Ciao, Tutti!
Now that I have a few minutes to catch my breath and use the internet, I will try the impossible task of capturing my week in Greece and the visit from my wonderful mother. There is just too much to talk about, too many good, strange, and delicious experiences to even try to accomplish the task of documenting them all. I wrote about 40 pages in my travel log in this week, writing as small as I could but still coming up to the end before finishing completely with the trip.
For the record, here is the top ten as far as I can remember it. Mom, feel free to correct me if I've missed anything.
1) Mom visiting from 10,000 miles away. Now is the spring break for the folks back in New York University, and boyfriends and girlfriends from all over are pouring into the NYU in Florence Villa. Having the bad experience last semester doesn't stop me from being able to share this European adventure with someone, and it was good to have a close companion with me rather than the trips to Ferrara and Venice with people I hardly know.
2) The cave where Zeus is said to have grown up, at the Lissithi plateau in Crete. I have never seen such a natural wonder as a cave before, and it didn't disappoint. This is probably the case because pictures in a dark cave are close to impossible, so I had no correct preconceptions of what it would look, feel, and smell like in a cave. I had been thinking about how much of human history I had been seeing and I wondered if I could see some natural beauty that I can't see anywhere else in the world, so Mom found out where this famous cave was and ventured into the mountains (see 5) so I could see it, and the caves closed an hour earlier than expected so the poor woman had to stay behind as I ran up the hill (difficult in 2000 meter elevation!) to procure a precious 30 minutes in the cave. The experience was indescribable, as experiences usually tend to be. It was surprisingly sensual rather than simply visual. There was a distinct smell of old damp rock, the sound of dripping water and the eerie echo, the welcoming cold without so much as a light breeze, the taste of recycled air and moisture. It was almost supernatural, and my initial desire to touch the rocks to see if they were actually rocks and not clay vanished, replaced by a degree of fear and uncertainty. I jumped when a stray drop of water pelted my shoulder from a rock ice sickle above my head, and I brushed it off like one would with a black widow spider. I slowly got more used to the cave and let may camera do its thing, though with flash not permitted and my body shaking all over from the sprint up the high altitude hill, not many have come out very well and none of them give the proper impression of what it was like down there. Again, it's a feeling that involves all senses. And to put the cherry on top, traveling on off-season made it sop I was the only one in the entire cave, arriving just after the stay of a group of backpackers.
Traveling in off-season would be pretty high on the top ten if I had anything all that good to say about it.
3) The Unexpected road trip in search of a good view of Psiloritis, the tallest mountain in Crete. After the trip to the ruins at Knossos, we whimsically decided to head towards that beautiful snow-covered mountain we saw from the road. We found a small town, Anogia, that seemed to be pretty close and not too long of a dive away, so Mom braved the long trek up into the mountains in search of Anogia. I was starting to get the hang of the navigation by then, and we would cross of the tiny one-street towns we passed as we continued toward the giant peak, enjoying the stares of mustached who clearly did not expect to see tourists. We were getting into Crete, away from our resort-style stay in Piskopiano, a city by the water. Mom could not look down, but I can assure you there were great vistas, and the exploration mixed with that to give beauty to the travel. Anogia turned out to be a city about 1000 people smaller than my high school, though Mom was surprised it was that big. There was one main street at the top of a hill across from Psiloritis, a street two cars could not really go down at the same time though they somehow did, and many smaller walking streets to the valley below where there were many churches, houses, a school, and other such buildings. Mom and I smelled a grill and had to stop for a grill, our first taste of the famed Cretan food (See 6). It was fantastic, grilled lamb as Mom had been craving since landing in Athens four days earlier. The restaurant had a window looking out on the glistening peak, and for the first time in the trip I didn't feel tired or hungry or anything other than just happy to be there. After lunch we walked through the town, visited a bakery owned by a woman who spoke very little English, who we had to convince to let us pay for the sweets we were buying. She was quite insistent on giving us gifts, and even when we forced the money in her hand she slipped some extra treats in that we hadn't originally requested. It is true what they say, that the people in Crete are really nice, even if they live in a town that's not used to tourism, like Anogia.
Crete was surprising. I had expected to spend every day in Crete swimming and relaxing, maybe writing some music. Almost none of that happened. In addition, we started our trip without knowledge of the language or where to find our hotel in the small town of Piskopiano, and we got lost on our way from the airport. We asked people who usually didn't know or didn't speak English, backed into a post with the car, a mistake that cost only enough to buy me that Greek guitar I liked so much in Athens, but we finally found our way to the town. Nothing was open. Nothing. Everything was boarded up, like a ghost town, chairs piled up randomly on the porches of restaurants bragging a roof garden view of the ocean, newspaper blocking the windows. Almost half the city was under construction. After finding the hotel and unloading our things, we went in search of a beach, finding signs to a "Famous Fun Sun Beach" by the town of Malia, which I liked but creeped Mom out. There were all sorts of free things, like swimming pools, trampolines, toys, etc, lined at the back of the beach, making it look like a circus, but everything was abandoned and the pools were empty, construction going on over to the right, just like in Piskopiano. I liked being at the beach and I thought the sand was pretty, but Mom was nervous about it, a theme of the trip for her (again, see 5), so we went back to the hotel and played backgammon, neither of us all that inspired by the island. It felt like we should put a note in a bottle and throw it as far away from our lone palm tree as we could, a deserted island. However, without this negative first impression, the surprises of Anogia, the cave, Lissithi, and the other great things we did in our next two days in Crete would not have been nearly as good. Crete defied expectations, then defied them again.
4) Flying a kite on the hill next to the Acroplis. We were in Athens for the final day of carnival before the start of Lent (see 8). The day after carnival ends is a national holiday when the kids go and fly kites all over the city. Mom and I could see them dotting the sky everywhere we looked as we made the climb to the Acropolis that morning, and I decided I had to fly a kite. We found some cheap kites being sold on the street and climbed up the hill across from the Acropolis to fly it. I was worried about being too close to the other kites and getting tangled up, though I guess I should have been more concerned that I have no idea how to fly a kite. It showed. Even with Mom's help, the thing refused to go into the air, usually preferring to dive for the nearby bushes whenever a Greek kite master looked our way or a sunburned tourist had just taken a picture. It got stuck in the bushes one too many times, and I was too frustrated and broke one of the wood poles keeping the thing together. Mom did her best to fix it, and we didn't give up trying to fly the thing, but it was lopsided and not very aerodynamic. We actually did get it up pretty high one time when I was on the verge of giving up (again), and Mom got the pictures, just before the kite dove back down again. The success was tantalizing, and I tried again and again but the poor thing was getting more and more tattered each time and we had to give up, saving what we could of the design and the tail for an eventual scrapbook. I was basically upset with kite flying after that, and Mom promised we would bring one to the beach this summer and learn how to do it right. I would have been able to get it up in the air had I not broken it earlier! Later that night when we climbed the rock at the foot of the Acropolis to watch the sunset, I found an abandoned kite on the ground (amid all the dead kites in the trees and ground) and tried to fly it on the crowded rock. The breeze wasn't so good, and I was having trouble doing it myself, but a German kid a few years older than me came and offered help. He found the string tied on at the wrong place, so he cut it off with a swiss army knife and re-tied it, a process that was quite difficult and took some time, making me feel stupid just standing there. When he finished, he and his friend tried throwing the kit over the edge, and the new knot came apart, sending the kite all the way down and rendering all the work for naught. Mom and I laughed and laughed as they apologized and sulked off. It's probably better that way. I still had some sunset to enjoy without giving the futile effort to kite flying. Ever since then we saw many kites stuck high in trees and other random places throughout Athens and even a little in Crete as well.
The pictures are having trouble loading right now. I'll get them up when I can.
5) Driving in Crete, Mom with white knuckles and numb toes, my nose buried in an unreadable map. This has to do more with the adventure of the whole thing and the surprise of Crete. One of the first things that happened when we were in Crete was that Mom pulled into an intersection without looking both ways, got beeped at, and the man in the other car even took the time to stop and yell at us from his car as we pulled into the supermarket to ask for directions. Then as we pulled out, the back of the car hit a concrete block, producing a scratch that kept Mom nervous for the entire trip, even though it ended up only costing about 300 USD. Mom said that Dad was the only one who drove in Costa Rica since she couldn't handle, so my confidence in her abounded. Plus she has basically no sense of direction, and I would have to give directions back to the hotel a lot before she memorized the route. It turns out she was concentrating on driving down these impossibly narrow streets and 179 degree angle turns and she could not pay attention to the surrounding landmarks, though she did know this one patch of sheep on a wrong road we took twice. She was quite a trooper, and as long as I had the map and knew roughly where we were going, she trusted me with the mentality of getting there as she handled the physical part. We were a great team, even if she would nervously jerks the wheel and then put her arm across my chest and mutter a breathless, "Sorry!" to which I would simply smile. This was even more so in the mountains, where Mom said the vistas would make her toes go numb, and as she described the numbness climbing up her body I wondered if she would be able to press the brakes or turn the wheel when the road forced such action. But despite these issues with the car, it was quite fun going on the road trip, something I haven't done in quite a long time, since Yosemite, actually. Driving through the mountains, looking down into the valleys, gazing at the sights, all this was very fun for me, and even Mom thought she had a good time, though I suspect for other reasons I would not quite understand. It was also empowering to be given the map and entrusted with the directions to wherever we were going on Crete, be it Anogia, Knossos, or Lissithi. There was adventure and yet also some sense of personal control, both whimsicality and
structure at the same time. I was a part of the vacation, I was not just there experiencing it through someone else's planning or even someone else's whims. It was really a cooperative effort to make the driving trip work, but with the map in my hand and Mom making the turns I told her to make, I felt like I was in control, a nice feeling.
6) Food!!! I love tasting the places I go to, which is why I went to three or four pastries in a single day in Barcelona. Everything we ate was very good, from the Anogia pastries to the gyros we had at the same place twice in Athens. It is impossible to chose a hi-light, but the most different thing I didn't expect was the quality of the grill. It wasn't quite barbecued, not quite grilled, and seasoned with tangy spices my mouth did not expect. I have not eaten much Greek food before except once or twice in Michigan and I didn't know what to expect when I got here. Everything was good, and it was always good to look forward to eating each day. Another good thing was how laid-back the food was. Unlike in Italy or the rest of Europe, or even in America, there was eating all day long. It would be perfectly acceptable to have two lunches, one at 11:30 and another at 2:30, or two dinners, one at 7:00 and another at 10:30. Mom and I didn't do this ourselves, as Mom's stomach bothered her ever since the scratch on the car, an incident that cost me dinner once and forced me to eat most of hers on a couple of occasions. However, we noticed that the restaurants in Athens were always open and always seemed to have people in them, no matter what time we passed them. A much more individualistic approach to food, where the most important thing is the diner's personal comfort in time. I liked that aspect a lot.
I will finish the top ten once I have more time. For now, here is the bare-bones list:
7) The Agora in Athens and the temple to Hephaestus.
8) The strange festivals/holidays Mom happened to be in town for, both in Florence and in Athens.
9) The Acropolis. Not just the walk up, but it's presence that even outdoes Florence's Duomo's, no matter where in the city you may be. That's right: one of the seven wonders of the world would not even make my top seven in a week of Greece. I didn't like the Parthenon as much as I liked the fortress-esque hill the thing was built upon. The whole thing was massive and rightfully the center of the city, the landmark that told you where you were at all times, both in the city and in the world. It was always watching over us it felt, and it was almost comforting that I could always just look up if I wanted to do any sightseeing. Mom loved it. It took her breath away. For me it helped me find my way and practice using my camera. Perhaps I will visit some day and the profound nature of the building will set in for me, but it didn't click this time, not the way Botticelli did in the Uffizi, for example. That didn't take away its meaning for me as a constant guardian of the city. It actually facilitated some thought about the importance of older music, like bebop or blues or baroque or what have you. In a metaphoric way. It was very comforting to see its stoic consistency when returning from the volatile stay in Crete.
10) The last day in Athens before the vacation-saturated departure, energy found despite profound fatigue.
Also when I have more time I will put captions on the photos and put them in their right places. I also must somehow find time to talk about teaching and the board game I made for class today. I also must tell the story of forgetting my bag on the train back to Florence from Rome, but don't worry, I got it back. And there is a lot more to say, but, as I said earlier, that task is impossible.
