wildly spoiled at Hotel Endorfina - taken fishing, given the run of the kitchen AND allowed on the furniture (as with the ouzo of apology in Santorini, these things did eventually come with a price, but we managed to avoid paying it in quite the way our host may have optimistically imagined).

Ahh, fresh pomegranate juice. So wildly good, so disastrously stainy.

Cold cooked black mussels, put back inside their shells on a bed of delicious spicy rice and sold as a night snack all over Istanbul. This, my friends in aquaculture, is what we should be doing with mussels.

Bream, our last dinner together on this trip, eaten at the New Galata Restaurant, under the Galata Bridge, looking down the Golden Horn towards Asia.

Figs stuffed with walnuts - known for some reason as Turkish viagra....

I am in Changi airport as I write this, having eaten laksa (good) and durian puffs (not so good) in the city today, and finishing off my rambutans....but I seem to have lost my camera... so here endth the food and drink. But one more post under construction - the wonders of Istanbul.

Keep watching, folks.

* Joke from Mehemet in in Kiyikoy:

Q: who smokes more than a Turk?

A: two Turks.

Food and Drink #4

2009-11-11T15:41:00.000-08:00

For some of you these seem to be your favorite posts... others report finding them less than thrilling. For the non-food-photo obsessives, there will be a decent post about the (other) wonders of Istanbul... but first... the food and drink:

This Greek salad and baked beans were served to us in a station-side cafe (think Kenny's Wellingtonians) in Larisa - a staging post in our epic bus-train-train-train-ferry-bus-taxi-train-bus trip from Amalfi to Thessaloniki. There was no English menu at the cafe, so the waiter invited me into the kitchen to point at what I wanted.

In Thessaloniki we found a small restaurant with fine wines, run by three women. The menu was limited and in Greek, so we asked them to tell us what to eat. This salad, carefully made from scratch and including spinach and freshly toasted nuts, came with a round of very soft and mild goat cheese - more cream cheese than feta.

Potatoes and meatballs baked together, the potatoes were sticky with reduced meat juices.

We had started by ordering red wine. I saw a dish of small pickled fishes on the next table, and pointed, asking if I could have one of those please (a dish for myself, not one of the other guest's fishes).

'No', said the waitress, looking at me sorrowfully with big dark eyes and shaking her head so that her plait - a dark rope to her waist - swung. 'Not with red wine. Never with red wine.'

'Afterwards?' I said hopefully.

'Maybe afterwards,' she said, still looking doubtful.

In the end I was allowed some fish (sour and salty and sharp - not good with red wine), but only after I had drunk my wine, and on the condition that I drink some raki with them.

And it was good.

The restaurant (name only in Greek).

We followed the policy created in Hania, and went back for a second night. They were pleased to see us, and gave us a special type of raki, and slices of the most delicious marble cake, moist but crumbly... and madeira cake... on a par with cousin Liv's.

This octopus...

and this ENORMOUS lump of fried haloumi were highlights of our food experiences in Edessa.

We needed something substantial and calming for the nerves, having been shouted at by a large man in camo as we entered the taverna. The owner of the taverna laughed and took his arm, then quickly bought us the menu and flipped to the back page. 'Billy - Edessa's Mascot' - there he was, the same round blank face, but dressed in a town crier's uniform. Harmless, clearly, but slightly unnerving for the uninitiated.

Anastasia's prize pumpkin, Hotel Varosi, Edessa

The last of the Greek salads, Thessaloniki train station

Fresh figs for desert, Istanbul

Turkish coffee in a tea garden just outside the Spice Bazaar, Istanbul

Inside the Spice Bazaar

Dried aubergine skins (for stuffing), Spice Bazaar

Turkish delight mountains

Street food, Istanbul

Street vege stall, Istanbul

tbc...

It is raining in the Northern Hemisphere

2009-11-10T22:34:00.000-08:00

time to go home...

We caught a Turbot

2009-11-10T09:28:00.000-08:00

but only through the use of a cellphone and money... but the fishing trip was very pretty:

Mehemet's boat

Cricor (sp?), Mehemet's fisherman friend

Mehemet, owner of Hotel Endorfina

A much bigger fishing boat...

Cricor in port

View from the village pub, Kiyikoy

we catch the turbot

Kiyikoy

2009-11-09T02:36:00.000-08:00

A small fishing and forestry village in Northern Greece. This morning, early, the view was mist and green hills above it. Then, later, the sun burned off the mist and we could see the golden sandspit and the Black Sea.

Last night we ate grilled red mullet, fresh bread and salad by the open fire. Our hosts were indulgent enough to cover the low table by the fire with a table cloth and allow us to sit cross-legged in the warmth. Mehemet, who used to run an international import/export leather business, and is now 'retired' to run Hotel Endorfina, sat with us and talked, drinking his 'lion's milk' (raki*). For us he provided delicious organic red wine.

Today we are going on a fishing trip - in his 'primitive' fishing boat, to see if we can catch a turbot.

Brillat-Savarin has a story about being called in to consult on the proper way to deal with a turbot that was too large for any of the cooking vessels of his hosts - he advised that it be cooked in the washing tub, and claims that the result was superb.

I am hoping to call to the end of my line just such a turbot.

* Turkish raki is like Greek Ouzo - aniseedy and very strong. Lion's milk is a good name for it - it certainly makes you roar.

Loose in Istanbul

2009-11-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

Hubble

Bubble

Toil

(unable to find image to illustrate this. Have done no toil for over a month - not even dishes!)

and trouble!

...even worse trouble...

On Being Welcomed

2009-11-06T08:34:00.000-08:00

In Thessaloniki we checked in to a five star hotel – the Electra Palace. It advertised itself as having a swimming pool, spa, Turkish bath, and the guide book recommended it as being 'as palatial inside as out'.

We caught a bus and then trundled down to the waterfront, where the big curving creamy bulk of the Electra Palace, its seven-storey facade studded with small balconies and stacked lines of pillars faces the main plaza. Along with imposing facades, golden automatic revolving doors, and staff with little jackets and caps are a cliché of classy hotels – and the Electra Palace does not neglect to provide.

Now, OT and I are not really five star people – not that we might not be in another life, but in this one, we don't have the necessary readies to stay in that kind of luxury. But, once in while, and especially following the “there is no cabin for you on this freezing cold boat” Bari to Igoumenitsa crossing of the night before, we can afford to splash out. And we were planning to spend three nights.

So it might have been a good idea for the staff to be slightly more pleasant – wheelie suitcase's feelings were hurt by the snooty look he received, and there was no such thing as a smile from the man at the desk, even for the fully animate among our party.

And the room was a disappointment. Smaller than almost every other room we've had, and lacking any element of the picturesque (or even the picaresque, which, for example, the adventure of the Lidomare steps in Amalfi provided). The bedding was not particularly luxurious. There was only one pillow each, rather than the hoped-for large and fluffy pile. There was a bath, and the pool was quite nice, but the rooftop bar served the worst approximation of a martini to ever pass my lips.

The view of the water, the container ships sitting off the port and the lights of Thessaloniki stretching down the coast was spectacular – but not enough to make up for the waitress' clear lack of interest in what we wanted, or the squalor of the drinks that eventually arrived.

We checked out the next day, moving 200 metres down the street, 100 euro down the price scale and about 1000% upwards in the welcome stakes. The desk clerk at the Hotel Tourist hauled our bags up the steps for us, grimacing and giggling, carefully explained about the door keys, breakfast and laundry, held the lift door, smiled and was generally solicitous. We were happy.

And the room was bigger, with two king single beds, gold-painted plaster garlands swinging around the walls and a fascinatingly shiny faux chandelier - interesting, if not entirely... tasteful.

***

After three days in Thessaloniki, we caught the local train out to Edessa. Edessa is a small town north and east of Thessaloniki. It is a little bit known for its waterfalls, but is mostly just a pretty town that serves as a base for various activities in northern Greece. OT had read about in the travel guide, and liked the sound of the damp mountain air. We both liked the sound of Hotel Varosi, a traditional hotel in an old inn, run, both our guide books assured us, by very friendly owners.

Edessa station – one small yellow building and two sets of train tracks – is too small to have a bridge or an underpass, so we followed the locals' example and dragged our bags across the tracks to the platform.*

The air in Edessa was sweet and autumnal with woodsmoke and the smell of drying leaves. The hill behind the station looked softer, more fertile than the standard rocky tumbles of the Grecian landscape. As we walked into town we heard the sound of rushing water and passed several small canels running under the road.

Neither of our guidebooks had a map of Edessa. Nor did they give directions for finding the hotel from the train station. Being the pair of abject ninnies that we are, we promptly got lost. We were looking for the charming old quarter of Edessa – we ended up in a deeply utilitarian precinct, with lawn-mower repair shops and medium rise housing. The story of our wanderings involves many side-streets and detours, and several encounters with bemused locals, who spoke more English than we speak Greek, but for whom our requests were still impenetrable and unanswerable.

We eventually found ourselves at the bus station, and telephoned the hotel to ask for directions from there. We had previously tried to have a phone conversation with Anastasia of Hotel Varosi, and discovered that she spoke little English. Again, this time, she understood that we were at the bus station, and assured me that the hotel was not far – 2 minutes. But she was not able to provide directions in English (and I was completely unable to understand her directions in Greek). I assured her I would ask someone, and hung up.
Inside the bus station, the ticket seller understood what I was asking and was able to direct me. And off we went.

We were most of the way there (200 metres up this road, turn left, there is a big church, turn right after the church...) and the road had changed from tarmac to cobbles, the buildings from square and concrete to crooked and stone with leaning wooden second storeys, when a woman hurried around the corner towards us.

“Ahhh”, she cried, rushing towards us, her arms open. She hugged first me, kissing me on both checks, then OT. “Anastasia,” she cried, pointing to herself.

“Anna,” I said, squeezing her arm. OT introduced herself, and Anastasia, beaming with pleasure at having found her wayward guests, took OT's suitcase handle in one hand, tried to take mine in the other (but I won the tussle), and strode off, twisting back to smile and nod at us over her shoulder.

Even if Hotel Varosi had not turned out to be a two-hundred year old traditional inn, with shining wooden floors, recessed windows, heavy beamed ceilings, sofas covered in woven rugs, an open fire, a pink rose in a green vase in our room, and wide, soft beds with crisp white linen, we would still have loved it. We had been welcomed, succored, our slightly grubby cheeks kissed and our burdens taken from us.

The inn

Autumn in Edessa

Dusk

* I have one recurring nightmare. This nightmare involves walking on train tracks carrying a backpack, which becomes strangely too heavy to move just as I hear the train's whistle signaling its approach. In the dream I do not think to, or cannot, let go of the bag. The train tracks are on a gravel embankment running across a paddock, scrubby with blackberry. I never see the train, only hear it coming. I think this dream has to do with watching Stand By Me and Fried Green Tomatoes too many times as a young teenage. However, it made Edessa station a little creepy. But I survived.

Heather

2009-11-05T05:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday it rained in Thessaloniki. We wandered down from the old castle above the city, stopping in at the churches tucked in among the houses and alleys on the hillside. We walked down shallow stone steps, with the rain water rushing down the drainage channels beside them. We looked out at the sea, its surface swept and pockmarked with the rain. We wiped the water off our faces with our hands in the church porticos before stepping inside to the warm, incense- and beeswax-scented air.

At every church we stared at the frescoes, the vaulting roofs. At every church, the site of long centuries of prayer and thought, I lit a candle for Heather McKenzie. Friend, bookseller, publisher, traveler, glamour girl and girl from the farm. She died suddenly last Sunday morning. Far too young.

Somewhere in this town

2009-11-02T15:32:00.001-08:00

there are restaurants that specialise in tripe and trotter soup. OT and I are in negotiations.

Food and Drink #3

2009-11-01T14:10:00.000-08:00

Bollito Misto (mixed boiled meats), Bologna

(yes, that's tongue and stuffed trotter)

Butcher shop, Bologna

(yes, those are skinned coneys)

Eggplant parmigiana and green sauce, Bologna

The best pasta we ate in Italy, Bologna

Artichokes, Bologna

Market graffiti, Bologna

Preserved peel, Bologna

Superior spring onions, Bologna

Cabbages and roses, Bologna

Preserved meats, Bologna

Autumn produce, Bologna

Fried fish with potatoes and spinach, Zadar (very delicious)

Grilled sardines, Dubrovnik

Mussels at Wanda, one of Dubrovnik's fanciest restaurants

...and mushroom soup (the picture cannot do justice to this soup's musty unctuousness)...

...and fettuccine vongole....

...and the chef's salad.

Bosnian roasted veges, Dubrovnik

Humble but delicious sandwiches, and a whole salted sardine, Dubrovnik

Pizza, Napoli

Calzone, Napoli. It seemed an unfair challenge to our abilities to make a pizza with lots of filling, fold it over, then put more topping on. This calzone and its friend the pizza above, defeated us.

We were also served this very nice spinach... which we had ordered under the name of broccoli. This happened two nights in a row in two restaurants... any clues, anyone?

Street food, Naples

Fish shop in Naples

Trussed octopuses, Naples

The Veuve, in the Palace

Naples

2009-10-31T13:35:00.000-07:00

A young man pulls up on a scooter – a pea green Vespa. He wears a polished metal bike helmet, a violet scarf, dark jeans and a tight green jersey. He whistles as he gets off the bike. At the bottom of the steps we are descending, a beagle, tied to the rail, barks and strains, tongue lolling, grinning, panting. The man unties the dog and together they get on the scooter, the beagle obedient in the footwell, tail wagging, the man's scarf whipping as he dodges traffic up the road and out of sight.

   ***

Piazza Garibaldi, as we return in the evening from Pompeii: a mess of construction, taxis, buses, cars parked next to, behind and at angles to each other, pedestrians with suitcases, north African men hawking 'iPhones' and sunglasses, and above the Piazza, in the violet sky, several flocks of small black birds, merging and separating, turning and quivering like sequins.

   ***

A fresh, damp, salty smell from the fish stalls. Wide low-sided white and blue plastic containers half full of water holding thin silver sardines, long flat smudge-skinned frost fish, clams the size of knucklebones, and octopuses, their mottled grey and violet hoods pulsating. The fishmongers hose refuse away over the cobbles.

   ***

Along the narrow streets the view on either side gives into rooms with beds, tables, televisions, mothers fathers, sons and daughters all together, and washing drying on racks. In one room a girl is laying the table: her brother sits and watches her from a corner, his hands folded in his lap, his armchair a dusty violet bruise in the dim.

Pompeii

2009-10-30T04:14:00.000-07:00

I wasn't sure what to expect from Pompeii – slightly jaded from Knossos, I was, of course, keen to make the journey and have a look, but I was prepared for another reconstructed curiosity, interesting but slightly kitsch.

Pompeii is far from kitsch.

The second storeys of most of the houses are gone, but at street level, almost everything is preserved. Along the main streets, there are snack bars and bakeries – I could imagine the ancient equivalent of souvenir shops dotted between them. The villas are recognisably pleasure houses of the wealthy – the little pools, the rooms still decorated with luxurious, charming, sometimes naughty paintings. There are three theatres. The largest could seat 12,000 – half the town – and the smallest perhaps 100, a suitable space for literary readings or recitals.

Street Scene

Fresco, Villa of the Mysteries

Snack bar counter

The city from below

Pompeii's excavators found impression after impression in the ash, where bodies of the townspeople had lain and decayed. The ash has been removed – but the empty shapes of the population remain, caught in plaster. As we passed the first of the plaster casts of the bodies, a guide said to his tour group, in accented English, 'they were in different positions, but all with their hands over their mouths'.

The ruins of Pompeii are astonishing and ghostly. It is a town that made a bargain with history – death and destruction in the world that it knew, but presence, real and human and touching, out into the ages.

***

The next day, after visiting the site itself, I spent several hours at the Naples Archeological Museum.

I arrived in the afternoon, just before two, and wandered up to the first floor to look at the paintings and mosaics taken from Pompeii. There was a board pulled across that section of the museum, and a man in a uniform was just switching out the lights. He looked at me and then pointed at a sign – 'closed at 2pm'. The museum is open until seven, and so I had left it til last on my cultural tour of Naples, as the churches I also wanted to visit tended to close earlier. Behind the board blocking my way I could make out the dim shapes of the frescoes.

For the first time on this trip I felt truly frustrated. So damn close. Not only did I really want to 'colour in' my mental images of Pompeii, but this is also the place where the famous mosaic of Alexander and Darius is kept, which, (as those of you who know the story of 'Project Alexander' will understand), I had a peculiar desire to see.

I looked sadly at my museum brochure (only in Italian). Then I looked again at the pages from my guidebook. Then I smiled. The fresco section was, for unknown reasons, closed for the afternoon, but the mosaics were on the next floor down, and open.

Of all the art and artifacts I have seen on this trip, the Pompeii mosaics are closest to my heart. It is partly their beauty, but also I think, the way in which they blend the visible craft of their making – the thousands of tiny stones pieces, so carefully placed – with the charm and lightness. And then there's the fact that they deal in food, sweet animals, myths and sex – all things I am strongly in favour of (No, not all at the same time. Calm down).

History

2009-10-30T03:23:00.000-07:00

It's one thing to visit a city like Dubrovnik, and admire the walls and cannons put up for defence from outsiders in the middle ages. It is another to see the bullet holes, spattered here and there on the stone street signs, and to look up at the steep hills behind the city and imagine them populated with narrow-eyed snipers.

We have mostly made this a tour of old cities, staying in the 'old towns' of Athens, Hania, Bologna, Zadar, Dubronik and Naples. We have had one real excursion into 'nature' – the Samaria Gorge – and a 'rural' experience in Santorini, but in the main, we are here to experience a depth and continuity of settled, solid 'civilization' that is not bodied forth in any part of New Zealand's very different history and geography.

But. In some senses, New Zealand, at least in the last 100 years, is more civilised than almost any part of Europe.

The old town of Dubrovnik is on a jutting peninsula: sea on three sides, and the curve behind an amphitheater of stark, steep hills.

In modern warfare, a shooting gallery.

Most of the old town is unmarked – there are few signs that less 1 8 years ago, the town was under siege. We saw one roofless house that may have been a war casualty, and few buildings on street corners with a spray of bullet holes up the walls.

Mostly the city and the country have put themselves back together after the lacuna of communism and civil war, rejoining (for better, and no doubt in some parts, for worse), the mainstream of world history.

In Crete we were near to Maleme, and the graves of many New Zealand and European
soldiers.

On the train from Rome to Naples, we traversed land that looks fruitful, tamed, obedient, a castle or ruined villa in the distance adding shape and mastery, like Stevens' jar in Tennessee.

But the land does not just have layers of peasant work and the ruins and still standing palaces and pleasure homes of kings and princes: it also has the discreet scars of more recent trauma, fought and felt with a depth and continuity that, in a distant island country (albeit with our own divisions and injustices), is hard to credit.

Important life lessons

2009-10-27T11:59:00.000-07:00

1. Travel with a pair of small sockettes in your handbag, in order to be constantly prepared for trying on fancy shoes (wisdom of OT).

2. More small cute men should wear small cute hats.

3. If you see Veuve Cliquot on special - buy it (thanks Pete)

Second Palace on the Right

2009-10-27T00:33:00.000-07:00

Dubrovnik and Naples are not that far apart as the crow flies - but you can really make it quite a long journey if timetables and connections take you by bus to Split (5 hours), then by ferry to Ancona (10 hours, overnight), then by train through Rome to Naples (5 hours). With various waits in between. But we have reached a state where we are happy on the move, or even in the suspension of train station cafes and waiting rooms.

In Ancona we missed a train to Rome by 3 minutes - and spent three hours drinking good Italian train station coffee, reading our books and watching the energetic life of the train station carry on around us. Even though we don't love Ancona (for example, we are irritated by its bizarre plan of having the place where you buy tickets for the ferry a 10 minute bus ride away from the ferry terminal), we were very pleased to be back in Italy.

Croatia is worth visiting - Dubrovnik is just stunning - but, well, Italy - the food and coffee is so good, the cities are so alive with people using them, yelling at each other, drinking in the Piazza, the men are so cheerful and helpful (although we have noticed that we have almost no interactions with Italian women - it might not be quite so fun if you live here...), the place is just so damn exciting and relaxing, grubby and elegant, bustling and ancient - what's not to love?

Last night we trundled a long way through Naples: out of the train station, across the Piazza Garibaldi, through a back street or two, down the Corso Umberto, up the Corso Duomo, down several more side streets and finally into our objective, the Piazza San Dominico Maggiore.
It got dark as we trundled through the streets, and the little shops with bundles of long pasta hanging above their doors, jars of preserves stacked in the windows and proprietors smoking in the doorways glowed among the grey walls.

We had been on the road for 36 hours. We were pleased to reach the Piazza. We figured we were now very close to our hotel, and showers, and then dinner.

Some twenty minutes later we had circumnavigated the Piazza several times and asked directions twice, once to an uncomprehending stare, and once to vigorous arm waving in a direction that didn't yield anything that looked like a hotel.

Finally we asked again and were told "up there, second palace on the right". The hotel is in a palace. The palace forms two sides of a small piazza. The entrance to the piazza is guarded by a pair of VERY LARGE iron doors. Like VERY LARGE. Like PALACE large. The door for human beings to get in through these portals is very small in comparison. The sign for the hotel is also very small - subtle, as OT said.

A kindly Italian man standing outside took pity on us and unlocked the human-sized door. We found the hotel (with a lift, for which we were grateful at this point), followed the receptionist through a reception area, down a very narrow hallway, around a corner and into AN ENORMOUS ROOM FIT FOR A PAIR OF PRINCESSES. Vaulted ceiling miles above our heads, a vast red persian rug spreading out like the sea reflecting a sunset, a red, spongey, high-backed, be-cushioned sofa that makes me feel like a pasha, and elegant, curved wooden furniture.

The shower leaks and the sound-proofing is not great (we are in the bottom of the mid-range after all), but CRIPES. Second palace on the right.

Wheelie suitcase

2009-10-26T02:27:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in previous posts, OT and I have very large wheelie suitcases with us on this trip. To be quite accurate, OT's is an orange wheelie suitcase, mine a gray wheelie duffle bag, with back straps.

Yes, if I were packing again for this trip, I might bring slightly less with me.* No, I don't regret the size, capacity and range of my bag – it contains a wide range of minor comforts and conveniences, a number of flexible outfits that do not approach, in any regard, to the cargo pants, ill-fitting tank-top and bum-bag (with optional poncho) that many of my lighter packing fellow tourists are forced to exhibit themselves in.

Trundling wheelie suitcase behind me along the docks of Split today, I wondered to OT whether I am wheelie suitcase's servant, or he is mine?

In my favour, he carries all my items for me from place to place, and always travels a respectful step or two behind me in public. I am also responsible for his upkeep (gaffer tape), and good order (regular re-foldings).

In his favour, I am the beast of burden that carries him up stairs (with a Pooh-bear like 'thump, thump, thump'). He is also willful, in a way that a truly servile being might be too anxious to perpetrate – his favorite trick is the turtle-roll, usually executed as we drop over a curb, in which he “loses” his balance and flips over, exposing his webbed underside. I have been interpreting this as defiance, but it has just occurred to me that perhaps he wants a tummy pat?

OT's suitcase, a slimmer, broader and altogether more stable creature, does not have this little routine up its sleeve. It does however, have a well-honed ability to temporarily digest items, only regurgitating them after a thorough shakedown. It would be unfair to blame the creature overly if it was a little wobbly on its wheels – the one item that seems to have been a permanent sacrifice is half our emergency supplies – a fifth of Johnnie Walker Black Label. (Don't judge us, Singapore Airport has a restricted choice of strong drink in small bottles. What was I supposed to do, buy Midori?)

* My suitcase was overweight at Wellington Airport. I transferred two guide books to my carry on and gave my husband one pair of brown and fawn striped socks to take home. That fixed it.

The physical body

2009-10-26T02:26:00.000-07:00

OT and I, heathens both, were each raised by lapsed Catholic mothers, with Grandmothers who took us to Mass. For me, midnight Mass on the night of Easter Saturday – Christ has risen again, the annually renewed Easter candle is lit, we will shake hands with our neighbours and wish one and other the peace of Christ, then walk from the small Church holding tapers, out into the sanctified Masterton night.

These early experiences of ritual (it would be wrong to call them experiences of religion, as the real possibility of any of it relating to anything beyond itself never occurred to me) established a sense (no doubt facile and undeserved) of understanding and belonging in the high church. It is natural, on entering a Catholic or Orthodox Church, to pay over a small coin, take a beeswax candle, light it from those already burning and place it upright in the sandy dish.

These last few days I have been lighting candles for Grandpa Jim – an action that would no doubt cause dismay, or at best incomprehension, in his plain Protestant soul. However. As I always felt eating the apple and honey for a sweet life on Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year), we can all use each and every blessing we can lay our hands on.

Jim Tocher, my husband's grandfather, died at 5:30am on October 22, 2009. He left a large and loving family.

Death, even, as in this case, where expected and with elements of a merciful release, is a shock and a sorrow to those left. The body changes, as the breath leaves it: from beloved object to be cherished, touched, cared for, enjoyed, sought out, to the cooling macabre.

When my own Grandma died, her face, wracked and drawn by long illness, was plumped and reshaped by the undertaker. She looked, as my auntie said, “like a nice little old lady” - but some other little dear, not herself. At the funeral home I kissed her polished cheek. The chill alien sensation hung on my lips for hours.

This strange modern world we live in provides so many opportunities for us to physically separate ourselves from those we love. New Zealand parents with children in London or Sydney (or children with parents who abandon them!), partners on business trips or long holidays, siblings who move away – we miss them, and no amount of skyping, writing, phoning makes up for the distance. This is what George Monbiot tries to face up to when he writes about 'love miles' – the recognition that indefinite physical separation may be unsupportable, that traveling to place your body across the table from family and friends, to wipe pumpkin from your granddaughter's chin or smell the familiar mix of perfume and human that means 'dear friend' may be, might be, in a category of its own. Can any of it be justified? – perhaps not, but love miles tries to divide what is essential from what is not. It is a very human excuse.

The love of the physical body takes another form in the tradition of reliquaries.

Reliquary:

A receptacle, such as a coffer or shrine, for keeping or displaying sacred relics.

[French reliquaire, from Old French, from relique, relic, from Late Latin reliquiae, sacred relics; see relic.]

1. Something that has survived the passage of time, especially an object or custom whose original culture has disappeared: "Corporal punishment was a relic of barbarism" (Cyril Connolly).

2. Something cherished for its age or historic interest.

3. An object kept for its association with the past; a memento.

4. An object of religious veneration, especially a piece of the body or a personal item of a saint.

5. or relics A corpse; remains.

[Middle English relik, object of religious veneration, from Old French relique, from Late Latin reliquiae,sacred relics, from Latin, remains, from reliquus, remaining, from relinquere, relqu-, to leave behind; see relinquish.]

With the Catholic Church's crazy beautiful literalism, there in that golden arm, a single finger pointing upwards, is the femur of St Catherine, in this boxed monstrance a shred of skin from John the Baptist is visible, this silver shoe holds, hidden but strongly present, St Lucy's foot.

The Museum of Religious Art in Zadar was room after room of these relics. The Church of San Petronio in Bologna too, had a chapel on one side devoted to reliquaries. These scraps of flesh and bone are the ultimate profanity – an abandoned body – made sacred, the object of veneration and pilgrimage. The pilgrims' journeys to this place, to kiss this gold, inside which is this particular bone, another type of love mile, a no more or less irrational belief.

Relinquish:
1. To retire from; give up or abandon.

2. To put aside or desist from (something practiced, professed, or intended).

3. To let go; surrender.

4. To cease holding physically; release: relinquish a grip.

[Middle English relinquisshen, from Old French relinquir, relinquiss-, from Latin relinquere: re-, re- + linquere, to leave; see leik^w- in Indo-European roots.]

I.M. Jim Tocher. Safe travels.

Inside, Outside

2009-10-24T11:06:00.000-07:00

When I was a gel at Kelburn Normal School, playtime and lunch time were nominated by the deputy principal as "inside" (rainy), "outside" (fine) or "inside/outside" (overcast, or fine but cold) days. There was a hand-lettered cardboard sign at the end of each corridor which she flipped to show the rule for the day.

Being the book-obsessed sloth that I have (almost) always been, I preferred "inside" or "inside/outside" days.

As a grown-up (ish), I have discovered that inside/outside is one of my favorite spaces: a covered porch (hello 608 Ronald Street and 82 Tararua Drive), a chair, rain or beating sun just beyond the lintel, a book, a cup of tea or glass of wine. To be outside in the fresh air, but defended by human structures from the elements. To be exhilarated by the smell and rush of a downpour without getting wet. To look up from the page and see the brimming, blinding light on the garden from the luxury of deep shade.

Today we visited the cloister of the Franciscan monastery in Dubrovnik, and the Rector's palace, which has an internal courtyard, open to the sky and surrounded with colonnaded balconies on two levels. It is easy to imagine the pleasure of his daughter or wife, passing from room to room along the balcony, lifted above the business below and free to step forward and view it, or retreat to the privacy of the recessed niches.

The palace was a place of business and activity; cloisters were designed for contemplation. They are places of thought, where, in all weathers, the monks could pace out the square, the garden always in view, their slow walk civilised by the measured bands of light and shadow shaped by the evenly-spaced columns.

In the garden of Dubrovnik's monastery, there are grapefruit and pomegranate trees, the pomegranates, at this season, overripe, blown and spilling seed, the grapefruit just turning yellow. The capitals of the columns are all different, dogs and flowers, faces and scrolls carved into the white stone.

It is a beautiful place, and echoed in me memories of the cloister at Arles – another old and quiet place, an inside/outside, an elegant and understated explication of the relation of the constructed and the natural, movement and thought, the relation of human to god.

Dubronik - wild weather and beauty

2009-10-23T10:24:00.000-07:00

Fort Revelin

City Walls

Map of Dubrovnik old town

Key

Street Scene

Ah ha, Zadar

2009-10-21T07:11:00.000-07:00

Zadar - a certain cool country reserve, a long but comfy overnight ferry trip, Roman ruins including the ´shame post´, reliquaries, nuns, delicious fish and the SEA ORGAN. Overall, a little haunting.

Shopping

2009-10-19T16:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday OT and I arrived in Ancona, North Italy, planning to take a ferry out that night to Zadar.

Yes the ferries go to Zadar from Ancona. No they don't run on Sunday. Ancona, while pretty from the sea, is a fairly uninspiring port town.

'Let's get on a train,' said OT. 'We'll go to Florence.'

An excellent plan – but the next train was leaving for Bologna. 'Bologna,' we cried, consulting our guide books... 'the culinary capital of Italy...'. We got on the train.

Bologna is not a tourist mecca – it doesn't have the artistic reputation and glorious architecture of Florence or Venice, the dirty edge of Naples, the high-fashion glam of Milan, the southern sensuality of Sicily, and it's not Rome. But. We are charmed.

The centre of town leads out from Piazza Maggiore. The buildings are warm red, the streets lined on either side with portico'd walkways. We arrived on Sunday evening, around 5:30. In the dusk, families, groups of young men, couples holding hands were meandering up and down Via Dell' Independenza. The passeggiata – the Italian tradition of taking a walk before dinner - happening right before our barbarian colonial eyes.

We found a central hotel with large clean rooms, viewed the famous and slightly lewd Neptune Fountain, ate (of which more in a subsequent post, no doubt), and noted the wide and enticing variety of shops selling gloriously, stupidly, beautiful items of physical covering and adornment.

Today was devoted to shopping.

[Note: if you are feeling at all puritan, or would prefer to think of me as a serious-minded person, stop reading now. Perhaps a cold shower would be nice instead?]

Shopping, to be perfectly pleasurable, requires a certain set of conditions, enough time and the right mindset.

The correct external conditions:

A match between your budget and your habitat.
It is no fun shopping when either:
* even if you see the one most desireable item of the day, it will cost so much that your card will be declined, or your financial stability for the next six months will be seriously endangered; or
* everything is 'cheap' (whatever your standard of cheap is). This just encourages spur of the moment, less than perfect purchasing. And there is little challenge, and therefore little triumph in buying an average item at an average price. A truly memorable shopping experience stretches and reshapes your budget and your conception of yourself.

Cool, overcast weather.
Too much heat and sun lead to dehydration, frustration and sunburn. You do not want to be constantly flipping your sunglasses up to peer more closely into a window, or having your judgement of items of clothing and their effect on you marred by slightly sweaty hair that's been flattened by a sun hat.

Shops with personality.
Ideally, a shopping district will have a mix of small but perfectly curated shops, each offering a harmonic or counterpoint to the related shops around them, and one or two leviathans, a Harrods that covers all bases, or large shop in which cosmetics, or hosiery, or sweetmeats stretch away from you and reflect back in the distant back mirrors. A great shopping experience never involves a mall.

Solo time
A shopper's pace is personal.

Preparing yourself:

Comfortable, slip on shoes.
Laces, or boots that catch the heel, destroy the ease and pleasure of changing rooms.

A favorite outfit.
This is very important. Like going to the supermarket when you are hungry, shopping for trifles when feeling ugly leads to over-purchasing. A good outfit provides the baseline – do I look better in this as yet un-bought X than I did when I walked into the shop?

A sense of calm.
Shopping is meditative and imaginative. Is this texture deliciously soft, or verging on slimy? Which of these colours steps forward from the shelves of folded jerseys? Will I ever want to cook a whole chicken in this dish, and if so, will the lid be deep enough?

Considered, and real, but not urgent, desires.
A list in your head of the people you love and will wish to give gifts to, now or in the future. A few special items of clothing, something beautiful to sit in a particular corner.

The over-riding rule: thou shalt listen to the item that speaks to you, and thou shalt pass over the item that is silent.

List of items that spoke to me, I bought and have never regretted:

Black knitted wrap, Punakiki
Lance, Kapiti (Peter Ireland)
Small round painting (Ange Lane)
Silver leaf earrings, Nelson
Black Ricochet jacket, Auckland
Trestle table, Finn Robson-Marsden, Wellington
Red coral and brass ring, Invercargill
Tank girl boots, London
Feather duvet, Briscoes
Oak escritoire, Taranaki Street Salvation Army
Silk velvet jacket with cowl, Bologna

List of items that I should never have abandoned:

Peach and green jug with reversed handle, Otaki
Turquoise liquorish allsort ring, Tinakori Rd

List of items purchased with an uneasy heart, that have brought nothing but regret:

Four white soup bowls with lids, Wanganui Op Shop
Several items of 'good work clothing', Auckland, prior to starting my first 'grown up' job
Hydraulically adjustable desk, Wellington
Several esoteric and unreadable texts of post-modern literary criticism, sale bin, Victoria University Bookshop.

Dear readers, it was a wonderful shopping day in Bologna today.

Italy

2009-10-19T14:28:00.000-07:00

stupidly beautiful clothes and jewelery

Bologna smells of

2009-10-18T14:10:00.000-07:00

cigar smoke, traffic, roasting chestnuts, cold air, perfume, and for a moment, from a side-alley, watermelon.

Dogs of Attica (and friends)

2009-10-18T13:53:00.000-07:00

Lions, Acropolis

Dogs of Plaka

Dogs of the Acropolis

Cat of the towel cupboard, Hotel Perissa

Restaurant cat, Emporio

Dog, Oia

My Santorini love, come home. He has been tethered to a tree as punishment for wandering for a night and a day. If you look closely, you can see that the string is tied round his neck, and the collar buckled around the tree.

Stowaway kitten, port, Santorini

Minoan lion, with 2000 year old hangover.

Endearingly pop-eyed Minoan donkey

This goat is standing in Samaria settlement - humans have lived here since neolithic times.

Really an amazing bee, Samaria Gorge

Beehives, Samaria Gorge

It's a sheep, Jim, but...

Warden's horse, Samaria Gorge

Saddle of same.

Alley cat, Hania

Rabbit that knows what it's about, Hania Museum of Folk Art

On being fed

2009-10-17T08:02:00.000-07:00

I am writing this on the train from Athens to Patras.

Last night we sailed through the night from Hania (Crete), to Pireaus (Athens). We slept in a small cabin with four bunks, Maria and Eleni on the bottom bunks, Anna and OT on the top bunks. Maria and Eleni, Cretan sisters, were on their way to Athens for their nephew's wedding. Nai, nai (yes, yes), they assured me, his wife-to-be is very nice.

It is 11am. I'm not usually one for going without my breakfast – the old tummy rumbles eagerly in the morning, as a rule. However, this morning all I've had is a coffee (at Starbucks, shame on us) when we got off the boat in Pireus. And although I will soon be ready for my lunch (perhaps some seafood in the port town of Patras?), I am not yet hungry. Why not? Last night, and the night before, and the night before that we ate at Portes, a Hania restaurant run by Susanna Koutoulaki (an Irish woman abroad), and her husband, a Cretan from the village of Maleme.

On the first night we arrived late, perhaps 11pm. The restaurant was empty – a woman with short curly hair and a face open and charming as a gold coin sat outside.

Portes is the last restaurant in one of the alleys of the old town. It is down past the large Samariais Taverna, past the Banana Garden (a restaurant aiming to attract tourist families with children who need amusing), and around the corner. Outside there are square white tables, each with four slim thrush-egg blue chairs. We stopped by the tables, uncertain if the restaurant was open.

'Hello girls', said Susanna, standing up and gesturing towards the door, 'come in'.

Inside the walls are the same chalky blue. The tables are covered with white cloths. A niche holds a brass pot, an amphora, a bunch of flowers. Intricate and beautiful old doors, salvaged from other buildings around the town, lean against the long left-hand wall. The bar and the small serving hatch through to the kitchen are on the right.

That first night, we ordered hora (boiled weeds), baked sardines and meatballs with leeks. We had a half litre of the house red. I asked Susanna if I should have the sardines or the gavros (small marinated fish). The sardines, she said as she scooped olives out of a barrel for us. 'The gavros is finished,' she said and laughed.

'What's good?' asked OT.

'Have the meatballs,' said Susanna, 'with leeks'. Then she brought us our bread and olives.

Restaurants in Greece will almost always offer a small bowl of olives and a basket of bread to start the meal, adding one or two euro to the bill. In most cases the bread is soft and white, with sesame seeds on top. Sometimes it comes with butter, sometimes we dip it in the olive oil from the cruet provided on every table. At Portes the bread is brown and tasty, homemade and filling.

I read about hora recently, when I was cooking greek beans at home, and the cookbook noted that the dish would usually be served with boiled weeds. I improvised with puha, dandelion, kale, chickweed and silverbeet. True hora is closest to a small dandelion. The plant is boiled whole and served in oil and lemon. When served, the fleshy white bases and the rosettes of limp green leaves look like small sea creatures, rather than vegetables. They taste of oxalic, and a slight dark green astringency.

On that first evening we were just passing through, unlikely ever to be seen again. Still, as we stood at the bar paying the bill, Susanna reached under the counter and brought out a little hour-glass shaped flagon, two shot glasses and a big green bottle. She filled the little flagon and then poured us out two shots. The raki was smooth and sweet, a definite alcohol hit to the mouth and brain, but nothing like the stomach-twisting offerings we'd had so far.

'This is good!' we said.

'My husband makes it,' she said.

Full and loosened by food, wine and raki, we made our way home.

The next day we decided to go back. This time Susanna's Cretan husband served us. He raised his eyebrow as we decided on a litre of the house red, and ordered four dishes (hora, roast vegetable salad, baked giant beans and mousaka).

'I bring the salads first,' he said, 'and then...' He circled his hand to indicate bringing us the rest of our feast.

He brought us the hora and little crucible of rock salt. 'Here', he said, 'a little more oil, and use this salt'. We looked up at him tenderly.

The food was, as mentioned in previous posts, exceptional. The roast vegetable salad with local cheese: the cheese soft, almost sticky, a gentle relative of feta; the vegetables varied, and each cooked to be al dente; the 'unique dressing', as promised in the menu, uniquely delicious. The mousaka spiced, the eggplant melting around the grains of mince, and the giant beans, big as the flat of a big man's thumb, in a tomato sauce orange with caramelised sweetness and olive oil.

That evening we sat outside. Our host, impressed at our capacity, brought us the little flagon of raki and a bunch of green table grapes. We motioned him to join us. He stood by the table, smoking and raising his glass with us, and talking about making the raki with grapes from his home village of Maleme. The red wine, as well, he makes. He told us that Susanna is from Ireland, and that the restaurant has been open five years.

It was late, again. He went inside then came out again with another little bottle, slipping it onto our table. He went inside to clean. We drank the raki. He came back out and saw the empty bottle. He clicked his tongue in amusement, fetched another bottle, and sat with us to drink it. We toasted each other, and Crete, and New Zealand, and said we'd be back for an early dinner before the ferry tomorrow.

We left, very relaxed, and climbed the three flights of stairs to our beds.

On the third night, our host touched our arms as we arrived to show his pleasure at seeing us, and called Susanna to say hello. We asked him to choose our dinner. He looked carefully over the menu, running his finger down the list, pausing on a dish, considering, saying 'too much cheese', or 'not two pies', putting together a meal.

He choose smoked pork and cheese pie, eggplant rolls, rabbit with prunes, and, though we ordered the roast vegetables again, brought us instead a different vegetable dish, saying 'try this, if you don't like it, I will eat it'.

We liked it - we liked it very much, a stack of zucchini and eggplant, layered with pesto and mint. The rabbit was light and parted gently under the teeth, the dark meat by the bone soft as jelly. The crisp short pastry of the pie enclosed a slab of white cheese and slices of aromatic, pink and fawn pork.

We drank the house red and worked our way through the food. Our host moved around the restaurant, serving his other customers, but coming to check on us - was it good, did we like it? It was, we did.

We asked for the bill - he bought the check, the familiar clear hour-glass shaped bottle, and a plate of chocolate cake and ice-cream. Kaimaki ice cream, with the herbed taste of Cretan hills in the sheep's milk, and chocolate cake baked in its own sauce, luscious and dripping.

We ate, and had to leave for the boat, our bellies full and our minds at ease and comforted by being fed, freely and with care.

Food and Drink #2

2009-10-16T07:44:00.000-07:00

Wine tasting, Santo Wines, Santorini

Yoghurt and honey, Knossos

Halva and raki on the house, Hania

Hora - boiled weeds

Dinner at Portes, Hania - moussaka, baked giant beans, hora, roast vegetable salad, red wine, followed by home-made and delicious organic raki. This is some of the best food I have ever eaten.

Garlic and onions, Hania

Butcher's shop, Hania

Organic Cretan dry white wine - Yiamas.

Food and Drink #1

2009-10-16T07:17:00.000-07:00

Birthday dinner in Athens: spinach pie, greek salad, eggplant, lamb, wine, octopus, raki.

Dinner at Cafe Platis, Santorini. Meatballs in tomato sauce (recommended by the proprietor and truly delicious), eggplant, white wine.

Eggplants in the garden, Hotel Perissa, Santorini

Greek salad, Emporio, Santorini (current Greek Salad count: about 50)

Santorini salad, stuffed calamari. Above the caldera, Santorini (to be followed by the ouzo of apology).

In which we go luxe and attempt to be helpful

2009-10-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

Chania (Ha-ne-AH) is the former capital of Crete. On the north coast of the island, the old town clusters around a kidney-shaped harbour.

Ready for a touch of luxury after a perplexing and slightly macabre stay in Iraklion (small dog skull, anyone?), OT and I booked a real hotel, with a proper shower stall, comfy beds and pretty furniture. We've been here three nights, and will leave tomorrow evening on the overnight ferry back to Athens.

Although Porto Del Columbo is a real hotel, it does not have every one of the mod cons. For instance - no WiFi, as yet. But we think that's a small matter, worth putting up with to sleep in a building that was the French ambassador's residence, eat the thick white yogurt with thyme honey they serve for breakfast, and look out of our third floor window over tiled terracotta roofs to the harbour, and the old Venetian-era mole.

Not everyone is so sanguine at Porto Del Columbo. On our second night in Hania, OT and I separated for a while in the evening, attending to various small tasks in the town. When I arrived back at the hotel, I found an elderly(ish) couple, both dressed in pale linen, standing in the foyer and saying quietly to each other 'but the cases, the cases, can we carry the cases?'

Those of you who have been in on the plans for this journey will know that OT and I decided we were going on a wheelie suitcase type-holiday, not a backpack type holiday. And that our first action, after deciding the trip was to happen, was to go out and each buy ourselves the largest wheelie suitcases we could find. Many people have looked doubtfully at me when wheelie suitcase is mentioned, muttering about steps and having to carry it, and what seems to to be the cardinal virtue of traveling, packing light. But, as I have to lift my own body weight at least once a week at yoga, I've developed quite considerable arm-strength. So I've waved my hand airily and cried 'don't worry, I'm strong'. Which I am.

So, with charity in my heart and muscles in my arms, I said cheerily to the couple 'do you need help with your cases?'. A simple question, a plain enough offer - but it threw them into confusion.

'Oh no no no', cried the man, pulling his mouth down and shaking his head.
'We are quite alright,' said the woman, her hand resting on the back of a chair and shaking slightly.
'Really,' I said, 'it's no trouble, I'm strong. Where are they?'
'Oh, at the waterfront,' said the woman (all of 2 minutes away, but with some steps in between it and us, and lanes too narrow to admit their hire car).
'Let me help you,' I said.
'Oh no,' said the man, real pleading in his voice. He bent towards me and clasped his hands, entreating me not to help him.* 'You are the second kind person to offer. No no, I'd be so embarrassed'.
So I gave up, and wished them luck and scooted up the stairs to our room, where I found OT.
OT: 'Did you see the couple downstairs?'
ATML: 'Yes, I tried to help them with their bags.'
OT: 'Me too! They wouldn't let me. When I came in, they were saying to each other "no porter? how can there be so many stairs and no porter?"'

We looked at each other, the two kind people, and started giggling.

Twenty minutes later, we were on our way out (for ice cream). There, on the threshhold, was the elderly safari-ites, porterless, struggling with two large bags.

I seized one, OT seized the other.

'No no no, you'll hurt yourself' they said.
'I'm strong!' I cried. I was overtaken by a wilful desire to carry the damn cases - it really was no trouble and the dear old chap, flapping like a stalky hen, had been dragging them painfully up the lane, step-by-step, for the last quarter of an hour. He held on to the handle of his case and protested. I looked him in the eye. 'I am a gift from the universe, sent to you to carry this case,' I said. He let go of the handle. I carried it off in triumph.**

OT, giving up on her case (her being strong for her size too, but a rather smaller creature than me), backed me up 'She is strong, you know', she said to the woman as they stood in the foyer watching me with the case on the stairs.
'How did she get so strong?', the woman whispered to OT.
'Yoga,' said OT, nodding wisely.
'The case is full of gin,' said the tired woman to OT, 'I was going to drink it on the cruise, but there was so much wine I haven't touched it. She's carrying five bottles of gin up the stairs.'

Yiamas!

*It is no doubt relevant to note that this couple were British.
** It was NOT as heavy as my case - actually not particularly heavy at all.

''We are inside a crazy Englishman's brain” – OT, Knossos, 12 October 2009*

2009-10-15T08:59:00.000-07:00

Questions for the day:

* How does a palace 'disappear' underground?
* Seven levels of Troy? Wasn't it a bit bumpy for building on by layer seven?**
* Would the contemporary world be a happier place if we practiced bull-jumping, washed each other's feet as a gesture of love and raised our arms above our heads to honour the dreamy-faced, poppy-crowned mother goddess?

Knossos, palace of the legendary King Minos, his filthy wife Pasiphae, and her son, the half-human, bull-headed Minotaur. Twenty-five minutes from Heraklion by local bus #2, six euro entry fee, open 8:30-19:30 summer, 8:30-15:30 winter.

For centuries Knossos dipped out of the known world, persisting only as myth: a twisting, partitioned, terraced palace a labyrinth; bull-worship remembered as a Queen passionately, lasciviously in love with a beautiful animal; the King whose apartment windows overlooked the sacred horns become the cuckold, reluctant guardian of a monster.

Enter Arthur Evans. Arthur Evans, good solid British stock, excavator and hypothesisor. The palace had been 'rediscovered' by Minos Kalokairinos in 1878, but serious excavation was forbidden until England took over the administration of Crete. In 1900 Evans arrived with a team of students, and set to. Bearing the supreme confidence of a late Victorian, he didn't just dig and uncover, he hypothesised and reconstructed, labeled and assigned, touched up, remodeled, conjectured.

The explanatory signs at Knossos have a faintly resigned tone: Evans called this the theatre 'because it reminded him of other theatres'. 'Evans believed that this room was used for bathing, although other similar rooms show no sign of water-related activity'. 'This area is entirely reconstructed and may not represent the original design...'

Knossos as we saw it today is not only the twisting remains of Minoan power; it is also a portrait of the inside of an English gentleman's head.

* Posted later because of lack of connectivity.
**This question looks forward to a later part of our trip.

Hania - that's where all the icecream went

2009-10-13T07:45:00.000-07:00

... but the backhaul is terrible, so the internet is scarce and slow...

Comfort and discomfort

2009-10-11T23:33:00.000-07:00

Questions for the day:

* were any of the ancient sculptors slaves, or were slaves restricted to carrying things?

* does contemporary Greek discourse about antiquity include analysis/identification with/reclamation of/anxiety about the colonial and slave-owning aspects of the glorious past?

* where have the good Cretans of Iraklion hidden the ice cream?

Yesterday OT and I rode our faithful steeds up to the site of Profitis Ilias monastery. The monastery, founded in 1711, is just below the peak of one of the string of hills that form the spine of Thira. The monastery site is impressive: the honey-comb bell-tower sieves the sky, and the tall stone walls with small recessed wooden doors create an appealing, secret-garden sense of hidden space.

The hill also hosts a military installation -- masts, dishes, several low buildings and a brick wall with the bold inscription "uncontrolled cancer-creating radiation from military radar".

**

Later in the morning we stopped at a taverna in Pyrgos village. We sat at our ease in the shade on a cane sofa with faded cushions, drinking black sweet coffee. Below us terraced fields, curved roofs, the sea. Across the square white furled sun-umbrellas, little madonnas of the courtyard.

Iraklion - so far, not highly recommended

2009-10-11T15:12:00.000-07:00

Footpaths under repair or non-existent, very narrow alleys, a rat skull, skanky bars. But the Mexican is good. And I hear rumours of a maze...

The price of Ouzo

2009-10-10T15:12:00.000-07:00

Questions for the day:

1. How is a marble temple 'destroyed by fire'?*

2. How many dogs are there for every Greek citizen?

3. OT wonders is it wrong to eat ice cream more than once a day?

This morning we turned our keys, squeezed our ignition levers, flicked our indicators, muttered 'keep right' to ourselves, and traversed the length of the island.

Thira is an archetype of the 'inhabited picturesque': without white curved roofs , blue domes and red geraniums**, the island would be a bleak and dusty volcanic speck. Habitation doesn't fight against or sit on top of the land; all that struggle left so deep in the past it looks natural. The slopes covered in squat vines remind me of the hills in Yorkshire - not the shape of the land, or the crops, or the climate, but the sense that every piece of dirt is tilth - has been turned over and over and over by human cultivation.

We lunched today at a taverna above the donkey path that links Fira (the main town) and the old port. The donkeys were very... animal. Manure, sweat and brass bells, lined up along the zigs and zags below us.

The waiter was very...friendly From Athens, he told me while OT was using the conveniences, just here for work. He bought us lunch (stuffed calamari) and then very kindly showed me exactly where the women's toilet was - taking advantage of the romantic and enticing location (no, you couldn't see the view, and yes, it was a little smelly), to snuggle up and ask for 'please, just one kiss'. He was polite enough to desist after a firm shove, and began to look distinctly sheepish when I came back up to the terrace and asked him, laughing, whether that trick ever worked, and if he ever had any takers for his offer.

He disappeared downstairs again and came back with the bill and two glasses of Ouzo 'from us'.

'What's this?' asked OT.
'I think it's an apology,' I said.

So now you know. Two glasses of Ouzo = one very unsuccessful pass.

* This question is left over from Athens.
** I am doing my bit for local colour by wearing sky-blue sneakers on the ends of my white legs.

My new best friend

2009-10-09T23:17:00.000-07:00

Lat night we set out up the road towards the nearest cluster of tavernas and shops (Emporio) to find dinner and drinking water. Our friend the dog (guest starring in previous episodes), followed us... though the grounds of the hotel... along the side of the street... into the first supermarket (closing)... into the petrol station (no water for sale)... into the variety shop (where we found water, but first tried to buy 4 litres of a clear liquid in bottles labelled 'water', but which the proprietress giggled at and told us was Ouzo)... and further along the street to Emporio square, where he proceeded to fight and sniff other dogs and dart intermittently across the square, causing the boys doing wheelies on their motorbikes to swerve and swear.

He has a panting, cheerful face, except when he's too close to a car or bike for comfort, and twists his body into pretzel curves to squeeze closer to the wall. Then he looks sheepishly anxious. In each of the shops, the owners called at him to get out, but he wouldn't leave till I motioned him out the door and looked stern.

"τι είναι ερωτευμένος μαζί σου" said the woman in the supermarket, making a beating heart with her fist on her chest and smiling. That's right folks: I've found love on a Greek island. If only he hadn't peed on the table leg during dinner.

In which we are forbidden 2 wheels, but offered 4

2009-10-09T10:04:00.000-07:00

Santorini -

Just as pretty as it looks. OT (other traveler) and I were banned from hiring scooters - "my heart, my heart", cried Diamantis of Diamantis Team scooter hire as we, erhem, careened, around the Hotel Parissa carpark. He has let us have a pair of four-wheelers. 'Much safer', he said. It's the handle-twisty accelerator that got us - very abrupt. Four wheelers you accelerate with your thumb.

The water is warm, although we haven't been in yet. The roads are narrow and full of fools like us, and very zoomy locals in cars and on scooters. The cliffs are very steep, the land very dry, khaki and dun. The sea is house-paint blue, almost purple - wine dark.

Our hotel has two beds in the room (there was an issue with this in Athens), and a verandah with a view over low grape vines and white washed houses to the water. There is a friendly dog, slightly wolfish in the muzzle like his cousins that lie in the shade of the little alleys in Athens.

Last night I dreamed that I lost my job (which was in publishing) due to the TET's (tough economic times), and that a plague was crawling through Wellington. Victims became very ill, their skin covered in creeping orange mold. The mold was on the telephone lines outside Kelburn School as well.

The moral of the story? Raki and octopus after 11pm do not make for a peaceful sleep.

We are drinking retsina and plotting our next move.

I meet the ancient world

2009-10-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I:

* ate a very ripe fig, very thoughtfully, standing by the ruins of the prison where Socrates drank hemlock.

* bought a rug from a Cretan, having drunk several cups of coffee, eaten a biscuit 'made by his aunt', drunk 2 paper cups of red wine, caused him to 'call his mother and ask her if he can do something special for me', been complimented on my eyes (while wearing sunglasses), and walked away twice. Thanks Theo.

* found OT safe and well, snoozing when I got back to the hotel.

* ate a delicious round flat cake that was like a light steamed christmas pudding.

* spoke to a cat in the ruins of Hadrian's library

* ate gyros for dinner looking at the temple of Athena Nike, flood-lit and splendid.

2009-10-07T22:06:00.000-07:00

alright it was inevitable

2009-10-07T21:49:00.000-07:00

Alright, it was inevitable - being the newly digital being that I am, and having this wee computer that I have, and travelling around and wanting to tell y'all all about it. The ultimate digital cliche - the travel blog. Here we go. Having much more fun.