JOURNEY TO SANTORINI
A fast catamaran takes us to Paros, where we board the ferry to Santorini. This is the most tourists we've seen since Istanbul. There are people from Dutch, French, Norwegian, English. One Dutch couple waiting at the dock had sturdy hiking boots and Coolmax socks, and outfits straight from the REI or perhaps the Travelsmith catalog. Another Norwegian couple had freshly scrubbed cheeks and the insouciance of youth. A perfect place for people-watching. Jim is delighted to find the beer on the ferry served in heavily frosted glass steins.
Santorini is breathtaking. I think we will stay at least a week.
Update: Just booked tickets on Sky Express to fly to Rhodes on 6/17/08.
Santorini is breathtaking. I think we will stay at least a week.
Update: Just booked tickets on Sky Express to fly to Rhodes on 6/17/08.
FINIKIA
We're staying in Finikia, a small village nestled against the slopes just on the other side of the ridge from the caldera. The guesthouse is reached by a labyrinth of cobblestone paths, where the enterprising Giorgis has painted blue arrows to point the way. After he led us to our rooms, he said he will take the donkey to get the luggage which remained in the van in the parking lot. An Australian couple from Sydney thought he was jokingly referring to his wife.
In the mornings we wake up to a view of the village and the sea. Finikia is still, as Giorgis likes to emphasize, very "traditionale," and in the stillness of the morning we hear only the bird, the breeze, and occasionally the donkey.
READING
Both Jim and I have now finished Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes," a tragicomic memoir of a poor, Irish, Catholic childhood. The passages with the schoolmaster and at the confessional are priceless.
I was unable to find a free book exchange here, so at the bookstore I pick out a hefty book - Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. I can see how this book can launch a thousand essay assignments. In the way that I first heard Purple Haze performed by the Kronos Quartet and only later followed the ripples back to Jimi Hendrix in the center, so I now see that I've been encountering ripples, some secondary or tertiary, emanating from this weighty tome.
Now I just have to meet some Irishmen or Russians on whom to project all this new understanding of their national psyche.
1 comment:
A week in Santorini - how fabulous! A wonderful thing to do is to walk the trail between Oia and Fira. It is basically an old donkey path (some parts are a bit rocky, but I had no trouble navigating it with sneakers). It skims the Caldera - six miles of breathtaking beauty with a cold beer at the end. I bumped into a few people (mostly Europeans - the Greeks thought we were nuts or lost - one local tried to direct me back to the road where I could catch the bus). The trail head at Oia is a bit tricky to find, but I think the info is in the Lonely Planet. I don't remember where the trail starts in Fira. Let me know if you want me to look it up.
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