Have Bag, Will Travel

Morocco, Riad Layali Fez

2012-01-30T08:28:00.002Z

We travelled to Fez with Ryanair on a late afternoon flight and I am certain that they have crammed in even more seats onto the aircraft because there was barely enough room to turn the pages of an A5 book let alone a broadsheet newspaper that they sold me so I tried to sleep and managed this for about an hour of the three and a half hour flight and after that had to try and amuse myself as best as possible for the rest of the cramped ordeal.

The landing at Fez airport was delayed but there was no explanation for this but at least Ryanair couldn't play their 'arrived on time' fanfair'. When we stepped from the plane at about half past seven we were greeted with an unexpected chill blast which cut through our clothing into our flesh and meant that we had to turn our jacket collars up and button up our coats against the wind because the temperature was dangerously close to zero and even though it was December this surprised us.

There was a lot of congestion at passport control and an entry form to fill in which was probably the worst designed official form that I have ever been faced with. Despite dealing with all this bureaucratic nonsense however the queues actually went down very quickly and when it was our turn to be processed we were given our unique identity number which was theatrically stamped into our passports and waved through to where a supervisor checked them for a second time presumably to make sure it had been done properly by the first official.

Before travelling I had read some advice that said watch out for taxi drivers in Morocco who will gladly overcharge unsuspecting tourists. That is no different from anywhere else in the world of course but I was mindful of that and took the second piece of advice which said when arriving for the first time it was advisable to take a pre-booked shuttle service because finding places for the first time and in the dark can be difficult. At €30 it was a bit expensive but our driver, Abdul, was waiting for us as promised in the arrivals hall and he quickly loaded our bags and set off for the city just twenty kilometres away.

The traffic was mad and so was Abdul as he carved his way through the rush hour traffic coping brilliantly at roundabouts with the ludicrous French driving rule of priorité à droite where vehicles from the right always have priority at junctions and roundabouts and which was evidently still the norm here even though the French themselves have seen the sense of virtually abandoning it in their own country. There was no real lane discipline that I could make out with drivers simply filling any available space that opened up in front of them and the thirty minute journey was one extended game of ‘chance’ where drivers simply waited to see whose nerve would fold and who would yield first. We flashed past motorbikes and donkeys pulling wooden carts, pushbikes and pedestrians and at one point even encountered a camel train.

As he drove he pointed out the tourist must-see sites along the way and then took us through a narrow gate into a busy road with small shops on one side and a high wall on the other that turned out to be a school building that would be overrun with children the next day. He parked the car and unloaded our bags and suddenly darted into a side road, no more than an alley really with an uneven surface with houses and shops along one side, then through a dog-leg turn and into a narrower lane and by now we were glad that we had taken the shuttle bus option because we would never have found this place by ourselves that’s for sure.

Another turn and then a dead end with a wooden door in the wall but nothing to indicate that this might be our destination. He rang the bell and someone inside approached and let us in. Here was a complete contrast to the medley of noise and confusion outside with an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity in a tiny eight room guest house with an inner courtyard and a swimming pool and tables set out for dinner. This was the Riad Layali and it was immediately charming and delightful. We had chosen well and we were introduced to the staff, served mint tea and allocated our rooms.

We filled in another official form which seemed to serve no purpose other than to confirm what we had said on the entry form but the staff insisted that it was important because they had to register us at the police station tomorrow.

We had selected a Riad for our accommodation because we wanted to stay inside the walls of the old towns rather than in the modern corporate hotels of the new city on the other side of the walls. The Layali looked perfect and had good guest reviews and we were not disappointed. We had excellent rooms on the first floor with internal balconies overlooking the pool, nicely furnished bedrooms and big bathrooms.

As it was our first night we had chosen to eat at the Riad this evening and in the courtyard a table had been prepared for us so after we had moved in we made our way to the table and settled down for evening meal. Being in an Arab Muslim country we had been concerned about the availability of beer and wine and had brought some with us just in case but, and I don’t want to sound like an alcoholic here, we were relieved to find that the Layali had a licence to serve drink so we ordered the local varieties and then had a first meal of Moroccan salad, chicken tagine and fruit desert. To be honest it was a bit disappointing and not nearly as good as we had had in Marrakech a year previously but we ate it anyway and washed it down with the beer and wine which tasted almost illicit being here in a Muslim country.

It had been a long day and there was a lot to do tomorrow so we didn’t stay up late but went to bed looking forward to a good night’s sleep. Unfortunately no one told us about the Adhan which is the Islamic call to prayer, recited by a man called the Muezzin at various times of the day and starting it seems in the middle of the night. In total the Adhan is called out in every mosque five times a day, traditionally from a minaret, summoning Muslims for mandatory prayers and the main purpose behind the multiple loud pronouncements of every mosque is to make available to everyone an easily understood summary of Islamic belief. In the old days this would have been done by shouting from the highest window by the man with the loudest voice (like Brian Blessed perhaps) but now it is done with the help of loudspeakers and although Kim was oblivious to it all there was no way that I could sleep through this.

France, Return to Carcassonne

2012-01-26T07:13:00.000Z

On the way down to breakfast the next morning, knowing how precious the French can be about their language, I attempted some simple communication with the receptionist about the arrangements for petit dejeuner. I am fairly certain that I selected the right words but graciously concede that I may not have had them in the correct order and this is an annoying thing about the French because they like you to try and speak their language, which is fair, but then ridicule you if you don’t get everything absolutely grammatically correct, which isn’t very encouraging. It’s a good job we don’t humiliate them when they mangle the English language with zis and zat and their inability to understand when and when not to use the letter H, but anyway, this woman looked at me as though I was from the very bottom of the evolutionary chain and asked with a large dollop of sarcasm if I would prefer it if she spoke English? Most Europeans are really pleased if you attempt a few words but the French really don’t like anything that they perceive as a corruption of their ‘beautiful language’ and I nodded meekly and said yes please.

It was overcast and much cooler this morning as we walked through the streets of Castres to the car park and we were glad to get in the car, turn the heater on and set off back to Carcassonne for our early afternoon flight as yesterday’s blistering afternoon temperature was fading away into a recent memory. I was fairly sure of the way to go but the Satnav lady decided that I would like to take the difficult scenic journey instead of the direct route and before we reached the main road at Mazamet she took me onto a minor road and into the Forêt de Montaud and soon we were climbing again along winding roads through a deciduous beech forest back into the Black Mountains.

I could have asked Kim to plot a more sensible alternative route using the paper map but the truth is that she isn’t too good with maps and this responsibility generally brings on a panic attack as he stares blankly at the multi coloured squiggles hopelessly looking for a clue and before she has even pinpointed our position it is generally too late because we will have missed the turning anyway. I shouldn’t really be critical because her inability with maps would be rather like me being asked to interpret a knitting pattern and she is very good at that.

I suppose this was going to save us a kilometre or two and it was quite picturesque but it was at the expense of our timetable and as we planned to drive into Carcassonne and to La Cité for a final coffee before going to the airport at a convenient junction I eventually overruled the Satnav and instead of driving deeper into the forest made for the direct route and the main highway.

We arrived in Carcassonne at ten o’clock which gave us an hour in the old fortress so we walked through the main gate and the narrow streets and made our way to the main square where it was too chilly to sit on the pavement so we were forced inside instead. While we sat with our final drink we reviewed our holiday and made a comparison between France and Spain to see if we could reach consensus on which we like best. We had enjoyed visiting this region of France but I have to say that we both agreed that we have a preference for Spain.

It isn’t fair to make that statement without some explanation so here are our reasons: First of all the centrepiece of every town and city in Spain, the Plaza Mayor, which is the first place we visit when we arrive somewhere new but there isn’t the equivalent in France; secondly, Tapas and the complimentary bowls of food in the bars and bodegas which the French don’t do and thirdly, staying with bars for a moment, the prices are much better in Spain because I can never understand the sky-high price of drinks in French bars and restaurants; fourthly I’m afraid it is back to the unpleasant subject of dog excrement because this really is a most disagreeable aspect of France.

Leaving the city we drove to the airport and returned the car and when I enquired everyone seemed to have forgotten about the refund that I was due on the rental overcharge and I had to remind the staff at the car hire office. I didn’t get the refund of course just a sort of vague promise that it would be sorted out and that was the best that I could hope for without making a scene or trashing the place.

Although the airport was tiny it had a high quality restaurant overlooking the runway and bearing in mind that the last place anyone would choose to go out to lunch in England would be Stansted or East Midlands Airports this seemed to be a popular place with local people who were arriving here by the tableful just for their lunch. As we sat by the window waiting for the plane to arrive the weather continued to deteriorate as grey sky muscled in from the west and brought some spots of rain and by the time we had passed through security and immigration control and were boarding the plane there was a downpour which gave everyone a thorough soaking as they queued to climb the aircraft steps.

Like the terminal building that struggled to accommodate all of the passengers the runway looked barely long enough to cope with a Boeing 737-800 and I noticed that the end of it curled up into an incline like you see on aircraft carriers presumably to give the plane a bit of last minute assistance in getting off the ground but the pilot got us up without incident and we quickly flew into the clouds and below us France was completely obscured from view.

Back home I contacted EconomyCarRentals.com and their customer services department told me that it would take at least twenty days to deal with the overcharging mix up but they would deal with it as soon as they could.

post script: It took nearly thirty days, several emails and a critical blog post to get it sorted but I did eventually receive my refund but I’ll think twice about using EconomyCarRentals.com ever again.

France, Castres and Holiday Reflections

2012-01-21T21:49:00.000Z

It was a lovely day now and the sun was shining as we left the hotel and first of all tranferred the car to an underground car park and then emerged from below ground into les Jardins do ‘’Evéché which were designed and laid out in the seventeenth century by the same landscape gardener who worked as part of the team on the gardens at the Palace of Versailles. The walk took us past the Hôtel de Ville and the Cathedral and down to the banks of the River Agout where we discovered the real gem of Castres.

Lining the river on the right bank were les Maisons sur l’Agout which is the old medieval riverside quarter where the old tanners’ and weavers’ half timbered houses with running balconies overhang the water and their colourful shutters and windows cast reflections on the gentle water of the river. It reminded me of Girona in Catalonia although this was much smaller in scale and rather more attractive. After we had taken more pictures than we really needed we walked over the river and along the front of these riverside houses where we could see that most of them were now restaurants and cafés with prices to match their enviable position. We did a second circuit of this old quarter and then walked into the heart of the city and the Place Jean Jaurès where there were cafés spilling out into the square adjacent to a statue of the famous French socialist politician at one end and an elaborate water fountain at the other.

We stopped for a drink here and as we sat in the hot sunshine we could see that this was a city in complete contrast to Béziers. It is the largest city in France without a motorway link which means that it is something of a relative backwater and where Béziers was in some parts grimy and uncared for Castres was smart, upmarket and busy. I also have to contradict myself here about the French and dog excrement because here the streets were immaculately clean and there was no doggy poop on the pavements at all.

After the short refreshment break we resumed our walking tour of the city and arrived at the Goya Museum at the Hôtel de Ville which has the largest collection of Spanish paintings in France except for the Louvre in Paris. Kim wasn’t keen on visiting a museum so she sat in the sunshine and I took a tour of the rooms which culminated in a special temporary exhibition of Goya’s prints titled ‘The Disasters of War’ which were sketched as a protest against the violence of the 1808 Dos de Mayo Uprising, the subsequent Peninsular War of 1808–14 and the setbacks to the liberal cause following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814. I found this rather surprising because the prints essentially set out scenes of atrocities, starvation, degradation and humiliation carried out by the invading French army against the Spanish people.

Our next task was to select a restaurant for later so we walked through the main square again and through some more medieval streets with authentic buildings and examined the menus of the three recommendations made by the hotel. We quickly made our decision before going back to the square for a second drink before returning again to the riverside where we anticipated that the position of the sun would now be perfect for more reflection pictures – and we were right!

The Hotel Europe turned out to be an excellent choice, a quirky place with an eclectic mix of furnishings and rooms. Ours was on the fourth floor up a creaky wooden staircase and through the heart of an old medieval building. We spent some time in the room and then prepared to return to our chosen restaurant. I really wanted an authentic meal so despite my squeamishness about the way it is produced and knowing that my vegetarian daughter would never approve or understand, I started with Fois Gras and for main course selected a Cassoulet.

The last time I had a Cassoulet was in a French restaurant in Baden-Baden in Germany and the beans resulted in an explosive and unfortunate intestinal reaction but I thought I would take a chance and try this regional dish in the region where it originates from. It was rather nice but a bit expensive and I cannot really understand why a few beans, a duck leg and a Toulouse sausage should cost nearly €20!

We enjoyed our meal, it was the best of the holiday and when we had paid up and left we wandered along the river for the final time before returning to the hotel for our final night in France for this time.

France, French Icons – Madame Liberty and McDonalds

2012-01-18T09:58:00.000Z

After breakfast at the Hotel des Poetes we walked into Béziers on a rather chilly morning to visit the market hall which had been closed the day before. It was a typical French town market hall next to the Hôtel de Ville in the centre of the city and this early hour it was not yet particularly busy. Our last market visit had been to the Varvakios Agorain Athens which had been a delightfully chaotic affair but this was much more orderly and the stalls were laid out to perfection much like the one in La Rochelle which we had visited a couple of years before. We couldn’t realistically buy anything of course and take it back in our hand luggage so we stayed just long enough to get our ‘market fix’ and then we returned to check out of the hotel.

I wasn’t looking forward particularly to my next challenge but I surprised myself and today I managed to make a much better job of getting the hire car out of the garage and was relieved to get out onto the street without ripping off a bumper or putting a crease down the side and we waved goodbye to the patron and set off on our sixty kilometre journey to Castres.

For the first twenty-five kilometres there was nothing very special about the journey as we motored across unremarkable landscape puntuated with a few untidy villages under a disappointing leaden grey sky but then the situation began to improve as we started to approach the Languedoc National Park and we drove through vineyards with leaves curling and turning to brown, their job completed for this year and then we started to climb and the road swooped through forests of deciduous trees which at this altitude were adorned with golden and russet leaves and we climbed still further to over a thousand metres and left the deciduous trees behind and entered the conifer forests of the higher elevations, the cloud gave way to brilliant sunshine and blue sky and it all became very picturesque.

At the top of the climb we went through the charming town of St Pons-de-Thomieres and as we sat in the mid morning traffic we drove past the Hôtel de Ville and in the courtyard there was a magnificent statue of Madame Liberty, the traditional female embodiment of the French Republic with her ample thrusting bosom unashamedly thrusting out and exposed to all. Madame Liberty represents the spirit of the French Revolution (various revolutions actually, 1789, 1830, 1848, 1968) and I have always thought how magnificent it would be if England could have a big breasted busty national symbol instead of the frumpy Britannia! It’s an interesting fact however that when the French built the Statue of Liberty for the USA they made sure that she was more discreetly attired! The French are proud of Madame Liberty who can be found in most French towns alongside the inevitable Place de la Revolution and the Place de la Republique an interesting contrast to the UK where I am yet to find a ‘Constitutional Monarchy Square’!

We didn’t stop in St Pons-de-Thomieres but carried on towards Mazamet where a by-pass took us around the centre and through the ubiquitous edge of town shopping malls which are a disagreeable feature of most French urbanisations as everywhere it is almost certain that the approach to any historic town or city must now pass through a collection of supermarkets and fast food restaurants. And this is another curious feature of France because every town we drove through had countdown signposts and specific directions to the nearest McDonalds restaurant as though the French need the constant reassurance that somewhere nearby is a set of Golden Arches. The poor French. There they were, with their low-rent bistros serving brie-filled crepes, soupe a l’oignon and coq au vin when all the populace really wanted was rectangular food-like objects that taste vaguely of chicken, and a side of dipping sauce

Well, actually it turns out to be not so curious because even though they maintain that they despise the concept of the fast food chain an awful lot of French people do eat there. Across France there are nearly twelve hundred restaurants (restaurants?)and in Paris alone there are almost seventy, with even more dotted around the outer suburbs. That’s much the same as London, but with only a third of the population. McDonald’s, or “macdoh” as it is known, is France’s guilty secret. In 2007 the chain’s French revenues increased by eleven per cent to €3 billion. That’s more than it generates in Britain and in terms of profit, France is second only to the United States itself. It is now so firmly a part of French culture that the menu includes McBaguette and Croque McDo and in 2009 McDonald’s reached a deal with the French museum, the Louvre, to open a McDonald’s restaurant and McCafé on its premises by their underground entrance.

It didn’t take long to drive the last few kilometres into Castres and we found the Hotel de L’Europe without any difficulty at all and after we had checked in and deposited our bags we set out to walk around and discover the city.

France, Béziers and The Origin of Faeces

2012-01-15T12:10:00.000Z

It was quite a steep and demanding climb up from the river L’Orb to the Cathedral St. Nazaire which took us through the narrow streets of the old quarter which except for electricity, mobile phones and satellite dishes probably hasn’t changed a great deal since the days of the French Revolution. The Cathedral is one of the largest and most important in the region but sadly it was closed right now for lunch so we had to make do with the sweeping views from underneath its Gothic exterior across the meadows and woodland on the other side of the river bathed in light swirling mists all the way to the Montagne Noire (Black Mountains) in the Languedoc National Park away to the west.

Behind the Cathedral and in the streets running off the Place de la Revolution we found the restaurants that it would have been nice to come across the previous evening so we checked the menus and the prices for later and having found one that we both liked agreed that we return later. We left the old quarter and walked to the modern centre of Béziers with the shopping streets flanked on all sides by tall handsome buildings with iron balustrades and balconies rather in the Catalan style. We stopped for a while in an expansive square and had a drink in the hot sunshine and watched local people going about their business and then we walked on.

Béziers is a member of ‘The Most Ancient European Towns Network’ which is a group of the oldest cities in Europe in a sort of exclusive twin-town arrangement. It was founded in 1994 with the aim of addressing common issues within the towns, such as archaeological research, tourism and heritage. The members include Argos (Greece), Béziers (France), Cadiz (Spain), Colchester (United Kingdom), Cork (Ireland), Évora (Portugal), Maastricht (Netherlands), Roskilde (Denmark), Tongeren (Belgium) and Worms (Germany).

I wonder if, when they get together, they talk about dog mess because although Béziers is a nice city, like a lot of other places in France it really has a serious problem with canine excrement! I assure you that I am not exaggerating here but literally every few metres along the footpaths we came across little piles of dog poop. It is estimated that France has nearly nine million pet dogs and as a general rule the owners couldn’t give a frog’s leg where little Fido drops his load and they would no more think about clearing it up than they would consider drinking Californian red wine or standing in line at a bus queue.

Occasionally we saw evidence of doggie doo victims – an initial large skid mark at the source of the unfortunate event and then a pattern of diminishing patches where the victim has tried to remove the obnoxious filth from their shoe. Avoiding it is a chore but it’s easy to know when you have stood in it – it could be a slip and a slide and a sprained ankle, it might be a gasp from a passer-by as they clasp a hand over their face or, if neither of these, it is almost certainly going to be the malodrous smell that is released. This certainly explained why lots of families in Béziers seemed to keep their shoes outside on the balconies because next to stepping in nuclear waste tredding in dog waste is one of the most unpleasant accidents of all as the foot comes down and like a faeces fondant the hard crust breaks and the smelly interior oozes out and fills the tread in the soul of the shoe!

You have certainly got to have your wits about you in Béziers that’s for sure if you are not going to spoil the sightseeing walk with a smelly accident. For the most part the art of safe passage is a subconscious affair – the eyes briefly scan downwards taking in the next six or seven metres of pavement in front, and then you can walk forwards in moderate confidence before the process starts again. One thing that you definitely don’t want to do on an Autumn day like this one however is walk through or kick the fallen leaves because there is no way of telling what obnoxious filth lies beneath.

It was still quite early when we returned to the Hotel and Kim had had enough of walking even after a short break and a glass of wine declined my invitation to go back out into the city again. I thought that there may still be things to see so I left her resting and went first to the Park des Poetes which was glorious now, bathed in late afternoon sunshine perfectly accentuating the colours of Autumn. In a prominent position in the park was a monument to another of Béziers’ famous, Jean Moulin, one of the heroes of the French Resistance in the Second World War and then I left and walked along Allées Paul Riquet, turned right at the statue and walked for about a kilometre to the crimson bull ring which was closed now for the season and was undergoing a refurbishment. To be honest, Kim made a good decision here because Béziers is never going to get into my personal top ten of favourite cities and having seen the arena I returned directly to the hotel.

In the evening we walked back into the city and went to the restaurant that we had picked out earlier where we had a nice but unexceptional meal before walking back to the room for the final night in the city.

France, The Canal du Midi

2012-01-13T07:19:00.000Z

We planned to stay in Beziers today, partly because it seemed good manners to spend some time there rather than dash off elsewhere and partly because I didn’t relish the prospect of reversing the Citroën out of the garage again. So, after another good breakfast we left the hotel and walked through the Park des Poetes which is a lovely oasis of green space with water features, wildlife and winding paths past statues and fountains. We strolled through and out of the park and then an untidy part of the town and underneath the railway line down towards the River L’Orb and the Canal du Midi which is one of the engineering marvels of France.

The idea of creating a waterway as a shortcut between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea had captured the imagination of successive French Kings and governments since Roman times. The regional route overland was slow, uncomfortable and haunted by bandits; the three thousand kilometre passage by sea took at least a month and was also dangerous as ships negotiating the Spanish coast dodged storms and Barbary pirates to pass through the Strait of Gibraltar.

In 1516, King François I invited Leonardo da Vinci to France to carry out a survey of a possible route, but this project was even beyond the great man and was abandoned because of the apparent impossibility of finding a source of water to fill any canal. Finally in the second half of the seventeenth century Paul Riquet had the vision and the courage to finance and complete the project. When finished it boasted ninety-one locks, three hundred and twenty-eight bridges bridges, dams and tunnels, and forty viaducts. In its citation and admission to the list of World Heritage Sites, UNESCO said the canal had “provided the model for the flowering of technology that led directly to the Industrial Revolution and the modern technological age”.

We arrived at the Port Neuf, a basin providing overnight stopping facilities and then walked along the towpath and crossed the river over a later viaduct addition, the longest on the entire canal and built in the nineteenth century to avoid having to use an unpredictable and dangerous stretch of the river. We were intending to walk to the Fonserannes Locks which are the third most popular tourist destination in Languedoc-Roussillon, after the Pont du Gard in Nîmes and the city of Carcassonne. It was about a kilometre and a half and it took us forty minutes to arrive at the car park adjacent to the eight staircase lock which descends just over twenty metres in three hundred rather like a Giant’s staircase.

The locks are considered to be a huge engineering achievement because they had to be cut from solid rock, and descended a hillside with an inconsistent gradient. All of the locks had to contain the same volume of water, but could not have precisely the same shape but nontheless they were built successfully without need of subsequent major repair. Suprisingly perhaps, this amazing piece of engineering was subcontracted out to two illiterate brothers, the Medhailes, and was built by a workforce composed mainly of women.

It wasn’t too busy today with just a few visitors and a handful of barges waiting patiently for the next scheduled operation of the locks. It was quite interesting but I have to say that if this is the third most visited tourist attraction in Languedoc-Roussillon then the region must be short of visitor attractions and I’m not sure that I believe that claim. From the top lock there was a glorious view across the river valley towards Beziers but we turned our back on that and continued to walk along the tree lined canal where two-hundred year old Plane trees with decorative mottled bark lean across the water, their heavy foliage forming an impenetrable canopy of heavily dappled olive-green shade.

The trees have been a feature of the eastern half of the canal from Toulouse to Sète since they were first planted in the 1830s. Their triple purpose was to strengthen the banks, reduce water evaporation by the strong Midi sun and shade the canal boats, which originally transported delicate products like wine and fabrics. But in 2005 disaster struck and for the past six years a fungus has been attacking the trees, spreading along the waterway and defying all attempts to cure or control it. Tree specialists have concluded that it is almost certain all the planes will have to be chopped down, burned and replaced because the trees have been struck by an outbreak of a virulent, incurable microscopic fungus which spreads through the roots and is thought to have first reached France with American GIs in the Second-World-War whose sycamore ammunition boxes were infected. We counted ourselves lucky to have seen these magnificent trees at this time because in a couple of years or so they may well be gone.

After a while we walked back, stopping briefly along the way at a café beside the locks and then we returned to Beziers via a redundant basin called the Chemin du Quai du Port Notre Dame that was once a thriving commercial part of the city lined with warehouses and store rooms but is now a derelict, run down and sadly neglected part of the canal with stagnant water, rotting quaysides and overgrown towpaths that will never be used again.

Having followed this alternative route back from the Fonserannes Locks we were unsure of our location, we were heading towards the thirteenth century Cathedral of Saint Nazaire but we had to cross some busy roads and walk through some poor and run down streets before crossing L’Orb over the Pont Vieux which is the oldest bridge in the city across the river and making our way back to the city.

France, The Camargue

2012-01-11T15:57:00.000Z

So we sat in the warm sunshine finished our drinks and then returned to the car, left Arles and made our way into the Camargue.

The Camargue is a special place not only in France but in all of Europe and it is another of those places that I have always wanted to see. It is a triangular area lying on the coast between the Languedoc-Roussillon and Provence and is a river delta where the River Rhône meets the sea – a marshy island bounded by two branches of the Rhône and the Mediterranean. With an area of nearly a thousand square kilometres the Camargue is western Europe’s largest river delta, with exceptional biological diversity and home to unique breeds of Camargue Horses and Camargue Bulls and to more than four hundred species of birds including Pink Flamingos. As well as all this wildlife it is always associated for me with Manitas de Plata and the Gypsy Kings.

We were only on the western edge of the park and inland and some way from the lagoons and the real heart of the Camargue but even here it was possible to appreciate the place for its unique qualities. The first thing we noticed was that for us there was a similarity with the south of Lincolnshire and the Wash Estuary, where we had once lived, flat featureless salt marshes, shallow lagoons and hectares of wetlands, drainage dykes lined with reeds, rice fields and wide open fields swarming with birds. We saw more flamingos stalking about, always a surprising cloud of pink in an overwhelming green landscape and then we saw the famous white wild horses, the Camarguais in the fields on either side of us and, just once or twice, the black bulls that are bred in feral conditions and reared for bullfighting in both France and Spain.

This was a drive across an empty and in places lonely route and I began to get concerned about the French driving rule of priorite à droite which can sometimes still persist in rural areas. This is the stupidest and most dangerous driving rule in all of Europe and is a French law that states that a vehicle coming from the right has the right of way even if they are joining a main highway from a farm track or a bridle path. It is so stupid that the French themselves have mostly abandoned it (except at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris) but in remote areas it is still a good idea to watch out for farmers in combine harvesters and pensioners in old 2CVs that continue to think that the rule is sensible and that it still applies.

It took about ninety minutes to cross the wetlands of the Camargue without incident and soon we were out and following the coast road back to Montpellier passing by La Grand-Motte, a purpose built seaside resort constructed in the 1960s and is a mass (or mess, depending on your point of view) of gleaming concrete and steel in startling contrast to the region that we had just left behind us. We skirted around it without stopping and then picked up the motorway which got us back quickly to Beziers just before six o’clock.

Our plan was to take a stroll around the city before it got dark to see if we could find a nice restaurant for later. We wanted to walk through the Park des Poetes but it closed at six and the park attendant was securing the gates so we walked instead in the opposite direction along the tree lined boulevard Allées Paul Riquet towards the city centre

Paul Riquet is the most famous son of Beziers, he was a wealthy salt tax collector in the reign of Louis VIV and in 1654 he drew up a plan for the Canal du Midi. At the peak of the construction, twelve thousand engineers and labourers people were employed in constructing the canal which was built in just fifteen years at a cost of more than fifteen million livres, a huge sum that Riquet financed personally, almost bankrupting himself and his family in the process. He died six months before the final stretch of the canal was completed in 1681. We thought we might go and see the canal tomorrow morning.

In this part of the city there weren’t a lot of restaurant options Kim wanted to explore further but I overruled her and this was a mistake because we were to discover tomorrow that there were more choices closer to the Cathedral quarter so we hoped that last night’s restaurant might open later and that we would return there. It started to cool quickly now as the streets, bounded with three and four storey buildings on each side, slipped first into shade and then into deep shadow. Beziers was completely different to Arles with an edginess that made us feel uncomfortable wandering through the narrow streets so we returned to the hotel, drank wine and watched French Television before we went out again later.

Unfortunately the simple restaurant that we had liked last night was closed this evening so this left us with only one other choice which Kim was unsure of. But it was warm enough to sit outside on the pavement even in shirt sleeves and to my relief we enjoyed a pleasant meal at a reasonable price and we made our plans for sightseeing in Beziers the next day.

France, Arles – Romans and Post-Impressionists

2012-01-09T19:33:00.001Z

As it turned out, quite by chance we had parked in a very convenient spot indeed and it was only a couple of hundred metres to the very centre of the ancient Roman city. We walked up some steps through a public park and immediately before us we could see the Roman amphitheatre and as there was a nice café with a terrace next to it with a good view we stopped for a while and sat in the sun and had a drink.

We had chosen to visit Arles for two main reasons, its Roman heritage and the painter Vincent Van Gogh. The city has a long history, and was of considerable prominence as a principal Roman Province and the Roman and Romanesque Monuments of the city were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1981. The Dutch post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh lived in Arles in from 1888 to 1889 and produced over three hundred paintings and drawings during his time there – that’s a lot of paintings in only a short time.

This was out fourth Roman Amphitheatre this year after Pula in Croatia in March, Mérida in Spain in April and the Coliseum itself in Rome in June and there is something majestic about them which just fascinates me. No one can be absolutely sure about which was the largest in terms of capacity and it is generally agreed that this was the Coliseum but we can be more certain about physical size and there was a plaque nearby that claimed that this was the twelfth largest in the Roman Empire. Interestingly using this criteria the plaque only listed the Coliseum as second largest but it’s like I have always said size isn’t the most important thing!

It didn’t matter at all that this might only be the twelfth largest because it is certainly one of the best looking and the works that have been taking place for over one hundred years or so have made an excellent job of the restoration. In that time the city has torn down houses that had been built inside the arena and demolished structures that had been built around and joined on to its perimeter and the gleaming white structure now stands in a natural bowl surrounded by tasteful up-market cafés and bars and tourist shops.

After we had walked around the outside and felt the imposing presence of the towering walls we paid our admission and went inside into the arena which is in use again today and stages concerts and bull fighting. Provençal-style bullfights are conducted in the amphitheatre in which the bull is not killed but rather a team of brave or foolish men who attempt to remove a rosette from the bull’s horn without getting injured. In addition to this every Easter and on the first weekend of September Arles also holds Spanish-style bull fights and has reckless bull running in the streets.

We stayed awhile in the amphitheatre but there was more to see in Arles so after we left we wandered through the streets and down to the banks of the River Rhône, the second longest river in France after the Loire, and walked along the embankment where river cruisers were beginning to welcome guests on board for a journey north to Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Because of the river, Arles remained economically important for many years after the Romans left as a major port but the arrival of the railway in the nineteenth century eventually killed off much of the river trade, leading to the town becoming something of a backwater.

This made it an attractive destination for the painter Vincent van Gogh, who arrived there in February 1888. He was fascinated by the Provençal landscapes and many of his most famous paintings were completed there including The Night Cafe, the Yellow Room, Starry Night Over the Rhone, and L’Arlésienne. I like Van Gogh paintings and the tourist shops were full of prints and reproductions but I am not an art critic and have to confess that alongside those I find brilliant I find some that quite frankly are not so good (shock, horror). The sort of things that my children used to bring home from school, I’d say well done and give them words of patronising encouragement and then after they had gone to bed I’d sellotape it up inside a kitchen cupboard!

As we walked through the narrow streets and into the Place de la Republique, the Hôtel de Ville and the Cathedral I liked to imagine that we were walking in the footsteps of Vincent but the truth of course is, that like Mozart and Salzburg or Shakespeare and Southwalk, it is unlikely that, a hundred years later he would recognise very much about the place at all bearing in mind all of the restorations to the Roman antiquities and especially the fact that Allied bombing raids in 1944 destroyed the house where he lived, much of the rest of the city and the principal bridge across the river that he would have been familiar with.

Our circuitous walk brought us back to the amphitheatre and the Roman theatre which has also been extensively restored and after in the last two thousand years being a fortress, a Visigoth housing development and later a landfill site is now restored to its original intended purpose. We walked around the grounds and through the ancient relics that littered the gardens and then before we said goodbye to Arles we had a second drink in the café near the arena where Kim persuaded me not to drive to Nîmes and another amphitheatre but to take the coast road back across the Camargue instead. And here was me mistakenly thinking she likes Roman amphitheatres as much as I do!

France, Beziers to Setê to Arles

2012-01-07T10:02:00.000Z

After a long day previously we slept late in a dark room blacked out by tight electric shutters and it was well past nine o’clock before we went downstairs and had an exceptionally good breakfast. We were planning to drive to Arles today further east and there were a number of different options for the route so we debated these over our food but failed to come to any firm conclusions except that we would first of all go to Setê, a fishing port and holiday resort on the Mediterranean coast.

Before we could go anywhere we had to retrieve the car from the hotel garage around the corner and this was something I was not looking forward to. The basement garage was rather crooked with a difficult entrance/exit and lots of brick walls inside separating the parking spots and I was going to have to reverse out! Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a problem but I seem to have considerable trouble in reversing a left hand drive car. At home in the UK my natural tendency is to look through the back window over my left shoulder but this is unhelpful in a left hand drive because it is almost impossible to see anything and looking over my right shoulder I find curiously difficult. Needless to say it took me several attempts to manoeuvre the car out of this tight space and it brought on such a sweat that I needed the air conditioning on full blast to cool down.

As we drove out of Beziers and followed the road to Agde the sun retreated behind marble white clouds that looked like crazy paving in the sky but as we reached the coast and the road followed a narrow spit with water on both sides and a string of beaches along the Mediterranean coast the cloud was pushed away and by the time we arrived in Setê there were clear blue skies once more.

I’m not sure what we were expecting of Setê but what we found wasn’t really it. I suppose we thought we might find a charming Breton fishing village or a Cantabrian seaside port but Setê was much bigger than we had anticipated and it was busy too as the city was filling up with tourists and locals who were making their way to the harbour and the seafront for their sea food Sunday lunch and the waiters at the cafés and bistros were preparing the tables in undisguised anticipation.

We parked the car in an underground car park underneath the Canal du Midi and left it there hoping that it wouldn’t choose today to spring a leak. The Canal, which starts at Bordeaux on the Atlantic Coast, terminates here at the Mediterranean and back at street level we walked along the basin full of colourful boats and surrounded by pretty pastel coloured buildings over the wall-to-wall shops and restaurants that seemed to be elbowing each other aside in the competition for business.

It isn’t fair to make a judgement based on la stay of ess than an hour but we didn’t particularly enjoy Setê and we left after a short while, navigated out of the city and continued our drive to Arles. For some reason the Satnav seemed determined to avoid the motorway and keep us on the coast road and we were glad that it did because a short way out of Setê we passed a series of marshes and lagoons where flocks of vivid pink flamingos were trawling the water searching for their lunch.

The road took us along the coast towards Montpellier and eventually to a motorway but soon as we were past the city the Satnav was again insistent that we leave and rejoin the slower departmental roads. I ignored it and eventually we discovered that we had got the thing set to avoid tolls and sure enough after just a couple of kilometres we came to a queue at a toll plaza. It was only €5 and it was worth it because instead of a slow drive through all the towns and villages along the coast we now headed towards and past the city of Nîmes (where there was an option to return to later) and in less than half an hour later we had crossed into the Camargue National Park and were approaching Arles.

It was lunchtime and like Setê, Arles was also busy with motorists and pedestrians pushing their way through the hectic streets and as we crawled through it looked horribly as though we might have a parking problem but eventually we saw a spot on a pavement next to a park and as local people seemed to be happy to park somewhere that really looked as if they shouldn’t we were happy to trust our luck and join them. The sky was cloudless now and the temperature was climbing as we asked for directions to the old town and set out to see the sights.

France, Rugby World Cup Celebrations in Beziers

2012-01-04T08:21:00.001Z

After the refreshment break in Carassonne we walked around a little more but we were soon going over the same ground and revisiting streets from an hour or so before so in the late afternoon we left La Cité by the main drawbridge gate and walked back over the Pont Vieux to the car park because ahead of us we had a sixty-kilometre drive to the city of Beziers where we would be our base now for three nights.

On the edge of town was a modern shopping centre which I remembered because this was where the Hotel Ibis was that I stayed at in 2003 so we pulled in, found a Lidl supermarket for some wine and beer for later on then and fully provisioned we rejoined the main road. We avoided the direct route by motorway via Narbonne because although it was no doubt quicker this involved the unnecessary expense of toll fees and instead we took the departmental red road, the D11, which more or less followed the same route as the Canal du Midi all the way from Carcassonne to Beziers and we stopped a couple of times at convenient places along the way to take a look at this iconic French waterway. These tree-lined, meandering stretches of the Canal du Midi are of such perfect postcard beauty that it is easy to understand why that when naming it a world heritage site, UNESCO declared it not only “one of the most remarkable feats of civil engineering in modern times”, but a “work of art”.

We arrived in Beziers at six o’clock and the centre of the city was a fermenting vat of overflowing masculine celebration bursting with stale booze and testosterone and the reason for the singing and the processions of cars all blowing their horns and the occupants chanting, was that earlier today France had beaten Wales in the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand and would now be playing in the Final the following week.

Rugby Football is the national sport of the south of France, even more popular than soccer and everyone here was in party mood. In fact if you draw a line from La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast to the Swiss border at Geneva twenty-eight of France’s top thirty clubs fall below that line and the only other two are in Paris, which means they get to do a lot of travelling for away fixtures. At this particular time, in October 2011, Beziers were bottom of the second division (i.e. thirtieth out of thirty) but this wasn’t spoiling it for anyone tonight I can tell you!

We had a nice hotel close to the centre and after we had settled in and taken care of a bottle of wine we walked into the city which by nine o’clock was curiously subdued after the earlier festivities which now seemed to have burnt themselves out and it was with some difficulty that we found a restaurant that was still open. Eventually we found a quiet little place where the staff seemed pleased to have some customers and we enjoyed a simple meal and a carafe of house wine before strolling back under a star filled sky to the hotel des Poetes and our little room on the first floor.

France, Carcassonne and La Cité

2012-01-02T12:22:00.000Z

After I had familiarised myself with our temporary transport and we had loaded our bags in the back of the car we set off towards the city and concentrating now on driving on the correct side of the highway and following unfamiliar road signs I soon forgot about the car hire scam.

It took only a few minutes to arrive in the modern city of Carcassonne which seemed strangely quiet for a Saturday afternoon and after a few minutes of parking indecision found a spot with no charges just about five hundred metres from the main attraction and its medieval core, La Cité, a huge walled town that was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1997.

For the record France has thirty-seven World Heritage Sites, which is third most in Europe after Italy and Spain.

We were glad that we had parked in the city and not in the official visitor car parks not just because there was a parking charge there but because we now had to walk and across the Pont Vieux and the River Aude which was lined with trees that were just beginning their transformation into Autumn colours. This is the best pedestrian approach to La Cité because, set high up on a hill overlooking the river, Carcassonne’s ancient walled city is picture-book perfect and this fairytale collection of drawbridges, towers and atmospheric cobbled streets was reputedly the inspiration for Walt Disney’s ‘The Sleeping Beauty’. This may or may not be true but is also similar to the story of Cinderella’s castle in Segovia in Spain.

A stone statue of Dame Carcas stood at the drawbridge entrance to the city and again, whether she is fact or fiction, this is the legend of Carcassonne. When the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne stood before the gates of the city with his rampaging troops, the castle army existed of only one person, Madame Carcas. (Difficult to believe I agree, but I will carry on anyway). Somehow she managed to give the illusion that many men were still on the walls (rather like the movie ‘Home Alone’).

Charlemagne’s plan was to starve out the occupants of the castle and Dame Carcas, rumbling this, threw a pig over the wall, its belly filled with sweet corn to give the impression that it was well fed. Charlemagne was duped and falling for the deception that the castle was both well provisioned and bristling with angry soldiers packed up and left. On witnessing the retreat Madame Carcas triumphantly blew her horn and thus – Carcas sonne. Now this is almost certainly not true and is very similar to the story of the painted oxen during the Hohensalzburg Fortress in Salzburg in Austria but one thing that is true about Carcassonne is that it was used to portray Nottingham Castle in the Kevin Costner film ‘Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves’ and for anyone that has seen the real Nottingham Castle this requires no explanation why.

Carcassonne stood as a fortified city from as far back as Roman times until Napoleon removed it from the list of official national fortifications and it fell into such disrepair that in 1849 the French government decreed that it should be demolished. This prompted an immediate campaign to preserve it as a historical monument and in 1853 restoration work began under the direction of the architect Viollet-le-Duc who repaired the walls and the roofing on the towers and the ramparts. The restoration was strongly criticized during his lifetime for lack of authenticity because recently returning from work in the north of France, he made the error of using slates and restoring the roofs as pointed cones, where local practice was traditionally of tile roofing and low slopes but it is exactly this feature of his restoration that has made Carcassonne such a magical place.

After walking around the outside of the walls we entered the city by a minor entrance and were transported into an alternative world of narrow streets and cobbled alleyways. we were immediately below the flying buttresses and the grotesque gargoyles of the St Nazaire Cathedral, which is a nineteenth century replacement for the original building but still manages to give a realistic medieval impression. We walked around the corkscrew streets and explored the battlements but at €16 each declined to take the Chateaux tour. There are rather too many shops in Carcassonne for my liking but we looked in one or two and puffed our cheeks out in disbelief at the prices and then we compared menu cards in the bars before selecting one that was consistent with our budget where we stopped for a drink.

France, Customer Service Improvement and a Car Hire Scam

2011-12-28T07:57:00.002Z

Earlier in the year we had flown from Stansted Airport to Pula in Croatia and the grotesque behaviour and the appalling lack of manners shown by the airport security staff prompted me to write to the airport to make a formal complaint when we got back home. I often threaten to make complaints and then calm down and forget all about it but not this time. Because of the complete contempt for the customer and the apparent determination to be as rude and ignorant as possible to passengers being processed through the security lines I imagine that quite a lot of other people might have complained as well and I would like to think that all of those complaints collectively did some good because on this occasion there was a completely different experience.

The man that checked the boarding pass actually smiled and wished us a pleasant flight, the woman at the scanning machine purred instead of snarled as she asked for our liquids and furthermore didn’t demand the transfer to a £1 Stansted plastic bag and the man who does the frisking when I set the alarm off actually apologised for the inconvenience of having to carry out the body search. I hope it wasn’t just an extraordinary fluke and that the airport is paying more attention to improving customer service skills and if they are then I for one will say (and I really didn’t think that I ever would) ‘well done Stansted Airport’ it was so much nicer being treated like a human being!

This was my second Ryanair flight to Carcassonne in the south of France as I had been there previously in November 2003 on genuine 1p fares and on that flight I got to sit in a row of seats in front of a television celebrity. My daughter Sally noticed him first and told me that the person behind was the man in the Vauxhall Zafira adverts, I turned and looked and agreed that it certainly looked like him but I argued that it couldn’t possibly be but then I heard him speak to his wife in that perpetually silly comedy voice of his and there was no mistaking that it was indeed Griff Rhys Jones.

Carcassonne is not a big place so we saw Griff several times the next day when we were sightseeing at the castle and the day after that when we sheltering from the rain in an unusually expensive restaurant for me and we had now bumped into each other so many times that he was beginning to recognise me. It was a cosy place with not a lot of room between the tables and he was sitting right next to me. As we had already been on nodding to each other terms for forty-eight hours it seemed rude not to speak so I said hello and we lamented the weather and then, not sure what to say next to a television celebrity, I stupidly asked him what he was doing on a 1p Ryanair flight. He thought about it and then simply said ‘Well, why not?’ and I think that was just about the perfect response.

We were staying in Carcassonne for two nights but we didn’t see him in the evenings because we were in a cut-price Ibis hotel on an edge of town shopping centre and I guess he was staying in a swanky hotel in La Cité because I could think of a lot of reasons why he wouldn’t have wanted to stay at the Ibis regardless of the price. We did see him again on the way back though because he flew back to the UK on the same flight as us.

I didn’t spot anybody famous on this occasion and after the short ninety minute flight we landed at the tiny municipal airport and after clearing customs found the car hire offices. I had booked a car with EconomyCarRentals.com and I was satisfied with the price I was paying but as so often with car rental companies there was going to be a problem. The girl at the National car rental office went through our paperwork and then charged me €65 more than the quoted price. I pointed this out and she explained that this was the correct price and that EconomyCarRentals.com were quoting incorrect rates and that as it was their fault that I could rest assured that they (EconomyCarRentals.com) would refund the difference and that they (National) would arrange for this to be done.

I have been ripped off by car hire companies before so I was not very confident about this but there was nothing that I could do except turn down the car which would have left us with an even bigger problem so I reluctantly agreed to a car hire scam that I hadn’t been the victim of before, took possession of the keys and complained about this all the way to the silver Citroen Picasso that was waiting for us in the car park baking in the warm midday sun.

Carcassonne has changed in eight years – for some reason they have removed the grass and replaced it with limestone chippings – a mistake in my opinion!

Istria 2011, Markets and Fortresses

2011-12-23T16:20:00.001Z

It was our final morning but today we managed to sleep through the church bells until about eight o’clock and breakfast time and after a leisurely first meal of the day we packed and booked out of the hotel.

We had an early afternoon flight so that gave us the opportunity to drive back to Pula and finish off the sightseeing that we hadn’t yet managed and a final lunch at Orfej restaurant.

After we arrived we parked in the same car park and went out into the town to visit the market that was close by. There was an outside area with rows of colourful pitches with stalls straining under the weight of fruit and vegetables all presented for purchase in an untidy but satisfying way but the best part of the market was the covered building constructed of iron and glass which housed the butchers and the delicatessens and best of all the fishmongers.

Now I always thought that fish was in short or declining supply but you wouldn’t have thought so here. European Union fishing regulations as well as the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (a division of the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations consisting of twenty-four counties that either border the Mediterranean Sea or just happen to fish there) do not seem to have had a serious impact on the availability of marine produce in Pula.

The agreed fishing quotas must be very generous indeed because this fish market looked as though someone had sucked up the entire seabed and delivered it right here at this spot. On closer examination of the produce however it soon becomes clear why we have to put up with stock shortages whilst the Croatians, and most of the rest of Europe as well, have such an abundance of choice, we are just far too fussy and our preference for fish is restricted to two or three species that we have fished into a crisis of extinction whilst the Europeans will eat a much greater variety of sea food. We like to buy our fish in little blue polystyrene trays and definitely without heads or tails and ready for the frying pan but here the slabs were brimming with fish so fresh some of it was still alive and flapping about and winking at us as we inspected it.

Excuse me a recollection here but this illustrates my point perfectly; once on holiday with my mother and presented with a menu that included a cod dish she actually asked the waiter if it was served with its head still attached! These things can be two metres long for goodness sake!

There were crabs still frothing at the mouth and octopus with tentacles still writhing and with an eye open daring anyone to buy it and take it home and tackle preparation for cooking. The colours were spectacular too, sparkling silver, gleaming green and radiant reds and trays and trays of vivid orange scampi and other intriguing and colourful crustaceans. One of my personal favourites was some unpleasant looking spiny specimens, which are used as a principal ingredient in a Croatian fish stew called Brodet.

In a separate part of the indoor market the butchers presented their abundant produce in display cabinets and negotiated with customers on cuts and joints for purchase, there were cheese and dairy stalls and fresh pasta and other local delicacies. What I liked was the smell of the whole place. In England supermarkets have no smell at all because everything is over-packaged and presented in plastic trays and vacuum packed containers, which makes shopping a wholly unsatisfactory and sanitised affair.

After the market we made our way to the highest part of the city to the Venetian fortress. We had the place practically to ourselves and we wandered around the battlements and enjoyed the views of the old town and the port that sat below this elevated position. We recognised the stone of course because this had come directly from the amphitheatre that we had visited a couple of days ago. The Museum was interesting but largely unremarkable but there were maritime displays that were close enough to touch and I enjoyed picking up the old ships tools that seemed far too heavy and crude to be of much use in the modern high-tech world.

There was one very interesting room full of exhibits from old ships that you were not allowed to touch and there was adequate signage to make this clear. On a previous visit to Pula, true to form, Kim ignored these precise visitor instructions and just had to reach out and investigate a jar of ships surgeon’s dried semen (I kid you not!). This set an alarm sounding and the immediate appearance of a member of the castle staff to investigate just what we had been up to. I thought that this was very amusing and well worth a photographic memory so I arranged an appropriate pose and was ready to capture the moment when Kim decided to give the moment a touch of authenticity by breaking the alarm beam for a second time. What the…..? Out scuttled the attendant again and this time around I could sense that she didn’t find it so amusing, she was clearly losing her patience so the only sensible thing to do was to leave before Kim broke any more ‘do not touch’ museum rules.

There were no accidents this time and when we had seen all that there was to see we made our way down to the main square for a final drink in the sunshine and then a short walk to the Orfej where we were not disappointed by the final meal that we had been promising ourselves and after an excellent lunch we made our way back to the car and then a short drive to the airport for our return flight.

It had been an excellent four days and we had enjoyed Croatia and Istria. We especially liked Pula and Rovinj, the Konoba Ferral and the Café Orfej, the boat ride with dolphins but most of all we had been delighted to be staying at the hotel Villeta Phasiana and the lovely fishing village of Fažana.

Istria 2011, Romans and Fascists

2011-12-22T12:47:00.000Z

It was only mid afternoon and as we had just about exhausted all that there was to do in Fažana without going over the same ground we decided to return to Pula for the afternoon.

Having visited the primary tourist attraction of the city on the first day we walked back to the town centre to see what else we could discover. The town had a slightly uncared for feel with many buildings having a lack of attention to detail in the finishings with drab concrete facades, exposed pipe work and cables that had not been quite tidied up and the first impression was that, compared to Rovinj, this place was a bit shabby and definitely still quite short of money. Looking up we could see bits of masonry looking precariously dislodged and practically disconnected from the buildings and I was sure that there was always an imminent danger of being hit on the head so did my best to make sure that we walked wherever possible in the middle of the street. There were quite a few shops but not many shoppers and the streets were curiously quiet.

We found the Temple of Romae and Augustus in the main town square and the Arch of Sergii, which are some of the town’s best preserved Roman structures and we also came across Agrapinina’s house, which sadly is not. I don’t think Agrapinina was anyone especially important and the remains of her house has been discovered in what is the back yard and garage area of a block of modern apartments. Such a shame really because these looked quite interesting but they were full of litter and there was even some graffiti on the walls. I suppose this is why people like Lord Elgin decide to bring ancient artefacts back to Britain if they are found unloved and uncared for in their original settings.

Instead we walked for a while along what has to be said was a disappointing sea front not least because it was completely devoid of bars for a refreshment stopover. I suppose this is to be expected of course because Pula is not a tourist marina but a fully working shipyard with a lot of activity breaking down old ocean going tankers that were so large there huge bulk overshadowed the adjoining town. In the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire this was a principal naval base that I am sure would have been familiar to Captain Von Trapp before he was pensioned off and sent off to Salzburg.

In a more modern part of the city we chanced across a pleasant little square with a water fountain and lined with nineteenth century buildings that had once been the bourgeois commercial centre at the height of the Austrian Empire. In this square was the City Post Office which was a much later twentieth century addition built in 1933 and although unremarkable from the outside had hidden inside a magnificent Gaudi like spiral staircase which rose majestically from the ground floor to the top of the building in an extravagant scarlet sweep that oozed style and grandeur.

The building was designed by Angiolo Mazzoni del Grande who was the chief architect for the Ministry of Communications and for the State Railways under the Mussolini regime in Italy. He was one of the most outstanding Italian architects of the modern period and was responsible for the design of many public buildings and railway stations across Italy that were characteristic of the Fascist building boom. It was an unusual discovery and it would be much better housed in a more important building but this was a hidden gem of Pula and I am glad that we found it.

As the afternoon slipped away we found ourselves back in the main square where we stopped for a drink on the way back to the car and then we left Pula, on this occasion finding the correct route out of town without taking the unnecessary detour and in fifteen minutes we were back at the Konoba Ferral. Ferral, we learned means one of those lights that fishing boats have to attract the fish and in terms of attracting things it certainly worked with us.

Later, after Kim had taken some final magic camera sunset pictures we assembled there again and while we sat there in shirt sleeves a German couple, wrapped up for winter, correctly identified us as English and mad. Actually it wasn’t that cold at all but we did take the precaution of eating inside again. Once more the food was excellent and we enjoyed a sociable meal with a helpful and attentive waiter who guided us expertly through the menu.

It was our last night in Fažana so before we returned to the hotel we took a final night time walk around the harbour and the square. We had enjoyed this place and it would be disappointing to leave in the morning.

Istria 2011, A Boat Ride With Dolphins

2011-12-21T10:40:00.000Z

The next morning the church bells woke me again at six o’clock and after a good night’s sleep I found it impossible to snooze away another hour or so, so knowing that Micky is an early riser and would probably be wandering about the village I decided to dress and go and see if I could find him. There was no sign of him in the streets or the coffee bars and it turned out that just like me the day before he was on early morning shopping mission to buy a new travel kettle to replace the one that Sue and Christine had somehow managed to blow up!

Although it was early there was quite a lot of activity preparing for the day as shops opened, cafés began to set out their tables and chairs and a few people were shuffling towards the bars for a first cup of coffee. In the back streets there were display boards which explained the history and the heritage of the little village which has a fragile economy based on the sea and fishing. Unable to find Micky I walked around the water and out along the harbour wall and all the while the sun was getting higher and warmer and it looked like another good day in prospect.

It was the day of the boat trip but that wasn’t until midday so after breakfast we set off on another walk out of the village but this time in a northerly direction. Not far out of the village we passed through shady pine woods that fringed the stony beach and then came across a camp site that was being prepared for summer visitors and beyond that was an abandoned holiday camp complex where the chalets were in a state of terminal disrepair and with a feel of the 1970s about it I think the kindest thing would be to demolish it entirely.

There was time for a drink now before the boat trip so we sat at our favourite bar and debated whether we had appropriate clothes for a sea going adventure and even though it was warm and the sun was shining we went in turn to the hotel to get some extra layers just in case.

We met Alex as arranged at twelve o’clock and he explained that there would be a short delay as the Capitan (this is how he described the owner of the boat) had been dissatisfied with the quality of last night’s fish catch in Fažana and had had to go to the fish market in Pula to get satisfactory supplies for lunch. We fully understood that because we had seen the catch coming ashore late last night and believe me it was not very impressive!

While we waited Alex explained that he didn’t think he could honour the five for four deal after all but we ignored him and Micky was especially determined that either he would or he would be going over the side later. It turned out to be quite a long wait because having gone to Pula to buy the fish the Capitan then had to cook it and prepare the salad to go with it and then we he finally arrived he had to go to the petrol station to get some fuel but finally after an hour delay we were finally on the boat and heading out to sea.

The boat trip was to be a circumnavigation of the island of Brujini and a scattering of smaller islands in a mini archipelago and as we got closer Alex passed round the home made wine served from a coke bottle and started to begin a narrative of the sights. Brujini was the holiday home of the Yugoslavian President Marshall Tito and today is used by the President of Croatia. On account of this there was a lot of security and a few soldiers but they seemed quite relaxed so I don’t think he was there today.

Alex pointed out the golf course, the President’s mansion, the zoo where a couple of elephants live (apparently) and the hunting grounds all well stocked with game. To be honest after half an hour or so it all became a bit tedious because, quite frankly, one island looked very much like another and the wind was getting stronger and it was beginning to get chilly.

Suddenly however the tedium was broken when Christine spotted something in the water that turned out to be a dolphin and encouraged by the sighting the Capitan went off course and tried to pursue it. It turned out to be two dolphins and although they kept a safe distance from the boat they accompanied us for a while and entertained us by regularly breaking the surface of the water. It isn’t everyday you see dolphins like this, my last time was in Cephalonia in Greece in 2000, and Alex explained that we were lucky because this happened only infrequently on the Capitan’s boat trip.

The sea was a bit rougher now so Alex explained that we wouldn’t be able to stop and eat as planned but the Capitan would take us back closer to Fažana where the sea would be calmer and I for one was glad to be heading back to the mainland. Eventually we stopped and enjoyed a simple meal of fish and chicken with a nice salad and a couple more glasses of the dubious red wine. We finished, fed the scraps to the seagulls and then headed back to the harbour. Alex tried to charge the full rate but Micky was having none of it and after a word with the Capitan the original deal was honoured. It had been a good trip but I was glad to be back on dry land.

Istria 2011, Rovinj

2011-12-20T16:23:00.001Z

It was time for a coffee and a beer and there were plenty of busy harbour side bars to choose from so as we looked for empty spaces Micky reminded me of his theory that if we (the men) made a selection then this would be automatically overruled by Kim who has a curious habit of always walking to the next one perhaps in some sort of belief that it will always be better, or perhaps she just thinks we can’t make a good choice? Micky stopped by an empty table at a perfectly acceptable café and sure enough Kim rejected it and led us instead to the one next door. It was almost identical and the coffee and the beer would be exactly the same so there really was no explanation. Micky smirked!

It was really hot in the midday sun and we sat and watched the harbour activity, the tour groups being led around the town and the children playing in the square. Rovinj was certainly very different to Pula with a chic Italianate ambiance that oozed style and disposable income. Whereas in Pula the tourist part of the city rubs shoulders with the noise and sweat of its industry Rovinj felt exclusively like a pleasure zone for holiday makers, yachtsmen and tourists with no hint of a scruffy industrial area. People in smart clothes parading along the promenade stopping every so often to stop for a sociable drink or to gaze into a shop window with overpriced souvenirs or to buy a couple of scoops of Italian ice cream from the parlours all along the front.

After our refreshment break we walked through the main square and melted into the side streets with the twisting cobbled streets flanked by pastel coloured buildings rising steeply from the pavements with washing lines strung between them and brightly painted shutters on the windows. The route to the top took us a maze of streets until we emerged at the top and in the cathedral square. All but Micky went in for a look around and then we took an alternative path and descended down to the square. On the way we passed a shop selling shell costume jewellery and as Kim examined the necklaces the shop keeper rather sharply said that if we were just looking then we should do it with our eyes not our fingers. We didn’t think this was a very friendly sales technique and if we might have been tempted to purchase something then we certainly wouldn’t be after that.

It was lunch time so we stopped at a water side restaurant advertising a reasonably priced menu of the day so we choose a table ordered some drinks and made our selections. Surprisingly Christine choose fish and I say surprisingly because although she is not so anti-sea food as Sue this was most unusual. And then unsurprisingly she didn’t like it and gave most of it away to Micky in exchange for his meat selection. Over lunch we agreed to take the boat excursion so we phoned Alex and told him that we liked his five for four deal and that we would meet him tomorrow at twelve o’clock.

After lunch we passed from one side of the old town to the other and walked through a market selling local produce and vegetables and then, except for some excitable seagulls, to the quieter side of town, which was less picturesque and home to a large stone monument to Croatian heroes built in the monolithic style much loved by the previous communist regime of Yugoslavia and which looked rather foolishly out of place but very, very permanent.

On the way back to the car the girls stopped for some ice cream and we retraced our steps to the car park. There was no wheel clamp and so we left the delightful town of Rovinj and ignoring the coast road took the direct route back to Fažana.

After a drink at the Konoba Ferral we let the rest of the day just quietly slip away. First we walked south out of the village along a stony beach that arched away in a crescent shape from the village and it was so warm and the sea looked so nice that I went for a paddle in the water but everyone else declined to join me and I have to say that it was a bit cool. Later we enjoyed another spectacular sunset and then being creatures of habit dined once again at the Konoba Ferral and we all enjoyed an excellent second meal where Kim and I shared a special fish plate and Micky, Sue and Christine had beef steak and we all declared our meals to be perfect.

Istria 2011, Palm Sunday and Intermittent Coastal Roads

2011-12-19T08:44:00.001Z

But that was only until six o’clock the next morning when the peace and quiet amnesty was over and the bells began to ring again and through a half slumber I counted the strikes and satisfied that it was still only early dozed on and off between the quarter hours until it was time to get up.

The day started with a crisis because during the over-zealous search routine at Stansted airport Kim had lost her hair brush and didn’t feel able to tackle the day with only the use of the hotel complimentary comb and I was dispatched to try and buy a replacement. At eight o’clock on a Sunday morning I wasn’t terribly optimistic but to my surprise there was a small shop open in one of the side streets and although it wasn’t a state of the art styling brush they had something that would suffice for a couple of days so I purchased it and returned.

It was a glorious start to the day with the sun flooding into the village square, making the water sparkle like thousands of tiny diamonds and the brightly painted boats shine in the reflected light. There was a good breakfast at the hotel and without many guests it was all for us. Despite the reliable early good weather Croatia has a compressed holiday high season from late June to mid September so the hotel was virtually empty except for us.

Being a week before Easter it was Palm Sunday, the day the Catholic Church, celebrates Christ’s entry into Jerusalem and on account of this there was a lot of activity in the square outside the church as more and more people began to assemble. Some had traditional palm leaves but it seemed that almost any sort of vegetation was acceptable and there were a lot of palm substitutes being carried. Soon it seemed the entire village was assembled outside the church and at half past nine they formed into a procession and set off to parade through the streets. It took them about fifteen minutes and then they began to file back into the square and into the church. There were so many people that only those at the front of the parade could make it inside so those at the back had to stand in the pleasant sunshine and listen to the service through loudspeakers attached to the front of the church.

Our plan today was to drive north along the coast to Rovinj and possibly Poreč but we would see how the day went before committing to both. The map seemed to suggest two alternative routes. One was a main road, possibly even a motorway, and so, with my paranoid nervousness about toll roads, we selected what appeared to be a perfectly good coastal route that would take us through a succession of villages along the way.

In theory it was a good idea but some of the roads that the map suggested were actually not really roads at all and in between villages the tarmac often ran out only to be replaced by a deeply rutted track that was completely unsuitable for our little car. Added to this was the inadequacy of the road signs that would regularly disappear leaving us to guess the direction of travel. The result of this was that we were forced to stop a couple of times and turn around and try again and after an hour or so we travelled inland from the intermittent coast road and came to the main road which wasn’t a toll after all and would have been the far better option in the first place.

As time was getting on we abandoned the idea of driving to Poreč and drove straight to Rovinj where we arrived late in the morning. The town was very busy so it took a while to find a parking spot and then some more time to understand the car park fees. It was free on Sunday but I needed to reassure myself completely about this because I didn’t want to get back to a wheel clamp.

The car park was next to the marina just south of the old town and as we walked past the boat repair yards and nautical shops there was a good view of old Rovinj. Like a lot of other Croatian Adriatic places such as Primosten and Trogir the original town was built on an island with a natural moat for protection so the town jutted out into the sea with layer upon layer of buildings crammed around the outside and rising up to a cathedral on the top. The moat has long been filled in and the town has spread onto what was the mainland and we walked around a busy harbour full of pleasure boats and towards the busy main squares.

Istria 2011, Fažana

2011-12-18T12:14:00.001Z

Pula is the largest city in Istria so I suppose it was inevitable that we would get lost leaving the place. In theory it should have been easy to pick up the coast road and drive the short distance to Fažana but after fifteen minutes or so it was obvious that we were going in the wrong direction, away from the coast and driving into the hills of the peninsula.

Istria derives its name from the its first known settlers , the ancient Illyrian tribe of the Histri, who arrived there in the early bronze age who were the first to use the geographical advantages of the peninsula to establish trade routes and develop commerce. Istria’s privileged position was however to become its burden as one by one other, more powerful and aggressive neighbours moved in to take control and take advantage of the trading and strategic military advantages that it offered. First the Romans, then Byzantium and after that Slavic tribes from the east and over the following centuries Istria was governed by the Franks, the Venetian Empire, the Hapsburgs, Austria and in the early twentieth century by Fascist Italy. It was later absorbed into Yugoslavia and following its break up divided by modern day Slovenia and Croatia.

Once we had realised our (my) mistake we corrected it quite easily and as we were in an elevated position we could see a road that led to the coast and although there were no signposts to help we trusted to luck and set off west. We were right and soon we were in Fažana and after parking the car next to the sea we went to find our hotel, the Villeta Phasiana which turned out to be ideally located in a small square right next to the harbour.

After the girls had enjoyed their first speciality ice cream we moved the car to the designated car park and walked the short distance to the hotel where we booked into some simple but stylishly furnished rooms with a good view over the square, the harbour and the sea.

We stayed long enough to unpack and untidy the perfectly presented rooms and then we assembled back outside to explore the village and enjoy the late afternoon sunshine. The hotel was in a perfect position right at the centre of the pretty little village and we took a stroll along the seafront to examine the restaurants for later on. We hadn’t got very far when a tall man with a dog spotted us as tourists and launched into a sales pitch for a boat ride around the islands for the next day or the day after. He told us his name was Alex and a trip with lunch was two hundred Kuna (about £15 each), Micky offered him a deal which he declined so we said we would think about it and he left us his mobile phone number.

We didn’t walk to far and quickly returned to a harbour side bar/restaurant called the Konoba Feral where we sat out of the wind that was getting stronger and had a couple of drinks and thoughts began to turn to evening meal. Back at the hotel the helpful receptionist recommended the Feral for food and as it wasn’t far to walk we agreed that we would take her advice.

In the sky the late sun and some occasional clouds were beginning to assemble into an impressive sunset ensemble and with Kim’s magic camera (if you remember, it can capture a sunset even if there isn’t one) it seemed certain that we would be able to get some good pictures. Micky and I met first and after taking the pictures we took an outside seat at the tavern and over a beer we approved the menu by making sure that there were not too many slippery things from the ocean on it and there were some suitably plain alternatives for Sue and Christine and having satisfied ourselves that it was alright we sat and waited for the others to join us.

It was an excellent choice and the food was perfect. Micky had steak, the girls had spaghetti and Kim and I had a scampi buzura which is Adriatic prawns in a pasta sauce which was a bit messy to eat but tasted divine. We had chosen well and it was an excellent meal and after good food and wine we ended a long day with the short walk back to the Villeta Phasiana. Opposite the hotel was the village church which regularly chimed the hours from the campanile bell tower and we worried about that, especially after we discovered complimentary ear plugs in the bed side cabinet but we needn’t have concerned ourselves because at eleven o’clock they stopped and a pleasant peace and quiet descended on the village.

Istria 2011, The Roman Amphitheatre at Pula

2011-12-16T14:37:00.000Z

The airport is only about eight kilometres outside of the city so once we had completed the hire car formalities and had squeezed ourselves and our luggage into the silver Hyundai Getz (not the Skoda Fabia that we had ordered) we set off towards Pula where we arrived just a few minutes later and found a convenient car park directly below the Roman amphitheatre and close to the busy docks.

The first century amphitheatre is the most important and most impressive building in Pula because it is the sixth largest in the world and one of the best preserved examples of its kind. The Coliseum in Rome was the biggest Roman amphitheatre and could seat a massive fifty-thousand spectators (Some estimates suggest eighty thousand but generally about fifty thousand is the agreed capacity of the stadium), the second largest was Capua, also in Italy but now sadly in ruin, which had only a slightly smaller capacity, and the third was in El Djem in Tunisia with a capacity of thirty-five thousand. The amphitheatre in Pula was designed for about twenty-five thousand and there were similar sized stadiums in Verona in Italy and at Nimes and Arles in Southern France so this was more of a Championship rather than a Premiership Ground.

We walked around the external walls and I was immediately struck by the grandeur and magnificence of the building. I have been to Rome and seen the Coliseum and in my opinion nothing can compare with that but this building made that assessment a close run thing. It towered mightily above us, the white stone walls reaching up into the clear blue sky and looking proud and strong.

As it was about lunchtime we decided to postpone the visit to the inside until the afternoon and we walked towards the city centre to look for somewhere to eat. We had stayed in Pula before so we knew where we were going, or at least we thought we did but confused by the busy streets we took a few wrong turns looking for a bar that we had enjoyed before. Down at the waterside the city isn’t particularly interesting or picturesque and we walked along a harbour that was fronted with bleak marine associated offices and was sadly without bars and cafés, but things improved as we walked back from the dockside and into main town street behind and eventually came to the main square with plenty of bars to choose from so we sat on the sunny side of the square and ordered drinks.

This has been Pula’s main square for a long time because in one corner, close to where we were sitting was the two thousand year old Roman Temple of Augustus which was in surprisingly good shape for all its years. It was hot now and the sun was trapped in the square and the heat intesified as it bounced off the white walls and pavements made of dazzling Istrian stone.

Istrian stone was quarried in the hills behind the coast and was much valued by the Romans and later the Venetians who, in the middle ages, controlled the quarries and transported thousands of tonnes to Venice to build the state buildings there. It is a limestone that is so dense that it resembles the finest marble and it was perfect for building columns and monuments because it could be quarried in exceptionally thick strata.

After the short break we left the square and quickly found the Café Orfej still advertising very reasonably priced meals. That appealed to us all so we went inside and made an attempt at translating the menu and finding that we didn’t have much trouble with pizzas we had a fine lunch and a couple of beers.

After lunch we walked back through the sunshine to the amphitheatre, this time to pay our entrance fee of forty Kuna and to go inside the impressive structure. There are over two hundred surviving Roman amphitheatres across what was the Roman Empire and this is one of the best to see because this is the only one that has its entire external structure rising to three levels still intact. There is still a lot missing however as parts of it had been dismantled over the years to provide ready prepared paving for roads and a convenient supply of building materials for later construction projects such as the town’s Venetian fortress built nearby. Thankfully most of the vandalism was restricted to the internal seating and terracing and the external walls with their towering arches are still left in place to see today.

The amphitheatre was built on sloping ground so that the part facing the sea has three levels and the other side facing the land has two. The great plinths which form the base are visible, along with two orders of arches divided by pilasters and an attic of rectangular windows. When it was in use large beams supported awnings which protected the spectators from the sun or the rain. Four towers around the perimeter had cisterns containing perfumed water that could be sprinkled on the crowd because the smell of animals, blood and fear must have been rather distressing even for a blood-thirsty mob. Under the fifteen entrances was a ditch served by elevators for beasts, people and stage sets to be moved easily about.

The amphitheatre was part of the primary gladiator circuit and remained in use until the fifth century and in that time it is impossible to imagine how many men and animals died in this place. Underneath the arena there is a small museum housed in the underground corridors where exotic animals and gladiators waited their turn to be raised to the stadium for their part in the bloody show and one can only try to imagine what a brutal and thoroughly unpleasant place this might once have been.

It was late afternoon now so having completed our tour of the amphitheatre and the underground museum we agreed that it was time to leave and drive to our hotel which was in the nearby fishing village of Fažana.

Spain 2011, Chinchón

2011-12-15T09:52:00.001Z

Although we had stayed in Chinchón before this didn’t help us pinpoint the location of the hotel which was hidden away in the warren of tiny backstreets at the back of the town. It took some finding and when we did, the door was locked, there was no sign of life and a queue of people waiting to book in. Eventually someone arrived and it was just coincidence that all of tonight’s guests had arrived at exactly the same time. It had been difficult finding accommodation in Chinchón so I was a bit nervous about the Casa Rural La Graja but it turned out that that had been unnecessary because we were shown to an excellent room with a balcony that looked out over the street and for the first time there was blue sky.

This was good news because so far today the weather had been pretty awful and it had been a longer drive than I had estimated so it was nice to be able to get out into the streets and make our way down to the Plaza Mayor at the lowest level of the town. We walked past the fifteenth century church of Nuestra Señora de la Ascunción where there were preparations for a big wedding with a lot of guests so perhaps that explained the squeeze on hotel accommodation this weekend.

It was warm when the sun shone through the clouds but the sky was full of dramatic movement and shifting cloud formations as it changed constantly from sunshine to billowing white clouds to ashen grey smears of rain cloud and then back again. We sat at a café outside and toughed it out but when the sun went away I had to agree with Kim that it was really a bit cooler than we really like it so we drank up quickly and performed a circuit of the plaza to choose a restaurant for later on. We would have liked one with a balcony overlooking the square but that was going to be optimistic because unless there was going to be a dramatic late improvement the weather was clearly not going to be suitable for al fresco dining this evening. We found one we liked, approved the menu and the prices and agreed that we return there later.

Leaving the square we walked back to the church stopping on the way to look back and admire the views over the countryside as it stretched away south all the way back to where we had started out this morning and then we threaded our way through the narrow streets and back to the hotel. It was such a nice hotel that we wanted to enjoy the sunny courtyard and the excellent room for an hour or so before going out for dinner.

The restaurant turned out to be an excellent choice and even though they were expecting a large party they made room for us and although as predicted we couldn’t sit outside we dined near the window which was the next best thing and we enjoyed an excellent final meal. We didn’t stay out late because we had an early start in the morning because we had to be at the airport at nine o’clock and bearing in mind the traffic problems we had last time we flew out from Madrid my plan was to be generous with the time allowed for getting us there with no last minute dramas.

•

After the poor weather the previous day we should have been able to correctly predict that it would be excellent this morning and so it was when we woke early and opened the shutters to check. It didn’t take us long to get ready and we were quickly out of the hotel and on the final leg of our journey back to the airport.

It was Sunday so there wasn’t any of the traffic problems that I had feared but we did seem to go the long way round to the airport and through a number of confusing motorway junctions and it seemed to take a long time to get there so it was just as well that I had factored in the extra minutes. Madrid Barajas is a large airport, the fourth biggest in Europe (after London Heathrow, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt) and the eleventh busiest in the World so it takes some time to get there, refuel and return the car and get to the correct departure lounge.

While we waited for the flight we reflected on the week and how much we had enjoyed Extremadura and the cities of Cáceres, Mérida and Trujillo and then Almagro in Castilla-La Mancha and we leafed through the pages of the Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Travel guide to Spain and wondered where we might go next?

Spain 2011, Consuegra, Tembleque and Aranjuez

2011-12-13T09:49:00.000Z

I realise that this isn’t the correct technical meteorological term but when we woke up the next morning, it was absolutely chucking it down! From outside there was the sound of (very) heavy rain and when the shutters were opened we were confronted with a blanket of thick grey cloud and horizontal precipitation thrashing against the window – it was all a bit dull and dismal and did not look at all promising. But, I have great faith in the expression ‘rain before seven, clear by eleven’ that I was reasonably confident of improvement as we mopped up the wet tiles under the balcony door, dressed and went for breakfast.

After a second equally good three course breakfast we reluctantly packed our bags and checked out of the hotel. It was still hammering down outside and when we emerged from the underground car park we were trying to find our way in driving rain and in some places through flooded streets. For some reason we found it more difficult than it really should have been to find our way out of the labyrinth of one-way streets and with wind screen wipers on double speed I am certain that we did two or three circuits of the town before we found the main road and a filling station and then plotted a course north towards Madrid with a couple of stops planned along the way.

To begin with our route took us along some nerve jangling minor roads but eventually we found some proper highways and the pace picked up as we continued to travel north. The rain was easing and with better weather to the west I was becoming increasingly confident of my eleven o’clock prediction.

After an hour or so we started to get close to Consuegra, famous for its castle and windmills and after getting confused at a motorway junction we eventually began to approach the outskirts of what can only really be described as a town of extreme contrasts. From what we saw of Consuegra it is scruffy and uncared for, the streets are grimy and the roads full of precarious potholes but rising high above all of the disappointment is a line of whitewashed, blue domed windmills standing sentinel over the town and the adjacent plain. Don Quixote’s windmills sit in a line along the top of a steep hill and they look down on the flat red dirt plains of La Mancha, their sails tied down and no longer spun by the wind. They are almost smug in what is now their supremely safe tourist protected environment.

The weather was wild and showing no signs of improvement and as we walked between the black sails and admired the bulk of the castle nearby we drew strange glances from bus tourists who were wrapped up in coats and scarves and gloves that were much more appropriate than our linens and short sleeves.

It was cold so we didn’t stay long and drove back through the untidy town and rejoined the Autovia heading north. Our next stop was the town of Tembleque but when we pulled in and parked, although it had finally stopped raining we were not terribly hopeful. It was dreary and overcast and the Plaza Mayor that we had stopped to see with its balconies, painted colonnades and stone pillars (not unlike Almagro but without the sunshine) looked disappointing and dreary and sadly won’t be going into our top five so after a quick visit to the tourist information museum we were soon back on the road.

We were on our way now to Aranjuez and the site of a Royal Palace of King Juan Carlos but the road passed by the town of Ocaña which is famous for two things, a Peninsular War battle that was the biggest defeat of the war for the defending Spanish army and for having the third largest Plaza Mayor in Spain after Madrid and Salamanca. I am not sure about that because we never actually got there but it might well have the biggest prison in Spain right next door and on account of the dodgy looking men hanging around the gate and the dreary weather we gave it a miss and drove straight by.

And so in mid afternoon we arrived in Aranjuez, parked the car, stopped at a café where we sat near the window and lamented the woeful weather and then walked the short distance to the Royal Palace. King Juan Carlos has eight Royal Palaces to choose from but I suspect he doesn’t stay at this one very often because it didn’t look very ‘lived in’, if you know what I mean; most are close to Madrid and one is on the island of Mallorca. We walked through the gardens and then paid the entrance fee to go inside and take the tour through a succession or rooms (all the same, by the way) and then some exhibits about life at the Royal Spanish court through the ages.

To be honest the day was in danger of becoming a bit of a let-down compared with those that had gone before and I think we were both a bit disappointed when we returned to the car and set off for our final destination, Chinchon, which we knew well on account of visiting there a couple of times previously. However, by some minor miracle as we drove the short distance the grey cloud began to shatter and disperse and by the time we approached one of our favourite places in Spain there was at last some welcome blue sky and although my eleven o’clock prediction was at least four hours overdue we were glad of that!

Spain 2011, Almagro and the Ruta de Don Quixote

2011-12-12T08:46:00.001Z

After four days of travelling, eight-hundred kilometres driving and some serious sightseeing, today we were planning an altogether less demanding sort of experience with a leisurely full day in the provincial town of Almagro.

Breakfast at the Retiro del Maestre was simply wonderful and easily the best of the week, in fact, if we were compiling a list of the top five hotel breakfasts ever then this would certainly be in there. It was the usual thing in terms of content but it had clearly been lovingly prepared by the ladies of the house and the cook fussed around the breakfast room, making recommendations, making sure everyone was happy and brazenly fishing for compliments. And she deserved them all because this was truly an excellent breakfast.

Almagro is an old town that was once much more important than it is today, two hundred and fifty years ago it was for a short time the provincial capital of La Mancha (1750-61) but religious decline set in during the reign of Charles III and it fared badly and suffered damage in the Napoleonic and the Carlist wars. Eventually it was eclipsed by its neighbours, Ciudad Real and Bolaños de Calatrava and it became the quiet town that it is today on, not being unkind, a secondary, less important, tourist trail.

Talking of trails, as we stepped out into the street we were now inevitably on the ‘Ruta de Don Quixote’, which is the golden thread that binds the Castilian tourist industry together in a ribbon of towns, castles and windmills stretching from Cuenca to Toledo.

Don Quixote is a novel written by the seventeenth century Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and is regarded as the most influential work of literature to emerge from the Spanish Golden Age. It is the story of a man who believes that he is a knight, and recounts his adventures as he rights wrongs, mistakes peasants for princesses, and “tilts at windmills,” mistakenly believing them to be evil giants. As one of the earliest works of modern western literature, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published. In 2002 a panel of one hundred leading world authors declared Don Quixote to be the best work of fiction ever written, ahead even of works by Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Cervantes has also been credited with shaping modern literary style, and Don Quixote has been acclaimed as “the first great novel of world literature”. Since publication in 1605 it is reputed to be the most widely read and translated book on the planet after the Bible. I tried to read it once but found it a bit heavy going so gave up quite quickly but as we walked along I resolved to give it another go upon returning home.

The historical centre of Almagro is conveniently located inside a circle of modern roads so this morning we circumnavigated it all as we walked through surprisingly wide and airy streets with the ubiquitous boxy white houses with little balconies and ornamental black iron grills over the windows where much of the town has been redeveloped to accommodate modern living demands. Along the route there were churches, a wide open park and a convent, now converted to a Parador hotel. We went inside to take a look but Parador room and menu prices are not really for us so we weren’t tempted to stay and instead made our way back to the Plaza Mayor.

Although it was midday it was quiet in the Plaza as we selected a table for a refreshment break and we watched restaurant owners preparing for what they hoped would be a lunch time rush and then we looked around some of the traditional local craft and souvenir shops and then the not so traditional Mercadona for some essential alcohol supplies because our plan now was to return to the hotel and spend the afternoon relaxing in the sun on the roof terrace.

As the sun moved from east to west in the sky we let the afternoon slip away with a bottle of local wine, a game or two of cards and a couple of chapters of our books but after a while some cloud was beginning to gatecrash the sky and gradually it turned from azure blue to milky white as the sun was blotted out. This was our cue to leave the terrace and return to the town for the final piece of sightseeing.

This was the Corral de Comedias, which is a sixteenth century theatre, similar to those that Shakespeare would have been familiar with in Elizabethan England, built in what was the courtyard of an Inn and which today is the only fully preserved example of a theatre of this type in the World. It is a working theatre still today and inside it is an immaculate example of a theatre of the golden age, built on three levels with galleries and private boxes running around all three sides of the still open courtyard. It was an unexpected little gem but it didn’t take long to walk around and listen to the audio commentary so after we had finished we stopped for a drink and compiled a shopping list of souvenirs that we could confidently carry back in our hand luggage and agreed on some local pottery and some water colour postcards of the main sights of the town.

There was time for a few more early evening minutes on the terrace but the weather was continuing to deteriorate and worryingly the hotel staff were beginning to prepare for bad weather by collecting up the cushions and winding in the sun shades that were no longer needed and this disappointed us but to be fair, given the pessimistic forecast before we arrived in Spain, we had been lucky all week so far with the weather.

To our surprise, by the time we went out again later the day finished with blue sky again as we sat in the Plaza for pre-dinner drinks and then, despite the shock of the rare pork the previous evening, dined at the same restaurant again where I was careful to choose something more conventional.

It had been a good day in Almagro and after dinner and before returning for the final time to the hotel we strolled one last time through the Plaza and had a final drink in a busy bar that was full of extended Spanish families all starting the weekend here in the square. It had been a quiet day but we had enjoyed the rest.

Spain 2011, The Plaza Mayor

2011-12-11T08:53:00.001Z

We were staying at the Hotel Retiro del Maestre, a renovated old Spanish nobleman’s house on a street leading to the main square and we found it easily and left the car in the underground car park. It was a friendly family run hotel with spacious and comfortable public rooms, a large outside terrace basking in the sun and was a nice room for us with a view over the garden.

It was late afternoon by this time and with the sun beginning to dip we didn’t linger long but made our way quickly to the Plaza Mayor to find a bar. On the way we passed by the equestrian statue of the Conquistador Diego de Almagro and then entered the rectangular Plaza. At a hundred metres long and forty metres wide and flanked on both sides by arcades of Tuscan columns supporting overhead galleries all painted a uniform shade of green and fully glazed in a central European style this place is truly unique in Spain. These galleries were originally open and used as grandstands for public events, religious festivals and even bullfights that were held here until 1785, when they were finally banned by King Carlos III.

We choose a table on the sunny side of the Plaza, ordered beer and wine and just sat and watched the activity while we nibbled the inevitable olives. The bar owner shooed away some small boys playing football, telling them to play elsewhere and families began to arrive and the bar quickly filled up with chattering customers. Walking around the square was a proud grandmother pushing a young baby in an immaculate pram which matched her pristine outfit and she completed at least a dozen circuits, stopping frequently to chat and to show off the small child to anyone who showed the slightest interest.

The Plaza Mayor is the most important part of a Spanish town or city and I really cannot think of an equivalent in the United Kingdom where we have public squares but use them in an entirely different way. This is the place where people meet, relax and enjoy themselves; it is generally flanked with shops and restaurants and usually has the town hall and the main church somewhere close by. When we arrive somewhere new it is usually the first place we make for because sitting with a glass of wine and a complimentary tapas it is the best place to be to get a feeling for the town and its people.

In the search for real Spain (not the coasts and the Costas), in the past three years we have visited and enjoyed dozens of Plaza Mayors; Madrid, the largest, Salamanca, the second largest, Toledo, next to its towering cathedral and the tiled Plaza de España in Seville. We liked them all and we began now to compile a list with a view to choosing our top five favourites. We considered Ávila, Mérida and Valladolid, Cáceres and Santiago de Compostella in Galicia but after a lively debate weighing up the pros and cons and putting forward the case for each one in turn we finally agreed on the top five but could not reach consensus on the actual order.

So this is our list: Segovia in Castilla y Leon because of the Cathedral and the architecture and the little streets running away from it like spokes from a wheel, Trujillo, where we had been only today, because of its unspoilt medieval charm, the unpretentious and functional Ciudad Rodrigo, Chinchón with its open balconies and bullfights and although we had only just arrived we liked this place so much that we both agreed to include Almagro in the list.

After a second leisurely drink we paid up and left the square and strolled back to our hotel where we asked for some dining recommendations and the receptionist convinced us to go to her favourite just a couple of streets away so after we had rested and changed we took her advice and found the restaurant in a side street off the main square.

It was nice if not conventional and it had a modern menu with some new twists on traditional meals and I have to say that I wasn’t prepared for rare pork. The sight of a pork chop oozing blood really wasn’t to my taste at all and because I have always thought that anything to do with a pig should be cooked right through it almost spoilt the evening for me as I worried about food poisoning and salmonella and trying to remember the location of the immodium tablets in the suitcase!

Although it wasn’t especially late when we finished the meal, we were tired after a long day that had started three hundred kilometres away in Mérida, taken us to Trujillo and then a three hour drive to Almagro and we were ready for bed. We walked back through the Plaza Mayor that was lively in a subdued sort of way (if that makes sense) and then to the street to the hotel. About half way along we heard Spanish guitars and the clack, clack of castanets and we wondered where it was coming from and then through the pavement level window of a cellar we could see a dancing class in full swing. Some local people suggested that we should go inside and watch so we did just that and before the lesson ended we enjoyed fifteen minutes of genuine Spanish music played by a sort of flamenco skiffle group and a group of young people dancing in true Castillian style.

It was a great way to end the evening!

Spain 2011, The Dehesa of Extremadura and the Olive Groves of Castilla-La Mancha

2011-12-10T08:39:00.001Z

The journey began well enough and we left Trujillo and started to drive south towards the N430, the main road from Mérida to Ciudad Real but after a few kilometres the satnav found us a shortcut. There was nothing wrong with this at first but at the town of Campo Lugar, which seemed to be somewhere in the middle of nowhere the tarmac road abruptly stopped and became a pot holed pitted shale track that went on for about ten kilometres. I was for turning back but Kim persuaded me to carry on and I conceded and drove with care as the road continued to deteriorate the further we went. I had resolved not to fall out with the satnav lady this week but this part of the journey severely tested my promise to keep calm. Eventually we came to a junction and a proper road and soon we were motoring towards our destination.

Through the east of Extremadura we passed through the oak tree plantations of the dehesa where the land is carefully cultivated and managed. ‘Dehesa’ is the name given to the seemingly endless areas of farmland consisting of groves of low density, mature oak trees because of the poor quality of the soil. Around half of the land of Extremadura is taken up by these dehesas and the spaces between the trees are used to cultivate cereals and as pasture for grazing livestock. The tree species is predominantly evergreen Holm, with Cork Oak grown on richer, more humid soils and at the base of the mountains. Several grades of tree coverage occur with the most open and more easily cultivated holding up to fifteen oaks per hectare, intermediate covering has up to thirty oak trees per hectare and the densest plantings thirty to fifty trees per hectare.

This part of the journey was reminder of just how big Spain is as we motored for mile after mile without meeting any other traffic or without passing through towns or villages. The road just kept grinding endlessly on in an easterly direction in a way that reminded me of the tortuous journey through Andalusia in a clapped out Ford Escort in 1986. The road had no lay-bys, picnic areas or service stations and I was glad that I had topped up the tank earlier in the day as we had left Mérida.

Eventually we passed out of Extremadura and into Castilla-La Mancha and the landscape abruptly changed and what had been a long straight road before now began to twist and turn as we climbed and dropped through undulating hills, river valleys, past huge reservoirs and through vast olive groves. The oak trees had gone now and there were olive trees as far as the eye could see.

This shouldn’t have been surprising because Spain is the world’s leading producer of olives and is by a long way the country with the highest number of olive trees (more than three hundred million), is nowadays the world’s leading olive and olive oil producer and exporter and the world’s leading producer of table olives, which explains why cafés and bars are always so generous with a plate of olives to accompany every drink. Of the two million hectares of olive groves in Spain, 92% are dedicated to olive oil production. The average annual production varies due to the cyclical nature of the harvest, but typically runs between 600,000 and 1,000,000 metric tons, less than a quarter of which is exported.

Olives are gathered from late November to the end of March, depending on the area and the year’s weather. Harvesting is a painstaking task and is done by hand, or with a stick to shake the fruit onto tarpaulins arranged around the tree (it is sometimes done with a mechanical tree shaker, though this can damage a tree). Looking at all of those trees that process must provide plenty of work at harvest time!

By late afternoon the journey was becoming tedious and tiring as we counted down the kilometres to Ciudad Real and Almagro just beyond as we passed through fields of grain decorated with drifts of scarlet poppies and more and more villages as we approached the city. We didn’t stop in Ciudad Real, which was a bit rude, because we were keen to get to our destination and once past the minor traffic hold up in the city we relaxed and enjoyed the last few motoring minutes as we approached our destination.

Spain 2011, Trujillo and the Spanish Conquistadors

2011-12-09T09:34:00.001Z

Trujillo, on the Tozo River, a tributary of the Tagus, is sited on the only hill for miles around and about forty kilometres east of Cáceres. Although the Autovia passes close by it is not an especially busy tourist city so when we drove in and followed signs to the Plaza Mayor we found parking ridiculously easy just a few metres away from the main square.

The pace of life in the plaza was delightfully slow with a just a few visitors wandering around and others sitting with local people in the bars and cafés around the perimeter. It was pleasantly warm but I would suspect that in high summer this large exposed granite space can become the Sun’s anvil and it would be important to find a spot in the shade.

All around the square there are grand palaces and mansions and outside the sixteenth century Iglesia de San Martín in the north-east corner is the reason why, a great equestrian statue of the Spanish conquistador, Francisco Pizzaro. It is an interesting coincidence that many of the sixteenth century explorers and adventurers who carved out the Spanish Empire in South America came from Extremadura and as well as Pizzaro, Hérnan Cortés, who defeated the Aztecs and founded Mexico, Hernando De Soto, who explored Florida, and Pedro de Almagro, who accompanied Pizzaro, all came from this south-west corner of Spain.

Francisco Pizzaro was born in Trujillo and became a conquistador who travelled along much of the Pacific coast of South America. He encountered the ancient Incan empire and brutally and quickly conquered it , killing thousands of natives, including the Inca King and stealing immense hoards of gold, silver, and other treasures for the King of Spain and for himself. As a consequence of Pizzaro’s adventures, Spain became the greatest, richest and most powerful country in the world at the time and as well as conquering Peru and founding the city of Lima, he also added Ecuador and Columbia to the Spanish Empire thus providing immense new territories and influence and spreading Roman Catholicism to the New World.

We walked out the Plaza Mayor and followed the steep cobbled lanes as they twisted their way up past buildings constructed of attractive mellow stone, past the Parador and more churches and mansions until finally we were at the top at the Alcázar of the Moors who controlled this city for five hundred years before the reconquest. Inside the castle we walked around the high stone walls and stopped frequently to admire the uninterrupted views over the dehesa of Extremadura spreading endlessly in every direction in a patchwork of agricultural green, gold and brown.

Walking back down to the plaza was a great deal easier than the energy sapping climb but we got lost in the cobweb of tiny streets and surprised ourselves by emerging at an unexpected entrance to the square which was jam-packed with cars on account of it being the end of school for the day and parents were collecting their children to take them home. It was a little past lunch time and we were overdue something to eat so we examined the menus at the pavement restaurants and when Kim was satisfied with our choice we found a seat in the sun and ordered some local dishes and a glass of beer.

As the Plaza slowly emptied and peace and quiet was restored it was nice sitting in the sunshine enjoying the sights of the square in a city blessed with great architecture and a theatrical history but mercifully not overrun with tourists. It was lovely and if I was planning the trip again I am certain that I would squeeze at least an overnight stop in Trujillo into the itinerary and we would have stayed longer this afternoon but we had a long drive ahead of about two-hundred and fifty kilometres because now it was time to start to drive back east towards Castilla-La Mancha which was going to be about a three hour drive.

Spain 2011, Mérida, World Heritage City (3)

2011-12-06T09:41:00.001Z

The breakfast was even more disappointing than the previous day so we didn’t spend to long over the meal and finished as quickly as we could before returning to the room, packing our bags in preparation for leaving and then returning to the streets of the city to see the last remaining sites.

The reason that Mérida has so many Roman antiquities is that it was a very important city in the Empire. The Roman conquest started as early as year 19 B.C. with the invasion of the Carthaginian region and ended with the last resistance in the northwest in the same year. The south soon came under the Roman Empire’s growing domination with a framework of roads connecting towns and strategic bridges and Iberian cities including Mérida, Cordoba, Seville and Cartagena passed into the hands of the Romans.

The economy flourished under Roman rule and, along with North Africa, served as a bread basket for the Roman market, and, as well as grain, it provided gold, wool, olive oil, and wine. Agricultural production increased with the introduction of irrigation projects, some of which remain in use even today and much of daily life consisted of agricultural work under which the region flourished, especially the cultivation of grapes and olives. Silver mining within the Guadalquivir River valley became an integral part of Iberian society and some of the Empire’s most important metal resources were in Hispania where gold, iron, tin, copper and lead were also all mined in abundance and shipped back to Rome.

Spain also has historical and political significance for the Roman Empire because it was the birthplace of the Emperors Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Trajan, Theodosius I and the philosopher Seneca and in the year 306, Spanish bishops were the heads of the Council at Elivira. Luckily, when the Roman Empire fell, it didn’t create such a major crisis or havoc in Spain as it did in other western countries like Gaul, Germany and Britain and thus much of its essential infrastructure remained intact.

Next to the river there were some excavations but to be honest we found these a bit disappointing so we hurried through them and walked to the river and walked along a pedestrian walkway back to the Roman bridge and then back towards the main square. We were looking now for the Temple of Diana and we found it tucked away behind the main shopping street and next to a small museum. The Temple was a sacred site constructed by the Romans in the first century A.D. and remains well preserved mostly because in the sixteenth century some local big-wig built a palace inside the rectangular ring of Corinthian columns. There has been some recent debate about removing the palace structure but as this is over five-hundred years old as well the archaeologists and the authorities have decided that it should stay.

We were over an hour ahead of schedule so we had a last drink in the main square while we waited for the car to be returned from the out of town car park and when it was there we went back to the hotel and checked out.

Our plan now was to visit the town of Trujillo that we had missed two days ago because of changes to our itinerary on our way to Cáceres and after we had stopped for fuel we drove north skirting the Parque Naturel de Cornarvo but to be honest there was little to get excited about across the flat dusty plains of Extremadura as we drove the fifty kilometres or so towards our destination.

Spain 2011, Mérida, World Heritage City (2)

2011-12-05T12:02:00.001Z

After lunch and the shock of the bill it was time for a rest, the antiquities were all closed now for the siesta and wouldn’t open again for a couple of hours so we went back to the Mérida Palace. It was hot and the sun was shining so it our intention to sit on the sun terrace on the roof, read a book, have a glass of wine and do a bit of lazy sunbathing. For no good reason (as far as I could make out) the sun terrace was closed and when I enquired at reception the receptionist said that they were unable to open it because it was too early in the year and it wasn’t warm enough! I was perplexed by that, in England we will sit on beaches in May even though the temperature is just a fraction above zero!

Kim rested in the room and in search of sun I sat on the patio at the front of the hotel and sneaked a can of Mahou beer down from the room so that I didn’t have to pay the inflated hotel prices. Sitting across the road from the busy Plaza Mayor it was lovely in the sunshine and after a while Kim joined me and I sneaked some more alcohol to the table and discreetly disposed of the giveaway evidence by hiding the cans under the table.

It was nice just sitting and enjoying the vibrant atmosphere of the square but with the sun moving behind the hotel and throwing us into shadow it was time to resume our sightseeing and to use the rest of our entrance tickets. We walked towards the River Guadiana because our first destination was the original Roman bridge built over two thousand years ago.

At eight hundred and thirty kilometres long, the River Guadiana is the fourth longest in the Iberian Peninsula and for part of its course marks the boundary between Spain and Portugal. As we approached the river I was reminded of a previous experience on the Guardiana in 1986 when I was travelling from Portugal to Spain by car. These days a bridge takes the motorway straight across but for centuries before that the ferry link between Vila Real de Santo António in Portugal and Ayamonte in Spain was the only way to get across and we took the twenty minute, two kilometre journey between the two countries.

At this point the river is about eight hundred metres wide and spanning it is the sixty arch Roman bridge that remained the principal road for traffic entering the city until as recently as 1993. Mérida was proving to be a really fascinating place with the oldest this, the biggest that, the best preserved, the most unique and now was added the longest remaining Roman bridge. It is pedestrianised now and we walked away across towards the centre and looked over the sides into the muddy brown water of the river below.

We didn’t all the way across to the other side but stopped and returned to the east bank because next we were visiting the Alcazaba, a 9th century Muslim fortification located near the bridge that was built by Emir Abd ar-Rahman II of Córdoba in 835 to command the city. It was the first (here we go again) Muslim alcazaba, and includes a big squared line of walls, every side measuring one hundred and thirty metres in length, ten metres high, nearly three metres thick and incorporating twenty-five towers all built re-using Roman walls and Roman-Visigothic edifices in granite. We walked around the walls and visited the underground water cistern and around the dusty interior but we were tired now so declared this to be the last visit of the day to leave a remaining few for the next morning.

The Plaza Mayor was busy but quieter tonight mostly because there weren’t any football matches taking place but the fountain which had been dry the previous evening was now erupting with water and sending magnificent plumes high into the blue sky. We sat at the same table and had San Miguel and wine and olives and we reflected on a busy day of awesome sightseeing and some amazing places.

My foot was aching and although I was trying to disguise it from Kim I think the limping gave it away so I was secretly pleased when she kindly offered to walk the five hundred metres (my estimate) to a mini-market that we had spotted earlier to buy a bottle of wine for the room and when she was out of sight I ordered another beer and tried to massage my aching ankle. She returned after twenty minutes complaining that it was further than I had suggested but at least she had the wine so we went back to the hotel to get ready for evening meal.

The meal the previous evening had been satisfactory but we had no plans to return there because we had seen a little place around the corner from the hotel where there were some pavement tables where it was warm and sheltered enough to dine out in the street and we had a pleasant, simple and unhurried meal before returning to the Plaza Mayor for a final drink and summary of what had been an excellent day in a Spanish city, which only a few years ago I would never have remotely thought of visiting.

Spain 2011, Mérida, World Heritage Site (1)

2011-11-30T09:57:00.001Z

After sleeping well we were looking forward to a five star start to the day, but I have to say that we were generally disappointed by the breakfast which was served in a dimly lit room with no staff and although there was plenty of choice the whole experience lacked any sort of vitality or atmosphere. Never mind because we weren’t here for the breakfasts we were here to see the city’s famous Roman ruins, which are some of the best preserved in Europe.

For a couple of weeks I had been suffering from a sore Achilles heel and it was especially bad this morning and that was a bit of a nuisance because there was going to be a lot of walking involved and there was a much see because Extremadura is considered to be the traditional boundary between Moorish and Christian Spain and Mérida itself has previously passed between Christian, Moorish, and even Portuguese control. Because of its rich and varied history it was declared a UNESCO World heritage site in 1993.

First of all we walked along a busy main road towards the crimson and saffron Plaza de Torres and near here was our first excavation to visit. We bought an all sites pass for €12 each which seemed like a good deal and went inside to see the remains of a house that had been the home and office of an important Roman citizen in the first century A.D. and after that we visited an adjacent ancient Roman burial site and cemetery.

It was getting hot as we made our way to one of the main attractions, the amphitheatre and theatre and as we walked we were aware of hundreds of school children arriving in buses, far too many for this to be a normal school trip occasion and we wondered what they were all doing here. We found the entrance to the site and all was revealed because today, and all week, there was a production of the Greco-Latin Youth Festival Theatre which meant that the theatre was in use and access was restricted. I was annoyed about that and wondered just how restricted?

We went first to the amphitheatre which was completed in 8 B.C. and was able to seat up to fifteen thousand spectators within the elliptical stadium. Last month we had visited the amphitheatre at Pula which accommodated twenty-thousand spectators but this seemed just as huge. It wasn’t in such good shape however because a lot of it has been subsequently dismantled for alternative building projects.

Mérida was the capital city of the most westerly Roman Province of Lusitania so this was an important place and the amphitheatre here would have been on the main gladiatorial and events circuit of the Empire and it continued to be used for this purpose until the fourth century. Today, on account of its past, Mérida is a sister city of Rome.

The site was beginning to fill up now with the school children and the volume levels inside the Roman Theatre (Teatro Romano) were beginning to build so we left the amphitheatre and walked the short distance to the theatre next door. Two thousand years ago this would have been a massive entertainment centre for the city and today we were going to see it being used for its original purpose. Although we couldn’t get down close to the stage area and the columns and the statues and the central seating area was full of chattering and excitable school children we could make our way around the upper circle and visitors were invited to stay awhile and watch the production. We sat and watched for about half an hour but it was a three hour show and struggling with interpretation we finally left and moved on.

After a drink and the inevitable dish of olives we walked past the amphitheatre house, which was closed but which we could see through the chain link fencing, and then made our way to the Roman Circus which would have been quite a way outside the walls of the Roman city. On the way we called in at a tourist information office and they told us to hurry because it would be closing soon for lunch.

Although we have now visited a number of Roman amphitheatres we had never been to a racetrack before and this place was stunning in its layout and sheer size. There is nothing left of the grandstands because these have all been dismantled and the stone used elsewhere but it was easy to imagine what it might have looked like simply by thinking about the Charlton Heston film ‘Ben Hur’ because it was in such a place as this that the Roman chariot races took place. Inside what was the arena it was peaceful and quiet with a carpet of rough grass and wild meadow flowers but with a little imagination it was possible to imagine what a place like this would have been like on race days when there was capacity for thirty-thousand boozed-up cheering spectators!

Leaving the circus we walked along another busy road looking for the site of the aqueducts because although they are not as spectacular or as complete as that of Segovia there are approximately eight kilometres of aqueduct running into and through the city. We found the largest and most complete, the Aqueducto los Milagros in a green park on the edge of the town with each towering arch topped with an untidy nest of twigs and a family of Storks.

We had been walking for four hours now and Kim’s whinge metre was beginning to twitch so this was a good time to find somewhere for lunch. It proved surprisingly difficult to find something suitable and one thing that Mérida did seem to lack was a good selection of street cafés and bars. The ones we liked were full and those that weren’t didn’t tempt us. Eventually, after we had passed underneath Trajan’s Arch on the way back to the centre we came across a place in a side alley off the main shopping street where, partly our own fault it has to be said, although we had a nice salad, we paid a hefty price for it and then sulked for half an hour or so afterwards. It seemed that we had paid the full price for a menu of the day even though we hadn’t chosen or eaten all of the courses. A lesson learned!

Spain 2011, Mérida and the Plaza Mayor

2011-11-29T07:19:00.001Z

Mérida is the capital city of the Autonomous region of Extremadura and is set in the heart of the Province of Badajoz. One of the most important Roman capital cities at the height of Roman occupation of Spain, the city today has one of the best preserved collections of Roman monuments anywhere in Europe. This is why we were here of course but right now all we wanted was a table in the early evening sunshine, a drink and a plate of olives so after we had approved the room we left immediately to the Plaza Mayor right outside the front door.

The Plaza was vibrant and busy with families enjoying the weather (it had rained the day before, the receptionist told us), young boys playing football and girls pat–a-cake and skipping. In the centre was an extravagant fountain and it was surrounded by arcades, shopping streets leaking away into shadows and tall colourful buildings decorated with palms and exotic plants. At each corner was a covered cafe so we choose one in the sun, next to some boys playing football and using palm trees for goalposts and sat and enjoyed the atmosphere.

What was noticeable was how well behaved the children were, how well dressed everyone was and how this seemed like one giant drawing room where an extended family was meeting up at the end of the day and having a sociable hour or two together.

As the afternoon turned to early evening we remembered that we needed some alcohol for the room because being a five star hotel there was no way we were going anywhere near the mini-bar. There were no shops around the square so we finished our drinks and joined the crowds of people walking through the main shopping street of the city. There were all kinds of shops but no mini-markets and we walked over a kilometre through the pedestrianised centre until we came to a busy main road, the Avenida de Extremadura, where we were certain there would be a shop because we had seen people with carrier bags, but being unsure which we to turn, left or right, it was time to ask directions.

There was a man on the pavement just watching the world go by and minding his own business so I asked him a straightforward one word question, “¿Supermercardo?” His face went curiously blank and I think that sudden shock came over him that happens to us all when someone speaks to us in a foreign language when we are not expecting it, or applies an unfamiliar accent to our own, and he was completely thrown off balance. He looked around for help but there was none so he shrugged his shoulders and rattled off some words in Spanish at top speed which I took to mean that he wasn’t sure, he was uncomfortable being accosted by foreigners and that we should leave him alone.

We decided to walk on and within twenty metres we were outside a huge ‘Discount Supermercardo’ and I don’t think I could have been so unintelligible that he couldn’t have understood that this was exactly what we were looking for.

The beer and wine was very reasonably priced although we had to buy a corkscrew again which bumped the bill up but it was all still quite cheap so having paid for our purchases and given a beggar, who was hanging around the door, €1,we made our way back to the Mérida Palace for a freshen up and a rest before going out again for evening meal.

The hotel was fine and there was no argument with its five star status but to be honest we were no more thrilled with it than last night’s one star Hostel El Cerro with its delightful room and beautiful view.

It was getting late by the time we had finished off a bottle of Rioja and were ready to go out so being unfamiliar with the city we didn’t walk too far and found a restaurant close by that seemed just about right. Actually it turned out not to be very thrilling and there was an elderly English couple in there complaining about the food and the service and although I wouldn’t have gone back it really wasn’t that bad and I enjoyed a Extremadura lamb stew and Kim a beef steak. We declared it delicious, there were no complaints from us!

Spain 2011, Cáceres

2011-11-28T07:36:00.001Z

Because of the city’s blend of Roman, Islamic, Northern Gothic and Italian Renaissance styles, the result of many tug-of-war battles fought here throughout history, Cáceres was declared a World Heritage City by UNESCO in 1986 and as we walked from the car park we passed into the old town through one of the eight hundred year old Muslim gates.

Saint George is the patron saint of the city and the story goes that he knew that there was a dragon terrorizing the population of Cáceres, so he captured it and brought it to the city; he told the citizens that if they all converted from Muslims to Christians he would kill the dragon. Fifteen thousand men converted (the women weren’t so important) so he slayed the dragon and Cáceres lived in peace.

The route from the gate took us to the immaculate Plaza Mayor which had recently been resurfaced and tidied up in preparation for a submission to be considered as Spain’s representative as the 2016 European capital of Culture. It was hot now under a clear blue sky so after we had walked the circumference of the square we took a table at the Meson ‘Los Portales’ and ordered drinks and tapas. Because of a communication problem (We can’t speak Spanish, the waiter couldn’t understand English) we didn’t get the one that we ordered but it was nice enough and we enjoyed it anyway.

After Alfonso IX of Leon conquered Cáceres in 1227 it flourished during the Reconquest and the Discovery of America, as influential Spanish families and nobles built homes and small palaces here, and many members of families from Extremadura participated in voyages to America where they made their fortune and then returned home to enjoy it.

The old quarter, with its numerous palaces, churches and convents is enclosed by the city wall, most of it Moorish in construction, many of the defence towers are still standing and there are even a few Roman stone blocks visible. From the Plaza Mayor we walked up the steps and through the Estrella de Churriguer archway. The two towers which flank the steps are the Bujaco Tower, which is the city’s best preserved monument and the gothic Púlpitos Tower built into the city wall.

Through the archway we entered the Plaza de Santa Maria where close by is the Palacio De Los Toledo-Moctezuma, which is a vivid reminder of the importance of Cáceres in the conquest of the Americas because it was built for Techichpotzin, the daughter of the Aztec ruler Montezuma by one of her three Spanish husbands.

Dominating the square was the Iglesia de Santa Maria so we slipped inside and took a look around carefully remembering to avoid the image of the Cristo de los Blázquez, also known as the Cristo Negro or Black Christ which, tradition has it, brought death to all those who looked at, or touched it. It cost just €1 to climb to the top of the bell tower so we paid and took the stone spiral staircase to the top where there were good views of the old town and beyond which we shared with all of the Storks that had built their untidy nests at the highest possible points.

From here we walked the old narrow streets. Past the Palacio De Los Golfines De Abajo, with its spectacular and architecturally important facade in a style that was widely used in Spain and in South America throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This Palacio was the house the Catholics Kings stayed in when they visited Cáceres, as guests of the Golfin family, the most important people in town, and the royal crest is carved above the doorway to prove it.

From the old town we came back to the square and walked into the shopping streets and around the old town walls from the outside and then with the afternoon slipping away we returned to the Plaza Mayor and to the car. If I was planning this trip again I would have stayed for a night in Cáceres but it was too late now and our accommodation was booked in Mérida about fifty kilometres south.

We estimated that we would be there in a little under an hour and at first all went according to plan until suddenly the motorway was closed and there was a diversion. Unfortunately no one had told the satnav navigator and she was totally confused. Actually everyone was totally confused and there were queues of traffic wondering where to go as the diversion signs unhelpfully just petered out to nothing. I took a decision to take the Badajoz road because although it wasn’t on the route to Mérida it was at least going south and I was confident that there would be a minor road to make the correction.

We started to travel south west and because this is such a sparsely populated region of Spain it turns out that there are not a lot of roads at all so we just kept going towards Badajoz and away from our intended destination. At one point the satnav suggested a farm track but I certainly wasn’t taking the VW Polo down there so we just kept going. Eventually after quite a lengthy detour we came across a road that was so new that it wasn’t on the map but it said Mérida so we trusted to luck and took it and started to drive in roughly the right direction

The journey that should have taken under an hour took nearly two and it was very late afternoon/early evening when we arrived at the Hotel Mérida Palace, parked the car and presented ourselves at reception for check in.

Spain 2011, Extremadura and Jamon Iberica

2011-11-25T09:38:00.001Z

Extremadura is an unspoilt part of the country made up of lush forests and majestic mountains, far removed from Spain’s crowded Costas both in terms of distance and character. It is one of Spain’s most sparsely populated regions, roughly the size of Belgium, and its distance from the coast has kept mass tourism at bay and relatively few tourists, either from Spain or elsewhere, venture to this western region of the Iberian Peninsula, sandwiched between the mountains of Portugal and the wide central plains of La Mancha.

We drove relentlessly west across vast agricultural plains peppered with towns and hamlets truly presenting us with glimpses of the real Spain, which is what we were keen to see. Beyond the fortified walls of the historic cities there are vast tracts of unspoiled countryside which attract flocks of rare birds from all over Europe and beyond. One of the most extraordinary sights in the whole of Spain is that of the region’s immense population of storks which build their huge nests on top of everything from palaces and telegraph poles to church spires and convent roofs.

The population of storks in Spain is rising, from six thousand seven hundred pairs thirty years ago to an estimated thirty-five thousand pairs today. In fact there are now so many White Storks in Spain that it is now second only to Poland who with fifty thousand birds has traditionally been the country with the most in Europe. This increase in numbers has been so dramatic that the conservation status has been changed from amber to green. Extremadura itself is believed to be home to more than eleven thousand storks along with many other rare and protected bird species which flourish in the nature reserves of the Province.

After a while we crossed the mighty Tagus and the road turned south with the Guadalupe Mountains to the east and the Monfrague National Park to the west. This it turns out is one of the most important raptor reserves in Europe and is the best place in Spain for a glimpse of Black Vultures and the rare Spanish Imperial Eagle. We kept a sharp eye out for a rare sighting but although we saw Buzzards, Hawks and Kites we didn’t see the rarer birds which sensibly keep well away from the road!

We drove through fields of grazing Black Iberian Pigs gorging themselves on acorns in preparation for being turned into the Spanish gastro specialty, Jamón ibérico. Iberian ham products are processed throughout Extremadura, making this region the country’s leading producer and in a sparsely populated region about a million hectares of open range are used by over one thousand-five hundred livestock breeders.

One of the fascinating things about the world’s great food is the way they are a product of geography and history combined into one mouthwatering gastronomic experience. The western provinces of Spain are a good example. About eight hundred years ago, it was decreed that every village would be responsible for maintaining a mixture of grass for grazing; cork trees for firewood; and holm oaks for shade, building materials and acorns. This woodland prairie, in effect a man-made ecosystem, once covered 90% of the region and while it is now much smaller, the dehesa, as it is called, still provides one of the world’s greatest hams: jamon iberico de bellota.

Bellota means ‘acorn’, and it so happens that the native black-hoofed pigs are remarkably fond of the vast piles of nuts that fall each autumn from the branches of the holm oaks. At this time of year, the cattle and sheep are shut away, and the pigs are turned loose to roam, snuffle and above all eat to their heart’s content. After two months of devouring up to ten kilograms of acorns a day, they roughly double their body weight. In winter the pigs are slaughtered and the legs cured with sea salt. Remarkably, though, the fattest animals are not yet even halfway through their journey from prarie to plate. The acorns on which they have been feeding are rich in oleic acid, the same fatty acid found in olives this means that their meat can cure for far longer than ordinary hams, from eighteen months to two years or even more.

Sold with its black hoof still attached, as an indication of its origins, it is kept on a special stand and carved into the thinnest of slices, to be served with a couple of eggs for breakfast, as evening tapas with a glass of salty fino sherry, or as a light lunch with crusty country bread and a little manchego cheese.

The ham of Extremadura is one of the best in the world and has won all the top awards. It is known as Pata Negra in Spain. Extremadura’s government had the “Dehesa de Extremadura” trademarked by the European Union in order to control the high quality standards and to prevent it from being counterfeited.

At Trujillo we left the Autovia de Extremadura and took the road to Cáceres across more open range with little sign of life until we reached the outskirts of the city, passed through the University quarter and then along an avenue with carefully manicured sycamore trees, all universally shaped, and then after driving into the old town and finding no vacant parking spaces we followed signs to an underground car park at the very edge of the old town.

Spain 2011, The Cueva El Aguila

2011-11-22T08:45:00.001Z

After an undisturbed night’s sleep in the quiet village we woke to a perfect blue sky and expansive views over the countryside and the surprisingly green fields sweeping down towards Talavera de la Reina and beyond that the Montes de Toledo rising through the gathering cloud. Breakfast wasn’t served until half past nine so we had time for a walk into town where we were expecting to see a market in the Plaza de Torres but we must have got our days mixed up because the Plaza was quite empty. We wandered around the streets that were beginning to stir into life and saw the same old men who had been there the previous night and clearly have nothing more to do all day in this tiny place than hang around the main square.

Breakfast at the El Cerro was excellent, just a simple affair of Iberian ham, manchego cheese and toast with olive oil and mashed tomato, called pan tumaca, but it was perfect and reminded us of our breakfasts in Carmona in Andalusia in 2008. One of the hotel staff was very friendly and spoke good English and was interested in our travels around Spain and intrigued that we picked out of the way places like Pedro Bernardo instead of the well known tourist places and we told him that we liked it this way.

We told him that we were driving to Cáceres and he became quite insistent that we should take a short detour from our route and visit the Cuevas El Aguila, the Eagle Caves, in the foothills of the Gredos mountains but we had a long way to go and were not sure if we liked caves enough to go to the trouble. When we checked out a few minutes later he reminded us again to make the visit and assured us that we would not be disappointed so it seemed rude not to go so we set off in the direction that he carefully marked on our map.

We drove out of the Sierra de Gredos which is a mountain range in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula, located between Ávila, Cáceres, Madrid and Toledo and has been declared a regional park. We were on the road to Cáceres anyway so it wouldn’t delay us to long to visit the caves and when they began to be signposted we turned off and irritated the satnav navigator who immediately insisted that we turn around – so we switched her off!

We followed a quiet rural road to a large but empty car park and parked close to the entrance and still not convinced that this was a good idea made our way to the kiosk and paid €7 each entrance and waited five minutes for the guide to take us inside. As soon as he appeared and escorted us underground we were immediately glad that we made the detour because this was an awesome underground cavern, over twelve million years old and inside a great hall of ten thousand square metres and a kilometre of pathway to walk through the great stalactites and stalagmites that rose in majestic multi-coloured columns throughout the cave.

The guide apologised several times for being unable to speak English but we reassured him that this didn’t matter because so much of his narrative would have been superfluous and we could imagine for ourselves what he was telling us. As usual in underground caves he kept pointing out natural sculptures that, with a lot of imagination, had a resemblance to familiar icons – the Madonna and Child (several times), Bulls, Matadors and famous Spanish Kings and Queens.

The temperature inside the cave is constant throughout the year, with an average of twenty degrees celsius and it was this that led to its discovery in 1963 by a group of children who noticed water vapour escaping through a hole in the ground caused by the difference in temperature of the caves and the outside. They crawled inside to investigate and discovered the Aladdin’s cave with all of its natural treasure and a year later the owners of the land, obviously sensing that there was gold in them thar hills, made it accessible and opened it to the public.

It took about thirty minutes to complete the circuit of concrete paths and various viewing platforms and when we emerged back into the daylight we were so pleased that we had taken the advice to visit because this was one place that was certainly worth a detour.

The original plan was to drive to Extremadura and stop at the town of Trujillo but the combination of the later than usual breakfast and the unscheduled visit to the caves meant that our original timings now had to be reworked so we decided to miss Trujillo and drive the two hundred kilometres straight to Cáceres instead. The drive was easy along a delightfully spacious motorway as we drove in a relentless straight line across Spain’s Central Plateau at some point crossing into the Province of Extremadura, the fifth largest in Spain.

Spain 2011, Pedro Bernardo in the Gredos Mountains

2011-11-21T09:52:00.001Z

We left Talavera de la Reina without too much difficulty except that we emerged from the underground car park onto a one way street and managed to cross the River Tagus twice until we found the road that headed north towards the Gredos Mountains, but once out of the city motoring was straight-forward and the satnav lady seemed to be a lot better than she was a few months ago in Germany so we didn’t have any fall-outs!

As we headed north we began to slowly climb as we entered an area of green scrubland littered with granite boulders where the verges of the road were a riot of red poppies and yellow daisies. Ahead of us we could see the mountains and the tops were covered in a few stubborn streaks of snow in the protection of the shadows where the May sun couldn’t quite reach. We were still in bright sunshine but ahead of us the sky was a dramatic dark grey, brooding, threatening and angry.

A short way out of Talavera we crossed the site of a famous battle of the Peninsula War where Sir Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington) won one of his most successful and famous battles. On 27th and 28th July 1809 the Battle of Talavera took place between the Anglo-Spanish army and the French. It was a total allied victory and during the fight Talavera was hardly damaged and Wellesley’s army expelled the French from the city and the surrounding area. The battle is also the setting for the fictional event of ‘Sharpe’s Eagle’ the first book written in Bernard Cornwell’s ‘Sharpe’ series.

The drive north took us into the neighbouring Province of Castilla y Leon and through the little town of Buenaventura, which was closed, and then the climb became more dramatic as we reached almost one thousand metres when we made the approach to the mountain village of Pedro Bernardo. We managed to stay just short of the cloud and the sun was still shining as we drove through several tricky hair-pin bends and into the village and easily found the Hostal El Cerro in the middle of the village on a dramatic bend in the road overlooking the valley below.

Although only two star it was an excellent hotel with a great room, a superb view and with excellent weather the ideal place for an hour or so of sunbathing on the very private terrace. After a while the grey sky started to muscle in and there was a drop or two of rain but inside there was a Jacuzzi to experiment with and relax in and after a half an hour or so it had blown over and the blue sky reasserted itself and there were good views over the rural hinterland with forests of elms, pines, chestnut and hazelnut trees and waterfalls and rivers making the town a scenic paradise.

The origins of Pedro Bernardo are not clear; the original name of the village was Navalasolana, and there is a popular local legend that talks about the leaders of two groups of shepherds, Pedro Fernández and Bernardo Manso. They started to fight and struggled to get the control of the village and finally, the feudal lord of the council came up with a solution and decided to change the name of Navalasolana to Pedro and Bernardo to achieve peace and stop the struggles between the two squabbling bands.

In the early evening we walked into Pedro Bernardo, passing first through the Plaza de Torres and then the Plaza Mayor where groups of mainly old men were sitting in groups and discussing the big important issues of the day. We walked through the twisting narrow streets flanked by crumbling buildings with precarious wooden balconies and barely inhabitable houses and we wandered aimlessly through the streets until we arrived at the church somewhere near the top of the village. It was nothing special and really hardly worth the walk so we made our way back down and stayed for a while in the main square and had a drink had a bar where there was reluctance to serve us on account of the fact that the owner and bar staff were watching a bull fight from Seville on the television.

The Hostel El Cerro was a perfect place for our first night, a rare mix of rustic charm and modern sophistication and we had no hesitation in eating in the hotel dining room. It was only eight o’clock which seemed to surprise the staff but the chef was already there (in the bar) and we tucked in to an excellent Chuletón de Ávila, an excellent cut of prime beef steak that we had enjoyed only last year on a visit to that city.

Although it was still quite early, we had been a long day and had had an early start so after the evening meal we went back to the room and sat on the balcony with a final glass of red wine and watched the stars twinkling overhead in the sky and went to bed optimistic that tomorrow would be another fine day.

Spain 2011, Talavera de la Reina

2011-11-18T06:36:00.001Z

With an objective to visit all of the regions of Spain and already travelled to the more obvious places such as Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla y Leon it was time this visit to be more adventurous. I have excluded from that short list places such as Galicia, Cantabria, The Basque Country and Catalonia because although we have been there I have become aware that these, although part of the state of Spain, are not really Spain at all and something quite separate and different.

On this occasion we choose Extremadura to the south west of Madrid, which the guide books claimed to be the least visited part of Spain. With no convenient international airport in the Province it was a choice between Seville and Madrid and the best available flights were to the capital about three hundred kilometres away from the cities of Cáceres and Mérida.

In the week before the journey the BBC had been promising rain and cloud which was disappointing so we packed appropriately with rain coats and umbrellas and when we took off from Luton Airport on an early morning flight the sun was beginning to rise in a blue sky and we became resigned to leaving good conditions at home and flying into colder, wetter weather.

Across the United Kingdom and the Bay of Biscay the weather remained clear and then we crossed the coast of Spain somewhere near Santander and we could see the Picos de Europa mountains and the plains of Castilla y Leon and it appeared that we may have been unnecessarily pessimistic but then as we approached central Spain and Madrid the clouds began to build over the mountains and it looked as though for once the BBC was correct.

By the time we reached Madrid however there was improvement and after we had landed and made our way through arrivals and car hire the sun was winning the competition with the clouds for control of the sky and encouraged by this we left the airport and began our journey west. In anticipation of rain we had an alternative plan to drive via El Escorial and visit the Royal Palace but we had been there before and with the sun shining we stuck to our original plan to drive to the city of Talavera de la Reina in the north of the Province of Castilla-La Mancha.

It was about one hundred kilometres for this first leg of the journey and the Autovia was practically empty so we enjoyed a trouble free, toll free, ride all the way to the city, which, with the help of the satnav lady navigator we found easily and parked the Volkswagen Polo in a convenient underground car park close to the centre.

Talavera de la Reina is a city in the western part of the province of Toledo and is the second-largest centre of population in Castile-La Mancha (after Albacete) and the largest in the province, larger than the city of Toledo itself, although the more famous city naturally remains the provincial capital. This means that to a certain extent Talavera is a city with an inferiority complex and this isn’t helped by the fact that it isn’t really a primary tourist destination but we are keen to visit as many Spanish cities as possible and we were not going to exclude it from our itinerary.

We emerged from the underground car park into the heart of the city park where there were fountains and statues and leafy walks leading to the Basilica del Prado where we walked and then got confused looking for the city centre. It was lunchtime and we were hungry so we quickly orientated ourselves and then confident about the direction of travel made our way to the city centre where in one of the satellite squares we found some tables in the sun and enjoyed our first tapas lunch.

During the 15th and 16th centuries, Talavera achieved great recognition, thanks to its ceramics. Wonderful pieces of pottery and Talavera tiles are found in the main museums of the world and in the most luxurious palaces all over Europe. The city is internationally known for its products, which King Philip II used as tiled revetments in many of his works, such as the monastery of El Escorial. The nickname of Talavera de la Reina is ‘The City of Pottery’ and Mexico’s famous Talavera pottery was named after the city. We could have guessed this because after lunch we walked through the old city towards the River Tagus and our route took us past a succession of similar ceramics workshops and shops.

Eventually we reached the river which is the longest in the Iberian Peninsula and the twelfth longest in Europe. It is just over a thousand kilometres long and flows all the way to Lisbon in Portugal where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Along its course there are several dams and diversions supply drinking water to most of central Spain, including Madrid, and Portugal, while dozens of hydroelectric stations create abundant power. The source of the Tagus is the Fuente de García, in the Montes Universales, Sierra de Albarracín Comarca. The main cities it passes through are Aranjuez, Toledo, Talavera de la Reina and Alcántara in Spain, and Abrantes, Santarém, Almada and Lisbon in Portugal.

The water was brown and dirty and flowing freely, swollen by all the recent rain that had fallen and we walked alongside it for a while back in the general direction of the car. The sun was hot now and the sky was cloudless so instead of leaving straight away we stopped for a drink in a little café in the park where we had a beer and thanked the BBC for getting the weather forecast wrong as usual!

Greece 2011, Athens and the Varvakios Agora (Central Market)

2011-11-16T21:47:00.001Z

On the last day we deliberately woke early because we wanted to return to the busy commercial street close to the hotel and visit the central market called the Varvakios Agora which was only a hundred metres or so away and housed inside a huge building with a dangerously crumbling facade that looked as though it might catastrophically collapse into the street at any moment.

It was still early and the market was barely open but we dodged inside alongside the delivery vans and the first few customers of the day and went first to the hall of the butchers. This was as far away as it possible to get from the sanitized, styrofoam, plastic wrapped supermarket meat that we are familiar with in the United Kingdom. You can’t pretend that these cuts don’t come from an animal when the entire skinned body is hanging in front of you! It smelled authentic as well as the aroma of fresh flesh, blood and offal just filled the air and butchers in scarlet stained aprons attended their stalls and invited us to inspect the merchandise. We looked but explained that we wouldn’t be buying because Easyjet might have had something to say if we tried to take a sheep’s head or a goat’s carcass on board the plane later today in our hand luggage.

We made our way into the seafood section with seawater an inch deep sloshing over our sandals so that we had to pull up our trousers so that they didn’t get drenched at the bottoms. For sale here was just about every conceivable fish in the oceans, ranging from the smallest of sea creatures to massive shark and tuna steaks as well as nearly every possible variation of sea floor dwelling crustacean, mollusc or bivalve known to man. It wasn’t like the fishmonger stall at Morrison’s that’s for certain!

On the streets outside the market there were untidy little shops, just kiosks really, selling fruit and vegetables, cheese, olives, nuts and herbs and spices and whilst we couldn’t really transport meat, fish or cheese, we did purchase some little bags of spices to take home and after the transaction was completed I began to worry about taking these little multi-coloured bags of suspicious looking powder through customs later this morning.

The whole of Athinas Street was rather run down but was full of character and vibrancy with roadside kiosks, shoe shops, bakeries, coffee bars, army surplus stores, pet shops, each with a menagerie of animals, and hardware stores. All of the shops were preparing for the day’s trading – transferring stock outside onto the pavements where it would stay for twelve hours or so collecting dust and grime from the traffic along this busy street before the displays would be dismantled and taken back inside overnight. This was the beating heart of Athens in contrast to the tourist main shopping street of Ermou or the overpriced flea market at Monastaraki and we liked it.

There wasn’t a lot of time to hang around however so we returned to the hotel for our breakfast and then we packed our bags, checked out and paid the bill and walked back along Athinas and Ermou towards the airport bus stop at Syntagma. Even at half past eight in the morning the sun was flooding the street with bright light and heat and we were forced to walk in the shade so that we didn’t get too sweaty as we carried and pulled our bags.

We were taking the bus once more because we still weren’t too confident about using the metro and we were a bit edgy again but we needn’t have been because the one hour journey to the airport inevitably passed without incident and by mid morning we were checked in and in the departure lounge and ready for our four hour flight back to Manchester.

We had enjoyed our fifth back packing adventure to the Greek islands in as many years, we had returned to some old favourites, Ios, Antiparos and Katapola and added some new islands to our travelogue, Koufonisia, Paros and Egalia. We had had a wonderful time and we had been fortunate to miss the strikes and the travel disruption but as we waited we agreed that next year we just might do something different!

Greece 2011, Antiparos to Athens

2011-11-14T11:39:00.001Z

When I woke in the morning it was a peculiar sensation but my head was still swaying as though I was still on Captain Ben’s boat and the bed was gently bobbing from side to side and I was happy with this because it was probably good preparation because we were shortly to take another small boat ride.

We had a ten-thirty appointment with the Blue Star ferry back to Piraeus but first we had to get back to Paroikia which meant a twenty minute taxi-ferry crossing to Paros so we skipped breakfast at the hotel, settled up and arrived in port in time for the short crossing to the larger island neighbour and the main port. We sat on the top deck and listened to the rumble of the engine and the growl of the exhaust as the boat negotiated the slight swell and delivered us to the quay side with enough time to spare for breakfast at a harbour side café and a quick trip to the supermarket for a couple of cans of Mythos for the journey.

The Blue Star Paros arrived on time and we made our way to the top deck and despite the fact that it was full to capacity we found seats at our preferred location on the starboard side of the boat so that we would be in the sun for the journey and where we waited for twenty minutes as the temperature rose as the sun got hotter and hotter before everyone was on board and the ferry finally cast off and slipped out of port.

Today the Aegean was clearer than I have ever seen it before and it was easy to pick out the islands of Mykonos, Delos, Tinos and Syros to the north and Naxos which steadily disappeared into the horizon behind us.

The ferry passed through the narrow channel between Kea and Kythnos and we were so close that we could clearly make out the small villages and the whitewashed towns clinging to what are really just mountain peaks poking out of the surface of the water and then shortly after that we could see the mainland and we began the final leg of the journey towards Piraeus. We had been sailing for nearly four hours now and the time had begun to drag but then we could see Athens, a gleaming mantle of white concrete spilling down to the sea and soon we were docked and in contrast to the slow pace of the islands pitched back into the madness of Piraeus.

Despite the robbery experience our plan was to take the metro into the city and we were edgy and nervous as we queued for tickets because in a Greek line it is essential to stay as close to the person in front (even if they are a pickpocket) because if you leave as little as a centimetre of space from the person in front then someone will interpret this as an opportunity to push in. The Greeks see queuing as a waste of time and an inconvenience and dislike it almost as much as the French and several people cut in front of me as I waited in line. I concluded that one thing’s for sure is that if there was an event at the Olympic Games for queuing then Greece and France would be an almost certainty for the final!

We negotiated the metro without any disasters and after emerging from the subterranean world we quickly found our accommodation, the curiously named Hotel Fresh, and settled in. It was a good hotel that I had paid for with Airmiles so seemed almost free and it was in a great area full of character that some of the hotel reviewers didn’t seem to appreciate but we liked it anyway. While Kim unpacked I walked along the main road lined with local shops full of character and found a place selling local wine in plastic bottles and a kiosk selling beer and made some purchases and returned to the room.

Let me remind you however that Athens was in the grip of a domestic and economic crisis so there was an edginess about the city and an unusually large number of police on duty at the main tourist spots as we walked to Monastaraki, The Plaka, Syntagma and Ermous and it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps they were preparing for a demonstration or worse still a riot so we retraced our steps to the hotel and stopped at a gyros place where we planned to have a roadside meal but there was only time for a beer as they took the tables and chairs inside and secured the shutters and closed. We noticed that every shop along the street was doing the same and the demonstration/riot concern returned.

Everything seemed settled enough however so later on we walked again to Monastaraki where we had a final holiday meal and then strolled back along a street of aluminium shutters all daubed in graffiti in various grades of obscenity and back to the hotel where we stood on the voyeuristic balcony and stared into people’s homes in the adjacent buildings as we finished off the plastic bottle of red wine before going to bed for the last time in Greece this year.

Greece 2011, Captain Ben’s Boat

2011-11-12T12:09:00.001Z

On the previous evening the owners of the Kastro hotel had persuaded us to book a trip for a full day boating adventure and a trip around the island with Captain Ben. They had promised that it would be great fun and that the weather would be perfect and after a couple of glasses of red wine we were easily talked into handing over our money.

So, the next day, after breakfast, we packed our bags and walked along to the harbour in time for the ten o’clock departure. By the time we arrived the boat was beginning to fill up and on the top deck passengers were staking their claims to the sun beds and claiming their preferred spot on the seats and we sat and waited while the last few passengers made their way along the quay side to board the boat. We were outnumbered by Scandanavians but there were some French and Germans as well but I am fairly certain that we were the only English on board.

At ten o’clock the boat set off and it just about now that we began to ask ourselves the question that why, for two people who get bored on a beach after fifteen minutes or so we had agreed to take part in this seven hour trip around the island. First the boat went to Paros to collect some more Scandanavians and then it headed out to sea and Captain Ben apologised for the wind and gentle swell that to be quite honest was barely noticable.

We headed north until we reached some islands, just rocks really, but one of them large enoughto have a small white church on it and the captain manoeuvred the boat into a small bay, dropped anchor and invited us to go over the side for a first swim. Once back on board I realised that we had only been going for about an hour and it looked like a very long day ahead.

Having gone around the north of the island we now started to head south and there were some famous people’s holiday houses to look out for. Apparently Antiparos is becoming a favourite with Hollywood ‘A’ listers and Captain Ben pointed out the favourite homes of Tom Hanks, Madonna and Angelina Jolie and this reminded me of my boat trip around the island of Capri in 1976 where there were more famous people’s houses than I could ever remember (except for Roger Moore and Sophia Loren).

We stopped at a beach for another swim and we took the opportunity to do a spot of beachcombing and came across some more driftwood additions for our model boat project and after that we sailed for about an hour before reaching an empty beach on the uninhabited island of Despotiko where we were set ashore to wait for lunch. After a while Captain Ben and the crew came back with some appetizers of grilled squid and spicy Syros sausage and some local ouzo to wash it down. The food was excellent and far surpassed our modest expectations but back on board it got even better with a barbequed meat kebabs and salad, plenty of red wine and beer and finally delicious grilled sardines.

After the crew had tidied up after lunch the journey continued along the coastline and past some white gnarled cliffs that reminded me of Milos and then there was another invitation to go swimming and snorkelling into and through the caves that punctuated the coastline. The alcohol was flowing freely now and people were beginning to lose their inhibitions. There was some wild partying at the front of the boat and a group of Swedish women came to life when the captain played an ABBA tape and they started the top deck dancing. If there had been a slight swell before the boat was really rocking now and Kim was quick to join in.

There was one final swimming stop in between the islands of Paros and Antiparos and then Captain Ben made for home, stopping first in Paros and then returning to Antiparos to finally moor up. It had been a fabulous trip and a great cruise and despite my earlier misgivings the seven hours had simply flown by and it had been a wonderful day.

Back on dry land we dropped off at a bar on the way back to the hotel but after all those hours on the water we couldn’t get our land legs back straight away and both of us were continuing to sway in motion with the boat that we had spent the day getting used to. Later we spent some time around the pool bar and then walked back into the village. We would have found somewhere to eat but we were still quite full after all the food on board the boat so we skipped evening meal but had a quiet drink down by the harbour and reflected on our holiday. This was our final night on the islands and tomorrow we would be heading back to Athens for a night in the city before flying home in two day’s time.

Greece 2011, Antiparos

2011-11-11T16:41:00.001Z

The hotel Kastro was excellent, we had stayed there before and had requested the same room but the owner insisted on upgrading us at no extra cost to a superior room and we were not going to argue with that!

In the morning we had an excellent breakfast under a gazebo in the garden where we planned a leisurely day in and around the village and the beaches.

We walked down what I suppose was the main street with plastic bollards to stop vehicles passing but which delivery vehicles simply ignored and drove straight over anyway, past quaint old mini-markets and twisting streets running in every direction and local women sitting chatting to their neighbours in front of the doors to their houses as they have done forever.

The main town of Kastro is a traditional Cycladic settlement, full of whitewashed cubic houses with little flowered balconies and blue painted doors and windows. My favourite doors are in the Cyclades where, next to the white that we all associate with the islands, the prevailing colour is blue. It turns out that the widespread use emanates from an ancient belief that the sky-blue shade of turquoise has the power to keep evil away. It is believed that the radiation of the colour composes a sort of invisible shield, which prevents the approach of bad spirits. Blue is used everywhere in the Cyclades, church cupolas, windows, doors, walls, staircases, fences and also as blue ‘belts’ around buildings, which supposedly provide protection against evil.

The road took us down to the harbour and we walked around it and to a gritty beach that was lined with armirikia trees with whitewashed trunks that provided welcome shade from the hot sun and we sat for a while and dangled our feet in the cool water. About an hour on a beach is more than long enough for me so just before boredom clicked in we left and wandered back to the village along the harbour side where there was a sudden frenzy of excitement when a fisherman landed a huge fish and set about gutting it and preparing it for the dinner table there and then by the side of the road.

On the way back we visited the ancient kastro that has a quaint but neglected mix of houses, some inhabited but others abandoned and crying out for refurbishment. There were some little shops and a folk lore museum that didn’t take long to look around and by mid morning it was time for a first mythos of the day and after that we ambled back to the hotel for a swim in the pool and a drink on the terrace. The terrace was blue of course with tubs of neglected geraniums, a crooked olive tree and pink bougainvillea tumbling down from overhead trellising.

While we sat and read our books on the balcony of the room the only thing to disturb us was the constant calling of the cicadas which are at their most noisy in the heat of the day. Apparently a single insect can achieve a sound level of one hundred and twenty decibels which is the equivalent of a pneumatic drill or a chain saw which is a very impressive ratio of sound to body weight. A human shouting like that would probably sound like Krakatoa erupting and the only man who can get remotely close to this is Brian Blessed.

There was happy hour at the poolside so before we went out in the evening we took advantage of that and after the sun disappeared walked all the way back down to the harbour, which was busy again. In the morning the little town seemed to have an end of season quietness about it but by the evening it had really livened up and restaurants, tavernas and chic boutiques had all opened their doors for business and the main street had a sense of vitality about it.

Anti-Paros felt very cosmopolitan and with no riff-raff about it felt just a little bit special. We poked around the shops but I have to admit that I do not have the same amount of enthusiasm as Kim for sparkly things on chains, baby clothes or sun tops and so quickly became bored. Kim sensed this of course and so we moved on and found a seat at the same taverna on account of the fact that we had really enjoyed it there the night before.

Greece 2011, Ios to Antiparos

2011-11-08T08:33:00.001Z

Although we were travelling to Antiparos today the ferry wasn’t due to leave until very late afternoon so we had most of the day ahead of us to spend on Ios. After our final breakfast with more delicious figs we packed our bags in preparation for later departure and then walked to the harbour.

This morning we walked to the white sentinal church on a headland overlooking the harbour, the church where we had been a couple of nights earlier to the wedding and the christening and the church where we walk to everytime we stay on Ios. Usually there is a reason for this because we are beginning the walk to Valmos Beach a couple of kilometres further on to see the naturists but today we had no such intention so it was a rather unneccessary thing to do. We have photographed this church from every possible angle and captured every single detail but Kim wanted to go again just in case there was the remotest possibility that we had missed something on the previous five visits.

There wasn’t of course and after we had eventually satisfied ourselves on this point we walked back down the harbour, past the campsite that was now closed for the summer, the Carrefour supermarket, the swanky boats rolling around on their moorings and clinking their masts like ouzo glasses and back to the village where we spotted Martin at the Octopus restaurant and joined him for a while and shared a Mythos moment.

Eventually we left him there and walked along the blue flag beach and paddled in the shallow water at the edge of the sand. I imagine this beach gets busy in summer but it was only sparsely attended today and there was plenty of space for everyone including Lisa who we came across sunbathing in a Robinson Crusoe sort of way far away from everyone else. The season was coming to an end on Ios, the clubs and discotheques were all closed and the hotels were beginning to dismantle their beachside sunshades and put away their loungers for the winter and there was almost a sense that they would be glad when it was all over and the final ferry took the last holidaymaker away from the island.

We didn’t make the mistake of going for lunch today but walked back up the hill to Homer’s where we spent the rest of the afternoon around the pool drinking, chatting and taking the occasional swim in the hot afternoon sunshine. But soon it was time to leave so we said our goodbyes, did our final last minute packing and, under pressure from Kim, I agreed to dispose of my favourite blue tee shirt. I had had it since 1995 and it had been to Greece with me thirteen times but I had to agree that it was showing extreme signs of wear now so I thought the Greek islands was the appropriate place to leave it!

It was a High Speed ferry to Paros so it only took a little over two hours to reach Paroikia but at eight o’clock it was dark and busy and we couldn’t find the passenger ferry to Antiparos just around the corner so we had to take a fifteen minute bus journey to an alternative car ferry which left at eight-thirty and got us across to the small island off the west coast of Paros in just a few minutes where we were met by the owner of the Hotel Kastro and driven to our last accommodation on the islands for this year.

From a previous visit in 2008 we knew where we wanted to eat but three years later and in the dark we just couldn’t find it so when we came across somewhere similar we changed our plans and ate there instead. The food was excellent but we had the slight misfortune to sit on a table next to a large party of French folk and whilst this wasn’t a problem in itself what was irritating was that they seemed to be in a sort of who caught smoke the most cigarettes competition and although the tables were semi outside the acrid smoke kept blowing across out table whenever they lit up. To compensate for this irritation it made me smile when I overheard that they had to order their meals in English – I bet that stuck in their throats as much as their foul smoke collected in my nostrils!

At the end of the night, after our excellent meal we were about to leave when two of the waiters suddenly appeared with bouzoukis and started to entertain with the first instantly recognisable chords of Zorba the Greek. We couldn’t possibly leave now so we switched tables away from the drifting smoke, ordered a second carafe of red wine and stayed for another forty-five minutes or so to watch the show and finally when it was all over we left and made our weary way back to the hotel.

Greece 2011, Various Ways of Travelling to Homer’s Inn on Ios

2011-11-07T09:19:00.002Z

Antonia and Vangelis – Homer’s Inn Hotel

If one thing was an absolute certainty it was that day twelve of the holiday was going to be very similar to day eleven but without the rugby football in the middle of it. Martin was going to watch the grand prix but not being a big fan of formula one racing and with Kim not being a big fan of sport of any kind we declined the opportunity to join him. To be honest, I considered myself fortunate to have watched the match the day before and I didn’t want to push my luck!

First thing we went down to the harbour again to buy our final ferry tickets, from Ios to Paros on the next day and Paros back to Athens on Thursday. It was a good job that we bought the Blue Star Paros tickets to Piraeus today because the man in the ticket office said that out of the one thousand five hundred passenger places on board there were only forty tickets left! If we had left it another day then we might have been thrown into another transportation dilemma.

After a deliberately long drawn out breakfast with fresh figs that Vangelis had picked specially for us that morning from his garden and which tasted delicious we just sat for a while on the balcony and then made our way to the swimming pool in anticipation of a completely unremarkable day.

Now, we have been visiting Ios since 2006 (missing only 2010 when we went to the Dodecanese islands instead) but that is no achievement at all compared with Martin, Lisa and Robin who have been returning to Homer’s Inn every year for nearly a quarter of a century. Robin, being a solo traveller, is not surprisingly more adventurous than most and this morning he entertained us with his tales of his various ways of getting himself to the island. Ferries of course from mainland or nearby islands and flying, but by a variety of alternative routes and different carriers including on one occassion, a seaplane into the harbour; by train and part way on the Orient Express via Sarajevo, and bravest (or maybe daftest) of all by car, driving through central Europe and the Balkans, through Serbia, Kosovo and Bulgaria. This year he had flown to Athens and today was his last day as tomorrow he had to return to the mainland where he was planning to stay in Piraeus for a couple of nights while drinking some of the bars dry!

Robin, Panos (Homer’s Inn Boss), Martin and Lisa

It was hot again now so we decided to leave the harbour and as we walked past the reception Vangelis stopped us to talk about the weather. Being an ex merchant seaman he has an unusually big interest in the climate and he gave us a forecast for the next few days. I understand why we in the United Kingdom are fixated with meteorological conversations but I don’t really expect it in Greece but he explained in great detail about wind directions and what difference that was likely to make to daily conditions. “Tomorrow will be sunny with a little breeze”, he explained in his throaty growl, “and the next two days also, but after that I am not sure”. To myself I presumed a wild guess that this would also be sunny with a little breeze because generally in Greece I find the weather to be very, very reliable!

Down at the harbour we thought we might have a drink and eat some calamari at the Octopus restaurant but we were a bit late and they were shutting down the kitchen for the afternoon so we had to find an alternative in the main square where we sat in the shade, had a bottle of Mythos and a rather unnecessary lunch which when we had finished we hoped wouldn’t spoil our evening meal.

For the rest of the day we did very little, walked back to Homer’s, sat at the pool bar and went occasional swimming, later Kim’s astonishing good run of luck at cards continued for another day and as an indication of just how leisurely the day was, in the early evening, we counted the goats in the next field which had been brought there with bells clanging noisily to graze for a while on the surprisingly green grass in the fields in the middle of the village.

Later we returned to the Octopus and ordered the plates of food that we had watched the local fishermen eating the previous night and we had a thoroughly pleasant evening in the company of local people while we saw the fishing boats being prepared for the night’s work ahead, watched the moonlight dancing on the water and listened to gentle lapping of the water against the harbour walls. Perfect, but sadly our last night as tomorrow we must leave for Anti-Paros.

Greece 2011, Rugby World Cup and a Baptism

2011-11-06T08:02:00.000Z

After an early night we woke soon after sunrise so with an hour or so to wait until breakfast we walked down to the harbour to check ferry times and watch the place starting to prepare for the day ahead and then returned to Homer’s for breakfast on the terrace.

I wouldn’t normally watch TV while on holiday but was prepared to make an exception today because England were playing Argentina in the Rugby World Cup and it was being shown at a bar in the village at eleven o’clock so we made arrangements to meet Martin and Lisa there and then went for a walk to the village for an hour or so before it started.

We walked to the top and admired the views of the port and on the way down stopped to talk to some fellow travellers. As we exchanged stories I saw what I thought was a lizard but quickly realised that it was a snake. Olive brown and about a metre long it slithered by and disappeared into a tiny crack in the steps. Later I asked Antonia who was surprised to hear of a sighting in the town and told me that a local naturist had reintroduced these serpents to the island and that they were poisonous. I am all for preserving the natural environment but that is just plain daft, as daft as Eugene Schieffelin introducing the starling into the USA or Thomas Austin releasing rabbits into the Australian outback. Daft also because although there is a medical centre on Ios for anything serious the only treatment is on the mainland and a snake bite would mean airlifting by ambulance back to Athens.

We walked around the steep and narrow streets and alleys to the windmills and through the shops that line the main street through the village and back to the main square and the sports bar where we duly watched England kick off their world cup campaign with a nervous and unconvincing victory against the South Americans. When the match was over we returned to Homer’s down the dusty track and after a short sojourn went for another walk to the harbour and along the coast road to the little church on the headland.

The road out of the village runs past the business end of the harbour and there were some brightly painted boats that had just landed their overnight catch and were negotiating sales with local people and restaurant owners in a babble of animated activity. It looked like a good night’s work and the trading was brisk. The fish looked interesting and on closer examination of the produce it soon becomes clear why we have to put up with stock shortages whilst the most of the rest of Europe have such an abundance of choice; we are just far too fussy about what we will eat and our preference for fish is restricted to two or three species that we have fished into crisis and near extinction whilst in Greece, as elsewhere, they will eat a much greater variety of sea food. We like to buy our fish in little blue polystyrene trays without heads, tails or entrails and ready for the frying pan but here the trays were brimming with fish so fresh that it was still alive and flapping about and winking at the prospective purchasers who were examining it.

On top of the church there was a Greek flag that was flapping uncontrollably in the wind and trying desperately to separate itself from the pole that was hanging onto it. The blue and white flag of Greece is called ‘Galanolefci’, which simply means ‘blue and white’. Originally it was blue with a white diagonal cross but the cross has now been moved to the upper left corner, and is symbolic of the Christian faith. Being a seafaring nation, the blue of the flag represents the colour of the sea. White is the colour of freedom, which is something that is very important to the Greeks after years of enslavement under foreign domination. The nine stripes of the flag each symbolise a syllable in the Greek motto of freedom: E-LEY-THE-RI-A-I-THA-NA-TOS, which translates literally into ‘Freedom or Death’.

There were preparations at the church for a wedding and a christening and later Kim returned to see the wedding and I joined her later for the baptism to see the ceremony of a little girl being accepted into the Christian Orthodox Church, which is a major event in the life of any Greek family. A Greek baptism is a sacred and religious rite that is performed on a baby to cleanse the soul and renounce Satan. The baptism is a complex initiation that starts with an exorcism and officially ends forty days later when the baby is presented to the congregation to receive Holy Communion.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to stop for the full forty days and we began to feel a bit like intruders on a private family event so before it was all over we left the church and returned to the harbour and instead of going to the Chora, tonight we ate next to the fishing boats that were being prepared for another night at sea at a place called the Octopus where, at pavement tables next to the fishermen, we were served excellent food and we were left wondering why we had always insisted on going back to the Mills restaurant on all of our previous visits.

Greece 2011, Koufonisia to Ios

2011-11-05T08:30:00.001Z

If we had taken any notice of the Canadian lady’s story about gales and worried about it at all then we needn’t have done because when we woke to our last day in Koufonisia there was no wind at all, the sun was shining and the prospects were good for a perfect day.

Over a simple breakfast we watched the French neighbours hanging out the washing and making sure that all of the socks were hung in neat pairs and with heels facing the same way and after that he squeezed a dozen oranges to make a breakfast drink in such a careful and loving way that he almost turned it into an art form. She appeared earlier than normal but went straight for the laptop and the mobile phone.

It was a lunch time ferry to leave the island and we had a last morning to spend in Koufonisia so we took a final walk to the village beach and had a long swim in the crystal clear waters, so clear that we could see the marine life activity on the seabed including a curious transparent like creature that looked a bit like a condom, or perhaps it was a condom, I am fairly certain that it was a creature but wasn’t prepared to get close enough to check!

After the swim we strolled leisurely back to the apartments for the last time, packed the last few things away in our bags and sat on the terrace waiting for our lift down to the harbour. These were our last few moments in Koufonisia, it was the hottest day of the holiday so far and we took time to reflect on our time here – we had enjoyed it, it was another island to add to our visited list but it wouldn’t break into our top five and to be honest we probably wouldn’t be coming back.

Our transport arrived and we said goodbye and in just a couple of minutes we were at the quayside with a handful of other people waiting for the Seajet. As ours was a tight connection in Naxos for the transfer to Ios we really needed the ferry to be on time so we looked out to sea nervously scanning the horizon for signs of its arrival. Eventually it came into view and was soon in the port but it was already five minutes late so this reduced our transfer window in Naxos to only eight minutes.

I tried to use thought transference to will people to board quickly and then to get the captain to slip the moorings and leave and it must have worked because everything went smoothly and soon the Seajet was easing away from Koufonisia and was soon at full throttle, rounding the southern end of Naxos and heading efficiently north towards the port at the other end of the island.

The ferry lost no more time and pulled into the harbour only a few minutes behind schedule but as the doors opened and we prepared to disembark we could see that our next ferry, the Aqua Jewel, was already loaded with passengers and cars and I used thought transference again to get the crew to hurry up and dock. The Aqua Jewel was almost ready to leave so we did our ‘Frenchman in a queue impression’ and pushed our way to the front and as soon as were off we ran to the other side of the quay and made it with seconds to spare. It wasn’t very elegant but at least we were on board and that was important because if we had missed this connection then we would be stuck in Naxos for the night.

Having sailed up the coast of Naxos we now sailed back down it towards again towards Ios. It was flat calm today with no wind at all and even the Greek flag at the rear of the boat was completely unable to manage any flapping activity as it hung limply on its pole. We sat on the top deck in the sun as Naxos and Paros slipped away and behind us and we got ever closer to Ios. The ferry sailed sedately along the coast and we looked out for familiar sights and soon we saw Valmas beach, the white sentinel church on the headland and then the harbour that we knew so well finally coming into view.

Vangelis was there to meet us, he had guessed that we would be on this boat which was good because foolishly I had taken down the fax rather than the telephone number so had been unable to phone ahead. We were pleased to see him and he welcomed us in his usual jovial way and gave us an immediate weather forecast update. He drove us the short distance to Homer’s Inn and soon we were settled in and on our way to the swimming pool to meet up with old friends. Martin, Lisa and Robin were where we expected them to be – near to the bar – so we joined them and caught up on the news and swapped redundancy stories with each other.

Inevitably we spent the rest of the afternoon around the pool in a repetitive cycle of overheating on the terrace, drinking Mythos and cooling off in the water before starting all over again. As the afternoon disappeared we prepared to go out to the Chora because part of the Ios routine is that at the end of every day we go to the village in time to see the sunset over Sikinos to the west just in case it was any different from the previous time. This involves a strenuous climb to the very top of the town and past a succession of small white churches that get smaller and smaller the closer to the top we climb. Later, being creatures of habit, we visited the same taverna as previous years because once we have found somewhere that we like I have to confess that we are reluctant to go anywhere else.

It had been a couple of years since we been to Ios and I think in that time we had forgotten how far it was and how many steps there were to get there. We had also forgotten that a meal at the Mills involves a lot of complimentary bread so we didn’t really need the additional portion that we rashly ordered. It was a good meal but we ate far too much and afterwards we huffed and puffed back down the steps to Homer’s Inn and at the end of the trail we were glad to get back and to go to bed.

Greece 2011, Koufonisia and Beaches for Everyone

2011-11-04T10:09:00.000Z

Every time we travel to Greece for the island hopping holiday we have to make room in the itinerary for a day or two of beaches and by the second day in Koufosinia it was clear that this year this was it.

It was another fine morning and today the wind had blown itself away and as we ate breakfast on the balcony the temperature was already beginning to rise. We planned a walk along the beaches this morning but before that I had to satisfy my Skopelitis ferry obsession and go along to the ferry booking office for a news update.

The news was bad and immediately brought my obsession to a shuddering standstill. The Skopelitis had not regained its operating license and would not be sailing the next day. This was a shame because despite its dodgy reputation we had been looking forward to taking a ride on the old ferry especially because we nearly used it in 2008 but on that occasion managed to miss its departure from Naxos due to a misunderstanding on my part about the exact location on the harbour side. Now it seems its days are numbered and we will never enjoy the experience of what is generally reckoned to be one of the worst ferries operating in the Aegean. The good news was that there was an alternative boat which in theory would still make our connection in Naxos (tight, but with a few minutes to spare) and we could get a refund on our Skopelitis tickets.

Walking north from the village there was an almost continuous string of beaches like a rope of sand holding the island in place, a golden halo of wide open shore line puntuated with rocky coves and private sheltered spots and we walked along them from one to another until we found one that suited us and where the water looked perfect for swimming. The sea was clear and the sunlight on the surface created leopard skin patterns in the shallows as we waded out into the vivid water, turquoise at first turning to violet and then almost mauve the further out into the distance and quite unlike any sea colour that I can recall elsewhere.

The swim was refreshing and cooled us down and after we stayed on the beach just long enough to dry off before resuming our coastal stroll. We walked across family beaches where people had picked their favourite spots and were planning to stay for the day and a hippie beach where untidy looking people were living in makeshift bivouacs in the trees at the fringe of the beach next to the road where they were probably planning to spend the rest of their lives and then we stumbled across the nudist beach where naturists were shamelessly stretched out tanning parts of their bodies where the sun doesn’t usually shine and we dropped our walking pace to a crawl so that we could take in the sights and make comparisons.

Out of sight of the beach we found our own private rocky headland and made our way out as far as we could and did our own spot of naked sunbathing before boredom set in and we made ourselves decent and made our way back the way that we had come stopping again at the seafood restaurant for a rest, a bit of shade and a Mythos.

We returned to the apartment and although it was now early afternoon a young French couple in the room next door were only just beginning to show signs of life. They were like a couple of characters from a French movie – silent, quiet, moody and almost completely non-communicative as each did their own thing, he drinking endless cups of coffee and smoking his way through a packet of cigarettes, blowing smoke rings and contemplating the resulting shapes and she permanently connected to the internet through her laptop or staring blankly at her mobile phone.

Everyday there was a washing line full of clean clothes with what I for one thought included an abnormal amount of socks! I am not against washing on holiday, I quite like the smell of Tide, but it seems such a waste of time to be carrying out chores normally associated with home. My advice is to take two pairs of pants, wear the first pair for four days and then turn them inside out for another four and then put them in a dirty bag in the bottom of the backpack and repeat with the second pair!

There was enough material here for a complete Luc Besson trilogy, here was the first – ‘La Vacance de la Introvertis’ to be followed up I suggest with ‘La Maison de la Introvertis’ and finally ‘Le Jardin de la introvertis’. It’s sure to be a winner!

We spent the afternoon on the terrace and later I went to buy the ferry tickets at the office where a Canadian lady was trying to negotiate an exchange on the basis that yesterday she had to abandon her journey from Amorgos to Naxos on account of the high winds and rough seas which had made everyone on board the Seajet unwell and unable to continue she had made an unscheduled stop on Koufonisia. She explained to me in graphic technicolour detail just how bad it was and I was alarmed to see that when I purchased our tickets I was handed vouchers for the very same vessel.

The day slid effortlessly into evening and we had a final walk around the village on our way to a restaurant that we had spotted earlier in the day where we liked the look of the menu. It was back towards the beaches and from the outside it looked small but inside it opened up onto a wide first storey terrace that overlooked the sparkling sea and we had an excellent fish meal to finish our final night on Koufonisia. If the ferry timings worked according to schedule tomorrow we would be moving on to Ios, one of our favourite islands.

Greece 2011, Koufonisia and The Meaning of Life

2011-11-03T08:39:00.000Z

It must have been a rough night, weather wise, because the ferry quay was awash as waves slapped against the harbour side and we had to negotiate deep puddles of sea water to get to the car park to meet the owner of the Villa Maria Vekri for the transport to our apartment and as we drove past the beach we could see that it had had a bit of a battering as well!

As it was so early and the previous guests had only just checked out we had to wait a short while for the room to be prepared but it didn’t take very long and soon we were shown to our ground floor apartment. It was a very reasonably priced room and I soon understood why – we hadn’t paid the optional extra for a mattress on the bed and instead there was what felt like a slab of concrete where something soft should have been! Actually, I am being unfair, it was very nice, no air conditioning but a ceiling fan instead with huge rotor blades that shook alarmingly and looked as though they had been salvaged from an army surplus Chinook helicopter.

At this early hour Koufonisia was desperately quiet, the mini-markets weren’t yet open so we had to go a bakery for a cup of tea and as we watched the inactivity and began to understand why everyone seemed to be in a rush to leave this morning and we began to wonder if we should have bypassed the island after all and continued straight on to Ios. After breakfast we walked around the village but took care to do it slowly in case we exhausted everything there was to see and do too quickly. We followed the coastal road past a derelict windmill and alongside the fishing harbour and on the way back to the Maria Vekri found the ferry booking office where there was still no news of the Skopelitis.

On the terrace of the room by late morning there were pizza oven temperatures and you could fry an egg on the patio table but there was also a battering ram wind that rattled through the garden and rearranged the furniture as it passed through and after deciding to spend the morning there I went to the shop for supplies. Just as in Katapola the storekeepers pulled the short change trick but I was ready for it now. The bill came to €8.55 and I handed over a €10 note and it was obvious that there should have been a rattle of loose change in the palm of my hand but all that was given back was a solitary 50c coin which looked lonely sitting there all by itself. When I pointed this out there was no apology offered just a barely discernable little smile at the corners of the mouth which seemed to say ‘ok, you caught me this time, but I’ll get you later – come back and see me again when you have drunk those four cans of Mythos’.

After a couple of hours it was time to explore again so we backed our bags and made for the village beach and next to a crescent ribbon of caramel sand went for a swim to cool down in a translucent turquoise sea, quite different to the blue of Amorgos. Not being that fond of beaches we didn’t stay long but left and walked along the coast and had lunch at a seafood restaurant before returning to the room.

To be honest, Koufonisia had been a bit of a shock earlier but seven o’clock in the morning is not the best time to make an assessment and we have learned not to make hasty judgements and by mid afternoon we were beginning to understand the appeal of the place. Of all the islands that we have visited it reminded me most of Kimolos, a small island next to Milos and bypassed by the modern world. Laid back, almost to the horizontal, this was clearly a place that was good for getting away from it all and for walking and swimming and laying on the beach and although we are not especially passionate about any of these activities we knew that we would be doing all of these over the next couple of days.

This was a place to relax, tranquil and slow, perfect for recovering from a nervous breakdown or contemplating the meaning of life and other serious matters; why women are hopeless at supermarket check-outs, how did the Trojans fall for that Wooden Horse Trick and just how did Nick Clegg become Deputy Prime Minister? Here, I thought, I might find the answer to something that has always troubled me – how can I be sure that the little light in the fridge has gone off when I shut the door? There was certainly time to give it full consideration without distraction.

In the evening we walked to the fishing harbour for the inevitable sunset pictures and after it turned dark we selected a taverna with brightly coloured tables and chairs and enjoyed a good meal, while, unbeknown to us at this time, the island’s mosquitoes nibbled away at the flesh in between the sandal straps on our bare feet and gorged themselves on the contents of our veins in exactly the same way that we enjoyed our evening meal.

Greece 2011, Amorgos to Koufonisia

2011-11-01T08:44:00.001Z

After breakfast I walked again to the ferry booking office but there was still no real news about the Express Skopelitis so we reprised our debate about the itinerary. We could skip Koufinisia altogether and go directly to Ios or we could spend an extra night on the small island, reschedule our dates at Homer’s Inn and reduce the stay in Antiparos from three nights to two. We went through the various combinations but it became too difficult and in an indecisive way confirmed that we would just go to Koufonissia as planned.

And so after this debate we took a long walk around the north side of the harbour past blue doors and blue domed churches and across pleasant secluded beaches where we continued to collect driftwood and finally arrived at a hard to reach bay where normal access is by boat from the harbour but our route was over the cliffs that required the sure-footedness of a mountain goat because one false move and there was a fifty metre drop into the sea via the rocks.

The beach was a bit untidy and it was unlikely to achieve blue flag status (there are none on Amorgos) but there was a wonderful sea with a gentle gradient to the deep clear blue water with an abundance of fish for snorkelling amusement. But shortly after midday the beach was getting rather full as more and more boats pulled in and set down their passengers. The beach bar was closed for the season and there was nowhere to get any refreshments so we walked back the way that we had come and had a drink in a bar next to some fishing boats resting in the gently undulating water.

In the company of a handsome tortoiseshell cat we had a simple lunch on the balcony of the room and then squandered the rest of the afternoon sitting in the sunshine. My interest in the ferries was becoming something of an obsession by now however and I did slip down to the boat terminal to see if the Seajet crew had returned to work after the strike and sure enough the soulless pink and white monster arrived, completed an efficient turn around and left in a hurry on to the next destination.

Except for the fact that the Swiss guest in the next room had to walk across our balcony to get to his room it was private and secluded so I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to work on the all over tan so taking the precaution to sit close to the stairs so I would be able to hear him if he returned then I slipped my shorts off and found the best position to get the best of the rays. Well, this man must have had Cherokee blood in his veins because I didn’t hear a thing but all of a sudden he was at the top of the stairs and I was caught good and proper with my pants down. Luckily he found it amusing and after I had made myself decent again he stopped and chatted to us for a while about his whistle-stop three islands in four days vacation.

We did nothing for the rest of the day while we waited for sunset time and a stroll around the horseshoe shaped harbour and then we returned to the same taverna as the previous night and had an another simple but delicious meal. We went to bed early tonight because in the morning we had a six o’clock ferry to Koufonisia.

•

It was still dark when we made our way down to the harbour and joined a line of passengers flocking onto the Blue Star Paros and we made our way to the partially covered seating area on the top deck of the boat. As we watched from the deck rail we watched what resembled a sort of Pied Piper activity as people emerged from rooms and spilled out of little side streets all heading in the same direction and making their way to the boat.

It left on time and slipped out of Katapola into a surprisingly rough sea and as the sun rose behind us the wind whipped up the waves and sent them high enough to crash over the sides of the top deck, the ferry lurched alarmingly from side to side, the Greek flag was cracking like a whip in the wind as though trying to detach itself from its pole and we were rather glad that this was only a forty-five minute journey. The Blue Star arrived in Koufonisia on time and it was a bit of a concern to us that there was a large crowd at the ferry terminus because it seemed as though everyone was leaving the island just as we were arriving. Did they know something we didn’t?

Greece 2011, The Express Skopelitis and Greek Ferries

2011-10-31T09:08:00.001Z

After the visit to the monastery and the gentle walk around the Chora we planned a lazy sort of afternoon doing nothing at all so after a drink in the main square we took the bus back down to Katapola where we stopped first at the mini-market for drinks and snack food. Behind the till of the shop was an old man with two weeks of beard, an untidy shirt streaked with dust, an old vest that may have been white once a very long time ago and a very impressive money diddling trick! After he had totted up the items, produced the bill and been presented with a note he would ask for change and root about in the palm of the hand and when he had finished it was certain that the transaction had inevitably cost a few extra cents. He did this every time and we concluded that this was his way of compensating for the extra taxes he was now having to pay to the Greek government in the wake of the economic crisis.

My next job was to check on the ferries. The Express Skopelitis was still firmly tied up in port and the news at the ferry booking office wasn’t too good. The Skopelitis it seemed hadn’t been playing by the rules and was operating with a counterfeit safety certificate that had been issued in Russia! It had had a number of warnings about this but the owners hadn’t complied with relevant enforcement notices and now the authorities were cracking down. And there seemed to be an alternative suggestion as well – although this deception was well known the port authorities had always turned a blind eye but now with the Euro problems and the Government’s privatisation programme the country can no longer afford generous subsidies to uneconomic boats so they have to be replaced by more efficient and more expensive big ferries that do not rely on state aid. The Skopelitis it seemed was a victim of the economic crisis and the suspension of the operating licence was perhaps a cynical way of taking it out of operation without breaking a government contract.

I asked if it might be sorted out by Friday and with a casual raised eyebrow and a shrug of the shoulder all I got was a non committal maybe/maybe not response and I knew that this was the best that I could hope for. It didn’t help that other ferry crews were taking strike action so there was no real certainty about ferry times in and around the Little Cyclades for the next day or two.

We had been stranded like this once before, in Folegandros in 2008, and had to alter our schedule and it seemed that we might have travel plan problems again here thanks to the Skopelitis and the strikes and that we might have to change the itinerary to take account of this so while we wasted the afternoon away on the balcony of the room we examined the options but satisfied that there were some others available we decided not to do anything too hasty just yet.

So, we thought no more about it as afternoon slipped into evening and after yet more sunset pictures and a bit of beach combing we had evening meal in an alternative taverna which we both declared to be excellent. One week into the holiday we were in a relaxed mood with a couldn’t care less attitude and after we had settled up and left we walked back to the hotel along a languid harbour with moonlight kissing the water and waves gently caressing the shoreline. It was delightful!

Greece 2011, Katapola and the Monastery of Panagia Hozoviotissa

2011-10-30T07:03:00.001Z

The plan today was to visit the Byzantine monastery of Panagia Hozoviotissa on the other side of the island which we had almost visited on our previous stay in Katapola. I say almost because although we made the bus ride and climbed a mountain of steps to get there we fell foul of the strict dress code and weren’t allowed in on account of the fact that we were wearing shorts. This time we were taking no chances so packed extra long sleeved shirts, shawls and trousers and after breakfast on the terrace set off for the bus stop.

As we walked we passed an old islander on a mule and it was obvious that he was going about his day and his work on his chosen form of transport. I got to thinking about how infrequently you see this now, much less even than when I first started to visit the Greek islands over twenty-five years ago and I realised that soon this will be a thing of the past. When this generation has gone it is likely that no one will continue to use donkeys for anything other than equine amusement. I felt glad that I had been there in time to see this and felt disappointed for those who will come after me and won’t.

We arrived at the bus stop in time but we needn’t have bothered as there was no bus driver because he was working to his own version of GMT, that’s Greek Maybe Time, and we had to wait twenty minutes after the scheduled departure before he arrived for work and warmed up the engine and the hydraulics before easing out of the car park to begin the journey.

The bus dropped us off by the side of the road and there was a short walk to the car park of the monastery and then a gruelling climb up an uneven path which clung to the side of the mountain overlooking a stunning blue sea and which took us eventually to the entrance of the startling white building set against the contrast of the age streaked grey and tan rocks. The monastery is built in a most improbable location, on the side of and into an inhospitable mountain but it was a good choice if all they wanted was solitude and peace and quiet because there are no neighbours to worry about.

We were slightly irritated to see that this year there was a selection of clothing available to borrow for those who didn’t meet the dress code – it certainly wasn’t there two years ago. Anyway we changed into our appropriate clothes and climbed the final steps to the entrance where a young man assessed our appearance and, satisfied that we were presentable, allowed us in.

It had been a long walk just to visit a few tiny rooms and it didn’t take long to make our way through a couple of anti-chambers and then the main chapel smelling of incense and adorned with icons and pictures of old priests and decorated with cloth of vibrant green and blood red with gold brading. It was all over rather quickly and the longest part of the visit was a minute or two in room on the way out where a priest handed out loukoumi and a glass of special raki which was for sale in a small display case in the corner. Finally we visited a tiny museum displaying robes, manuscripts and religious artefacts and then we were shown back out into the sunlight and took the path back down to the bus stop.

On the way back we were ready for a second visit to the Chora where we ambled through the corkscrew streets returning several times to exactly the same place passing by several churches, the castle, blue doors, blue sky, shady vines and friendly cafés and I knew that this was my kind of town. The Chora is rather like a hippie time-warp, slow, lazy, faded and bleached, pot plants struggling in the midday sun and appropriately slow mood music in the tavernas and bars – it reminded me of a favourite pair of old denim jeans and my battered blue t-shirt that I am reluctant to throw away. In and around the tavernas there were lazy cats, which in between trying to look cute for diners with leftovers were concentrating on looking for a shady spot and simply snoozing the day away.

Greece 2011, Katapola and the Chora (Amorgos)

2011-10-29T06:59:00.001+01:00

Katapola was tranquil, peaceful and perfect and at this precise time might possibly have been the most wonderful place on earth and we looked forward to our three days of perfection because apart from concrete, mobile phones and air conditioning this place probably hasn’t changed a great deal in a thousand years.

We were surprised to see the Express Skopelitis ferry in the harbour because it was supposed to be sailing today and later someone told us that it had a problem with its certificate of seaworthiness and had lost its licence to operate. To make matters worse another ferry had failed to turn up and there was a lot of activity at the ferry booking office where the clerk was patiently trying to rearrange people’s disrupted travel itineraries. I mention this because in five day’s time we were due to sail on the Express Skopelitis ourselves and I began to wonder if we might have a problem but then Kim reminded me that five days is a long time in Greece so for the time being we thought no more about it.

First we walked around the rather untidy beach and collected more debris and Kim was by now so enthusiastic about the project I had to insist that she show some restraint because the she was collecting far more than we could ever realistically take back home in our luggage if we were to take our clothes back with us as well. The stroll took us around to the northern side of the bay and after we had walked through the streets and alleys we stopped for refreshment in the shade and agreed that for the remainder of the afternoon we would take a bus back to the Chora on the way back to the top of the mountain.

The Chora cannot be seen from the sea or from the harbour and this is where, in the past, Amorgans lived, safe from the sea and from hostile attack. From the outside it doesn’t look especially promising but once inside the walls of the town it is a different matter altogether. The town turns in on itself in an introspective sort of way and inside there were narrow shady streets and lots of traditional cafés and tavernas. It was a lazy place where time goes by slowly and no one is in a particular hurry about anything. If this was Naxos or Ios the Chora would have been teeming with shops and fast food places but this was a local town for local people and completely unspoilt by the retinue of tourist shops that can be found on more popular islands.

We explored the streets and in a very stiff breeze climbed to the very top to the redundant windmills that overlook the town and the Venetian castle that is built on top of a rocky outcrop that soars above it and its mass of dazzling white buildings.

Descending through the mazy streets and alleys there was time for a drink in the main square where old locals were beginning to gather for an end of day chat. I wondered where all the young people were and I think answered my own question – Athens probably.

There was a noticeable absence of English travellers but by contrast there were a lot of French people on Amorgos because this island was one of the locations for the Luc Besson film ‘Le Grande Bleu’ which the French rave about but which turns out to be one of those hard to understand surrealist French non-event movies that goes around in ever decreasing self indulgent circles until it finally disappears up its own aperture.

After we had taken the bus back and returned to the village we found a dusty mini-market because we wanted to buy some wine. It was surprisingly expensive and the information on the labels hard to interpret but at the back of the shop a French couple were passing judgement on a home-made red poured from a plastic bottle. They declared it to be acceptable so we agreed that if it was good enough for them then it would be perfect for us so we purchased a bottle and took it back to the room and sat on the balcony for a couple of hours and sorted through the driftwood in a sort of quality control process.

We waited now until nearly sunset time and then talk a walk along the southern shore of the harbour, past an inevitable white church and an unnamed statue where Kim captured more stunning sunset pictures and then we strolled back to the village stopping in again at the ferry booking office for information. The clerk had clearly had a stressful day and wasn’t inclined to be too helpful but we gathered that she didn’t like the Skopelitis very much on account of the fact that it is heavily subsidised by the Greek government and she seemed to resent that. We decided to leave and return tomorrow when hopefully a good night’s sleep might have improved her demeanour.

We had been looking forward to eating at a taverna called ‘The Corner’ (for no other reason it seems than it is indeed on a corner) but the danger with going back to somewhere that you have been before and enjoyed is that it may not live up to expectations and unfortunately this was one of those occasions.

It was a family run place and waiting on the tables were a couple of young children, clearly their parents were oblivious to presidential decree No. 62/1998, which sets the minimum age for admission to employment, including children in family businesses, at 15 years. After the meal we visited the bakery to buy some calorie packed baklava to end the day and there was a young boy working there as well who served us with expert precision and we took the sticky purchase back to the hotel where we ate it on the balcony and washed it down with a final glass of local red wine from the plastic bottle.

Greece 2011, Amorgos – Egiali to Katapola

2011-10-28T08:47:00.001+01:00

After a second breakfast on the terrace and several cups of tea we packed our bags and went for a last walk into the pretty village of Egiali and rechecked the bus timetable just to be sure that there wasn’t an alternative schedule on a Sunday. There wasn’t and I knew that already but I checked anyway, it’s a bit like that thing that English people do when they get on a bus or a train and even though they know the answer they ask the destination several times of different people just to be certain.

The bus fare to Katapola was good value at only €2.50 each and after we paid the driver started the engine and left Egiali dead on time. We had liked it here and if we planning the trip again we would have squeezed an extra night in at the Filoxenia but our plans were made and we had a room booked in Katapola in the south of the island.

We sat close to the front of the bus and in the seat directly behind the driver there was an old woman who was determined to talk constantly in some sort of quest to distract him as he eased the vehicle out of the village and began the ascent to the top of the mountain that separates the two ends of the island. Before this road was built the only effective way to get between Egiali and Katapola was by ferry but this new road provides a useful dry land alternative.

At first we passed through what might be loosely described as fields with rows of derelict terraces and dry stonewalls that separated the hillside into individual plots of land. Amorgos is mostly inhospitable rock that has been baked hard in the sun for thousands of years but as recently as only fifty years ago people here were scraping away at the thin soil and the stones to try and make a living or to feed the family by growing fruit and vegetables. Each islander had a personal plot and would attend each day to manage and tend the land. They had to carry all of the water to the side of these plots and the only way to achieve this was by using a donkey. Then in the 1960s visitors started to arrive and the enterprising islanders realised that there was more money to be made renting out the back room and this was also a lot easier than a twelve-hour day toiling under a hot sun.

The terraces are all abandoned now to thistles and what other few plants can survive in a hostile environment and they are unlikely ever to be cultivated again. There is no one to look after them or protect the heritage, each year parts of the walls collapse and disappear and soon they will be gone altogether and that will be a sad day. Although no one will ever see it again I like to imagine what this hillside might have looked like fifty years ago with farmers scratching away at the ground, donkeys patiently waiting to return to the town and fishing boats slipping in and out of the harbour below.

As the bus climbed higher and the engine began to labour and groan the sides of the mountain became greener with rugged plants clinging stubbornly to the thin soil and then we reached the top of the mountainous spine of the island and we could see all the way down across the Chora and into the port of Katapola and still the woman in the seat behind the driver kept talking – I’d have backed that woman in a talk-off against my mum!

The bus stopped briefly at the Chora to pick up more passengers and then the driver set off down the hairpin bends of the mountain road and down to the port. I think he liked this part of the journey because he made extravagant manoeuvres with theatrical turns of the steering wheel and he was confident too, even at one stage of the precipitous descent taking time out to make a telephone call while still listening to the woman behind him jabbering away.

After only a few minutes we arrived at the final bus stop, got off and met the owner of the apartments, the Villa Katapoliana where we had stayed previously and were hoping for the same room that we had liked. We were to be disappointed on that score but we had a nice room anyway and a balcony that was surrounded by flowers and trees so we settled in and then went out to reacquaint ourselves with one of our favourite islands.

Greece 2011, Sick, Suicidal or just Anti-Social

2011-10-27T06:55:00.001+01:00

This year in our hotel room on the island of Amorgos I was amused to find in the guest information folder a helpful copy of the Regulations, Article 8 of the Law 1652/30-10-86 which is a list of rules associated with renting a room. These made amusing reading and these extracts were the pick of the bunch:

Article 1

“The hotelier may refuse the leasing if the clients a) Looks conspicuously ill, b) is under the influence of alcohol or c) has an untidy appearance.”

This seems a bit harsh, whilst I agree that a hotel might not want to let a room to a drunk what if someone who needs a room had suffered from sea sickness on the ferry and was looking a bit green or was just a bet dishevelled at the end of a long day back packing? Who decides what constitutes being untidy I wonder?

Article 8

“If the room is leased for a fixed time the hotelier has not the right to break the lease unless the client a) transgresses the regulations, b) is taken ill suffering from a contagious disease or any other disease causing inconvenience to other clients, or c) behaves against the commonly accepted moral law.”

This seems a bit unfair on anyone feeling a bit unwell or has a cold with an annoying cough for example and I would be intrigued to know exactly what the commonly accepted moral law is?

Article 20

“The client on arrival at the hotel must hand over to the hotelier or to the competent director the precious or of considerable value articles and the money that he carries with him, against receipt.”

Can’t help thinking that is going to be a bit inconvenient, especially the money bit, how are you supposed to eat?

Article 21

“In case of illness due to an infectious or contagious or mental disease as well as in the case of death or suicide of a client the hotelier is entitled to compensation by the client for the expenses he underwent as a result of the happening.”

My advice is try not to have any sort of illness that might be messy, such as diarrhoea for example, and if you are going to kill yourself do it in a way that is quick to clear up otherwise your family are going to end up with a large bill. On the other hand I’m not sure how relevant this illness rule is because under Article 8 a sick client will already have been thrown out on the street and that includes the mental cases who might do themselves in.

My personal favourite:

Article 23

“It is forbidden a) the preparations of meals or decorations by the clients in the hotel room also the taking of meals in the room with the exception of sick clients, b) the use of petrol engines or electrical appliances, c) the use of electrical current for other purposes than lighting or shaving”.

You will have spotted the inconsistency here because clients aren’t allowed to be sick (see article 8), who in their right mind is going to use a petrol engine in a hotel room and why is it ok to use electricity to shave but presumably not to dry your hair?

It goes on “d) the washing of linen or clothing, e) the placing of luggage in the corridors, f) the changing of position of the rooms furniture and the operating of holes into the walls for hanging photographs, g) the keeping of domestic animals, h) gambling, i) noisy music and songs which might cause inconvenience to others.

This is a pretty comprehensive list of don’ts and I have personally broken at least half of these rules. I have certainly eaten food in my room, used electrical appliances, washed my dirty underpants out in the sink, played cards for money, encouraged a cat to come in, reorganised the furniture on the balcony and put my bag down for a moment or two in the corridor. On the other hand I haven’t ever used a petrol engine or a Black and Decker drill to make holes in the wall or organised a rave in my room.

Article 24

“If the client violates the provisions of the regulations, continually makes noise and behaves in an improper way he may be considered as undesirable and asked to leave the hotel within twenty-four hours and evacuate his room”

I wonder why, if someone was behaving so badly, they get twenty-four hours notice to leave when a sick person, it would seem, has to vacate immediately – this hardly seems fair!

Greece 2011, The Boat Souvenir Project and Wasting Precious Water

2011-10-26T06:52:00.001+01:00

Lagadha was a wonderful place full of sights and sounds to provide a satisfying Greek fix, a braying donkey resting in the shade who seemed to strongly object to having its picture taken, two outrageously gay Italian men arguing theatrically with each other about which directions to take back to the car park and a fish delivery van and a driver who announced its arrival in the village by blowing loudly on a conch shell. Soon it was decision making time – should we walk back to Egiali down the difficult donkey track or should we find somewhere for a cool Mythos and wait for the one o’clock bus? Secretly we both knew the answer to that and we found a nice place in the shade in the main square and placed our order.

At the next table there was an elderly English lady who looked as though she had just stepped out of a Merchant Ivory film with a very plumy voice which on account of her conversation about all things country and hunting I guessed might be from somewhere like Rutland. After she had established our shared nationality – ‘Ah, fellow Engleesh’ she declared at the top of her voice ‘Ha did ewe get har?’ and we told her that we had arrived by ferry. ‘Gud, Gud’ she said as though this was some massive achievement but I couldn’t help thinking that this was rather obvious and wondering how else she thought we might have arrived unless the airborne division of the SAS had parachuted us in or the European Union have suddenly funded an Aegean tunnel link to Naxos! Before leaving with her Greek companions she made some recommendations about Amorgos specifically and the Greek Islands in general and then she was gone. And so were we shortly after that because it was time to catch the bus which, I had to agree, was a great deal easier than walking.

In the afternoon we strolled to the beach and went for a swim in the sea and I continued my search for interesting bits of driftwood. Despite her earlier lack of enthusiasm even Kim was showing some interest in the project and by now we had the pieces we needed for the hull, the mast, the rudder and a cabin, some cuttlefish for sails and miscellaneous bits of twig and sticks for the sea. Later as I scavenged the harbour for other useful bits a helpful fisherman provided some authentic cord which was going to be just perfect for the nets.

The beach was close to the port but there was no activity of any kind because there were no more boats due today. It’s nice to see boats because it means there is still some connection with the rest of the world, or did I get that wrong and it is the other way round?

Not being dedicated beach people we stayed just long enough to dry off and then returned through the village and back to the hotel where we let the rest of the afternoon slip away. After four days it was time for a shave and I mention this not because anyone would be remotely interest in my ablutions but because I have noticed a curious thing about bathroom wash basins in Greek hotels. In almost every bathroom there is a notice on the wall explaining how precious water is and encouraging guests not to waste it – so curious then that there is hardly ever a basin plug and if there is then it more than likely will not fit and the water just pours away into the u bend and beyond. Surely if they are serious about being careful with water then it would be sensible to provide a simple piece of rubber on a chain to make sure that to take a shave you don’t have to keep the tap running continuously!

After the sunset we examined the ferry schedules and bought tickets for the next three legs of the journey, Amorgos to Koufonisia, Koufonisia to Naxos and Naxos to Ios and then we returned to the same restaurant, which was quieter tonight and had a second delicious evening meal selecting the beetroot starter and fish soup and grilled fish to finish.

Greece 2011, Amorgos and Egiali

2011-10-25T06:44:00.001+01:00

Kim was the first to wake and by now she had perfected the art of making as much noise as possible and opening the shutters to shine the sun in my eyes that it wasn’t very long before I was on my way to the mini-market with a shopping list for breakfast provisions.

On some of the bigger islands big name supermarkets are starting to appear (later this week were disappointed to find a Carrefour Express on the island of Ios) but that sort of unwelcome progress has not reached as far as Egiali and the two local mini-markets were delightfully old-fashioned and traditionally disorganised with shelves full of random items irregularly stacked, dusty corners to investigate and curious items for sale. After a look around I selected pastries, yoghurt and fruit and walked back to the Filoxenia.

During breakfast on the balcony we noticed with some nervousness that there was some stubborn cloud clinging to the tops of the mountains that surround the town like a crescent rock stockade but we were comforted by a stiff breeze that kept dislodging big lumps of it and blowing it away far to the east.

The plan today was to visit the nearby village of Lagadha and there was a bus due at quarter to eleven but having inherited my dad’s aversion to paying unnecessary bus fares, and as it was only half past nine, I persuaded Kim to walk the couple of kilometres by road and footpath instead. I almost instantly regretted this when after only a couple of hundred metres or so the path began to climb and Kim slipped into full whinging mode. Kim’s whinging can come on like this without any warning whatsoever and it quickly reaches maximum on the moan metre and it was at this time that I decided that when we got home I would write to the local rambling association and tell them to disregard our application for membership.

The road zigzagged all the way up and we could see it looping away from us in front so I was glad when we came across a stony donkey track that was a more direct route and we left the road and tackled the steps instead disturbing and scattering the basking lizards as we went. It was uneven and difficult in sandals and Kim found the going tough but it was a lot easier for someone in peak physical condition like myself!

Once inside the whitewashed walls of the village we quickly found a roof top bar where we could rest a while and Kim could get her breath back. A nice feature in the bars and cafés in Amorgos was the hospitable habit of providing customers with a glass of cold water. I was unsure of this at first because I was brought up with a paranoia of drinking water abroad, so bad that I used to wash my teeth in bottled water in case I inadvertently swallowed a millilitre or two. In fact the first time that I went to Greece, to Kos in 1983, I had to have typhoid injections and a certificate to prove it! (This suddenly reminded me of the awful 1974 British sit-com called ‘Don’t Drink The Water’). Well, how things change and now it appears to be safe to drink the water across the whole of the European Union without suffering ill effects or an upset stomach and this was certainly the case in Amorgos

Rested and cooled down we returned to the quaint narrow streets with decorated paving and adjacent buildings all whitewashed and blue. All whitewashed and blue because since 1974 in a law passed by the military government of the time all houses have had to be painted white and church domes blue. Recently a debate has been re-opened between the Ministry of Culture and other authorities about allowing the use of alternative colours but as yet the law remains in place.

In the middle of the village we came across a curious shop and when I peaked inside the gloomy interior an old man invited us in. It was a sort of workshop and he explained to us that he was the village carpenter, the village hardware store, liquor supplier and barber! He obligingly showed us around and explained the family pictures hanging on the walls and invited me to have a haircut but I respectfully declined when I saw the age and condition of the clippers!

Greece 2011, Paros to Amorgos

2011-10-24T15:06:00.000+01:00

We had to set the alarm today because there was an early ferry at half past nine so we woke, packed and went downstairs to be the first on the breakfast terrace. After several cups of tea and an above average continental breakfast we paid up, said goodbye and rejecting the offer of transport walked to the port. Turning down the lift was something we quickly regretted because the pavement was uneven, our bags were heavy and even though it was early it was already quite hot.

Soon after we arrived at what is euphemistically described as the departure gate our boat, the Anek Lines, Artemis, arrived on time and we made our way with the handful of fellow passengers to the top deck in the sunshine and as soon as everyone was on board it set off and slipped out of port. The Artemis, named after the Greek Goddess of the wilderness, the hunt, wild animals and fertility (so quite a spread of responsibility), is a slow boat with a reassuring rhythmic throb of a reliable old engine and we sat in the middle of the boat and took comfort from that.

At first the Artemis closely followed the rugged coastline of Paros punctuated every now and again with white Cycladic churches and little fishing villages and then past the picturesque port of Naoussa on the north-west of the island and soon after that the island of Naxos started to reveal itself. Just a hazy outline at first but getting sharper with more detail as we got closer in the way that a water colour painter might start with the first blurred colour wash and then progressively fill in the detail.

The Artemis called in at Naxos and exchanged some old passengers for new ones and then set off sedately south down the narrow channel that separates Naxos from Paros and ahead of us we could make out the island of Ios. Around the south of Naxos the coastline became more inhospitable with jutting peaks and deep rocky gorges and this made me realise that these are actually the bits of the land that the sea doesn’t want and a short while later we entered the islands to the west of Naxos called the Little Cyclades.

Artemis called first at Iraklia where in the small port the sunlight was dancing like dainty fairies on the corrugated surface of the gently rippling water and then after we left a few minutes later we were in Schinoussa which looked like an island that time had forgotten! Out of Schinoussa a Cycladic wind came from nowhere, the seas started to froth and build into frothy meringue peaks and the salt spray reached all the way up to the upper deck forcing people inside. Not us though. We kept our steadfast resolve and remained up top.

Sometimes Greek ferry journeys feel very functional, a case of just leaving somewhere to get somewhere else but this was not one of those journeys, this was much more like a pleasant five and a half hour Aegean cruise, sitting in the sun, watching the islands slip by one by one with a book in one hand and a can of Mythos in the other.

After Koufonissia the rough seas died down as quickly as they had sprung up and soon we were approaching the southern Amorgos port of Katapola where we would be returning in a few days time. The ferry continued its journey along the west coast of Amorgos, an island shaped like a seahorse and rising like a wall of stone from the sea almost in a no-man’s land between the Cyclades and the Dodecanese, dry, brown, arid and hot and after forty minutes we arrived in the northern port of Egiali where we were met by the owners of the Hotel Filoxenia who unnecessarily transported us by mini bus the one hundred metres or so to our room, which was lovely and facing west was sure of a good sunset later.

We were hungry so had a late lunch and after that took a walk around a half asleep town then bought some wine and spent the rest of the afternoon on the generous balcony of our room. As we prepared to go out for the evening a small herd of goats passed through the grounds and although I tried to remember I don’t think I have ever stayed in a place before where wild goats roam freely.

After capturing the pictures of a glorious sunset in the harbour we walked into the town for evening meal. There was a lot of choice but one in particular seemed popular so we decided that that was where we would dine. There were no spare places and people were standing around in a predatory sort of way waiting for a table opportunity and elbowing their way to empty chairs as they became vacant and somewhere in all this we ghosted in like Martin Peters and jumped the queue. After a short misunderstanding about the evening special menu we sorted out our choices and had a first class meal at the end of an excellent day.

Greece 2011, Swimming With Sharks and Greek Australians

2011-10-24T06:42:00.001+01:00

After the shortest of refreshment breaks our next stop was the beach which was just a stone’s throw from the hotel so we collected our swimming essentials and found a spot we liked on the sand, stripped down to our bathing costumes and paddled out into the inviting silky water. This year I had packed my black swimming trunks because I always consider black speedos to be quite slimming!

There is currently a beauty salon fad in the United Kingdom and elsewhere which involves parting with substantial amounts of cash, taking shoes and socks off and dangling them into a tank of fish which will nibble away at the dead skin and provide a natural pedicure. The toothless fish are called garra rufa and are also commonly known as ‘doctor fish’, they come from the Eastern Mediterranean, mostly Turkey, and there were some in the sea today and when we stood still long enough they congregated at our ankles and shortly got to work. While we enjoyed our free foot treatment it became obvious that the discerning little creatures preferred my feet to Kim’s and I could easily steal her fishy medical companions by standing close to her. Kim became irritated by this so I explained to her as best I could that the only explanation I could think of was that I really couldn’t help being a ‘fish magnet’!

This alternative beauty treatment sounds weird but it might be considered positively normal compared with some others. For example, bull semen, a moisturising hair treatment that uses the sperm of Angus bulls. Ox bone-marrow shampoo from Brazil, Nightingale droppings used in Japan as a facial cleanser, snail slime used in South America as a hand cream and snake venom which is claimed by some to have the same face-freezing effects as Botox.

It was a pleasant beach with warm sea, golden sand and a gentle breeze which kept the temperature comfortable. In the shops earlier we had seen some souvenir boats made of drift wood and this gave me an idea. It would be impossible to take one home given the restrictions on hand luggage so I decided that I would collect the bits of wood and sticks off the beach, take them home and, in an Airfix sort of way, make my own so I set immediately about beachcombing and starting my collection.

After her early start Kim was tired now so while she went back to the room to sleep I stayed at the beach, enjoyed some more foot treatment, had another swim in the Aegean and continued my search for suitable boat building materials. After I had tired of all that I returned to the room and rejoined Kim and where we waited until nearly sunset time before going out again for the evening.

We had seen Paroikia in the daylight so our plan was to return in the evening for a different perspective. We walked through the same streets but now twinkling lights illuminated the shops and tavernas and the trendy bars that were closed during the day were beginning to open for business. We walked from one side to the other and left the old town just in time for Kim to capture the sunset pictures that she wanted.

We had considered returning to the same taverna as the previous night but there was a lot of choice at this end of the town and even though it was rather touristy we allowed ourselves to be talked into one by a persistent waiter who found us a nice table by the water’s edge. It was busy and one thing we couldn’t help noticing was that there were a lot of young Australians at adjacent tables and walking along the street.

We shouldn’t have been surprised of course because after World War Two and the unstable post war years in Greece many people from the mainland and the islands packed their bags and set off down under. In fact Greeks were one of the main groups targeted by Australian Government migration schemes in the 1950s and 1960s and by 1971 there were one hundred and sixty thousand Greek-born people in Australia. Today, just under half of these live in the State of Victoria and the city of Melbourne has the largest Greek community outside of Greece and after Athens, Thesaloniki, Piraeus and Patras (all in Greece) is the fifth largest Greek city community in the World so this must surely explain why so many Australians visit Greece every year in search of their family heritage.

A trio of young (Australian) girls were persuaded to take the table next to ours and after a while the waiter came to take their order. ‘Can I get you something to drink’ he purred and then looked perplexed when they asked for three glasses of tap water! He came back after a few minutes with the order and directed them to the food menu. One of them took a while to decide and then made her selection– ‘I’d like a lettuce and tomato salad please’, the waiter must have thought this was the starter and waited for a further choice to complete the meal but after a pause she added without batting an eyelid – ‘without the tomato!’ He was totally baffled now and just repeated ‘a lettuce and tomato salad without the tomato?’ ‘Yes please’ she confirmed, ‘I’ll have extra lettuce instead’. I wonder what they made of that in the kitchen?

Anyway, we had a rather nice meal while we listened to the sea and eaves dropped other people’s conversations and when we had finished, although it wasn’t late, we were tired so we wandered off back in the direction of the hotel. We had a rather early start in the morning so we needed a good night’s sleep.

Greece 2011, Paros and Paroikia Old Town

2011-10-23T09:38:00.001+01:00

Kim woke early this morning and did her best to invite me to join her in a state of consciousness by banging doors, turning the lights on, opening the blue shutters to let the screaming sunlight inside the room and by using the hair dryer! Although I was vaguely aware of some of this anti-social activity I resisted the move from slumber to wakefulness and in the end she conceded defeat and went for a walk by herself along to the beach. I woke an hour or so later and found her wandering along the seashore enjoying the early morning sunshine.

After breakfast in the hotel we walked the short distance to Paroikia past a row of gaily coloured fishing boats where leather skinned men with gnarled and calloused hands and smelling unashamedly of sea creatures were rearranging nets, carrying out repairs and sorting through the remains of the previous night’s catch, the best of it long gone to the restaurant owners who had been here much earlier and only tiddlers and odd looking scraps left now which were being picked over and were destined either for the fishermen’s grilled lunch or rejection and disposal back into the sea.

It’s a sad fact that we have always previously neglected Paros, being a busy ferry hub this has always been a place to rush through on the way to somewhere else so today it was time to put that right and give the place the courtesy of a proper visit and behind the untidy ribbon of harbour front fast food bars, travel agents and car hire offices we slipped into the tiny streets of the timeless old town. Here there was an eclectic mix of modern chic boutiques, old fashioned mini markets and the inevitable tourist shops (actually, a few more shops than I am generally comfortable with, I have to say) rubbing shoulders with blue domed churches, Venetian villas in various stages of neglect and restoration, bars and a Kastro.

The narrow cobbled streets invited exploration and as we walked around some led to surprises and others led to nowhere in particular but all around were white washed walls, blue doors and fences and fading menu boards and the place was filled with the familiar smells of the Greek Islands, heavy incense from behind the church doors, fresh moussaka from the tavernas and Tide washing powder spilling out through the doors and windows of the houses where people went about their daily chores.

Eventually we left the old town and emerged in a large square with one of the most important churches in all of Greece, the fourth century Panagia Ekatontapyliani, which means Our Lady of a Hundred Doors, and is the oldest remaining Byzantine church in Greece. According to legend, ninety-nine doors have been found in the church so far and the hundredth will be discovered only after Constantinople is Greek again. This church was unusually welcoming to inappropriately dressed tourists insisting only that they behave with respect and keep their voices down.

We duly noted this and went through the heavy doors into an alternative world of black robed beardy priests, local worshippers and travelling pilgrims all lining up to kiss the lavish icons of their favourite Saints. Outside and around the church there were old fashioned stores selling various cards each with a picture of a part of the body. If you have a bad leg then you buy a leg picture, a poorly arm an elbow picture and so on and then you take this to the Church and ask for a cure and leave it there so that God doesn’t just forget about it after you have gone and these were fastened in bunches to railings and picture frames. All of this icon kissing means quite a lot of unwanted spit and saliva of course so to deal with this, cleaning ladies with spray cleaners and dusters circulated constantly to deal with the slobber and the germs on a continuous and never ending polishing circuit of the church.

Back outside we bought ferry tickets for the next leg of our journey to Amorgos and then we set about the important business of comparing Greek salad and Mythos prices in the bars and tavernas because this is the benchmark we use when we make decisions about dining arrangements. €5 and €3 respectively seemed to about the average price so there was no inflation shock there to deal with so we selected one and spent a pleasant half an hour watching the town go about its business.

During this time it became clear that we needed to reassess our opinion of Paros. We had only really seen it as an impatient heaving mass of traffic and people that accompanies the arrival and departure of a ferry but in the intervening periods it settles down into the same soporific slumber as all of the other islands.

We liked it!

Greece 2011, Blue Star Ferry to Paros

2011-10-22T20:56:00.000+01:00

My apologies to residents of Piraeus but it is not the most attractive city in Greece – constructed almost entirely from limestone and clay as a reminder of the Athenians fifty year love affair with concrete and cement. In the words of Mike Gatting, this is not a place that you would even send your mother-in-law and we were pleased when the ferry slipped its moorings and headed out to sea precisely on time and our personal chill tanks started to fill with credit!

We were travelling economy class of course but this is the best place to be - sharing the open top deck with grey haired hippies with pony tails revisiting the 1960s, back-packers wearing creased clothes who haven’t washed for a fortnight, sun-seekers, thrill-seekers and nostalgia-seekers, bench-hogging sleep-snatchers, aging grey-beards in open toed sandals and sun kissed cougars strutting their stuff. This is good company thankfully missing the football shirts, lycra and stag and hen parties who have all flown directly to Mykonos and Zakynthos!

As the Blue Star left the port the engines throbbed reassuringly and black diesel smoke leaked from the exhausts; on the bridge and down below I imagined a frenzy of activity by the crew but on top it was lazy, languid and laid back. The ferry joined a line of boats leaving the port, rather like the start of a marathon race with dozens of competing ships looking for the best channels and tides.

It was hot and humid but after a few minutes large clouds began to build, the skies darkened and the sun disappeared as the ferry followed the coastline of the Greek mainland before slipping between the islands of Kea and Kithnos and into the Cycladic ring. We couldn’t see the islands to the north and south because it was hazy and dull but after a couple of hours the clouds began to break and the sun spilled through casting orange pools on the shiny blue surface of the water as the Rayleigh scattering effect began the daily process of turning the sky from blue to red.

It was just at this time that Kim lamented that in all of our ferry boat journeys in Greece we had never seen dolphins and then by a stunning coincidence, within only a few seconds, and I swear that this is true, we suddenly saw dolphins! About a hundred metres from the boat dorsal fins began to slice through the surf and then several of them were leaping into the air and some swam obligingly close to the boat below us. As word began to spread more people came to our side of the ferry and I worried about weight distribution and whether the boat might topple over but after a few minutes the show was over and everyone began to drift back to their seats. We stayed on dolphin look out duty for a few more minutes but no more appeared.

As the sun disappeared the journey began to drag and the dampness that accompanied the darkness forced us inside for the last hour and we were glad when we arrived in Paroikia at ten o’clock and joined the pushing, jostling crowd and left the Blue Star. As usual the quayside was full of apartment owners trying to sell their rooms in a sort of chaotic scramble that makes a French bus queue look well organised but we were met as promised by our transportation to the nearby Hotel Dilion on the edge of the town and we carved our way through the turmoil.

It turned out to be acceptable but not breathtaking and we simply left our bags and strolled to the sea front to find somewhere for a late meal. We were away from the town centre and found a good looking place busy with local people, which is always a good sign, so we joined them and enjoyed a fine meal and some impromptu entertainment as diners on the next table frequently interrupted their meal to break out into traditional dance. It was late and gradually the tavern started to empty as people paid their bills and left and it was some time after midnight when we made our way back to the hotel looking forward to a good sleep after a very long day.

Greece 2011, Piraeus – Planes, Buses, Taxis and Ferries

2011-10-22T11:02:00.000+01:00

In the weeks and days before flying to Athens to start a holiday in the Cyclades I began to wonder if it really was a clever idea to fly into a city in the grip of economic crisis and social disorder with regular demonstrations and disruptive strikes by the transport sector which we would be completely reliant upon to get from the Greek capital to the islands. But we put on our holiday blinkers and ignored the concerns and reluctant to spend more money on an alternative flight to Santorini went through with the original plan.

On a previous arrival at Athens airport I was metaphorically mugged by a taxi driver and paid a fortune to get to the city and the last time we left Athens Kim was literally robbed on the metro so we didn’t want to chance either of those options this time and took the only alternative form of transport available, the X96 express bus to Piraeus. The man in the ticket booth was rather terse and didn’t have his ‘welcome to Athens, nice to see you’ head on this lunch time but I suppose anyone would be grumpy if it is their job to sit in a stuffy wooden box all day answering the same dumb question over and again. The cost was €5 which was an eye watering 56% more expensive than two years previously and I hoped this wasn’t indicative of an average inflation rate over this time or else this would put the holiday budget under extreme pressure.

A bus ride in Athens is a unique experience, it has to be said. The roads were busy but the driver of the Solaris flexibus seemed totally oblivious to other vehicles as he charged along at high speed, switching lanes, clattering over tram lines and tossing the passengers about like the Saturday night lottery balls on hard unyielding plastic seats. It was like being in a car chase at the movies, anyone in the way had better watch out and at one stage I had to take a look to see if Sandra Bullock was driving. Corners didn’t slow the bus down and the only respite from the madness was a few infrequent stops on the way to the port, which we reached after about fifty minutes.

The metro would have been preferable but you get mugged on the metro and as this was our first time back in Athens since the robbery we were understandably on edge. We had taken improved precautions to protect our possessions but we still felt nervous and slightly anxious. We continually scanned the bus for potential robbers and pickpockets and held on tight to our wallets, cameras and bags and after every stop we suspiciously scrutinised every new passenger that joined us.

In our experience dining options around the port are seriously limited and after we arrived in Piraeus there was about four hours before the ferry to Paros so we had made plans to visit a taverna/bar that we knew and to have a long lunch to fill the time.

This involved a walk along the busy harbour front and this was not as easy as it sounds because Piraeus simply has to be one of the most traffic crazy places in Europe that makes an Italian city look like Emmerdale on a late Sunday afternoon and there was a mad confusion of snarling traffic that almost defies description. Cars, buses and lorries were all growling aggressively through the streets with absolutely no regard for traffic lights, lanes, rights of way or pedestrians (especially pedestrians). Swarms of yellow and black cabs drove around with complete disregard for anything else and for anyone foolish enough to irritate them it was like poking a stick into an angry wasp’s nest. The madness was being ineffectively choreographed every now and again by traffic police blowing madly on whistles and waving arms in a totally manic way that quite frankly was completely unintelligible to absolutely everyone whether in a car or on the pavement and all in all didn’t seem to be helping a great deal.

It is easy to imagine that Piraeus is simply a suburb of Athens but it is in fact a completely separate city, the third largest in Greece, with an interesting history all of its own. Most of this we fail to appreciate because we just hurry through on the way to somewhere else. In 493 BC, taking advantage of the natural harbour and strategic geographical position, the Athenian politician and soldier Themistocles initiated the construction of fortification works in Piraeus to protect Athens, ten years later the Athenian fleet was transferred there and it was then permanently used as the naval base for the powerful fleet of the ancient city.

Themistocles fortified the three harbours of Piraeus with the Themistoclean Walls turning Piraeus into a great military and commercial harbour. The fortification was farther reinforced later by the construction of the Long Walls under Cimon and Pericles, with which Piraeus was safely connected to Athens. Piraeus was rebuilt to the famous grid plan of the architect Hippodamus of Miletus to a pattern that has been replicated in many cities in the USA and in Milton Keynes in England. The walls were destroyed after the defeat by Athens to the Spartans in the Peloponnesian war and the port of Rhodes assumed predominance in the Aegean. Later the walls were rebuilt but destroyed again by both the Romans and the Goths and during the Byzantine period the port completely lost its trading status.

Today, Piraeus has regained its importance and is a mad world of taxis, trams, back-packers and local people all competing for the same piece of tarmac. This should not have been surprising because it is the largest passenger port in Europe and the third largest worldwide in terms of passenger transportation where nearly twenty million people pass through every year. There were certainly a lot of people about this afternoon and there was a long queue to get on board the Blue Star Paros and in the usual way foot passengers were competing for space with cars and commercial vehicles. We didn’t want to sit inside so we made our way to the top deck and found a seat outside at the back of the boat to catch the sun and we made ourselves comfortable in preparation for the four and a half hour passage to the island of Paros, one hundred and eighty-five kilometres to the south east.

Italy 2011, Frascati and Marino

2011-10-21T13:08:00.000+01:00

Frascati, another of the Castelli Romani, is a busy dormitory town for nearby Rome and being the location of several international scientific laboratories is closely associated with science and technology. In 1943 it was heavily bombed and approximately half of its buildings, including many monuments, villas and houses, were destroyed. Many people died in an air raid on 22nd January 1944, the day of the battle of Anzio. Towards the end of the war the city was finally liberated from the Nazi German occupation on 4th June 1944 by the advancing American infantry.

What Frascati is best known for is its famous white wine, also called Frascati, which enjoys a Denominazione di Origine Controllata status. The vineyards where the vines are grown are volcanic and well drained with a micro climate influenced by the Alban Hills. The Romans referred to it as the Golden Wine both for its colour and its value and it has become embedded in the cultural and economic traditions of the town. In the fifteenth century there were over a thousand taverns in Rome and producers of Frascati owned almost all of them. It is said that Frascati is the most often mentioned wine in Italian literature.

The bus suddenly reappeared so we quickly finished our drinks and walked back to the bus stop just in front of one of the most impressive buildings in the town, the Villa Aldobrandini and known also as Belvedere because of its charming location and excellent view overlooking the whole valley up to Rome, twenty kilometres away. The bus left on time and as we still had a couple of hours or so before we needed to leave for the airport we felt confident enough to get off at Marino and have a look around there as well.

The bus dropped us off in a square with a curious fountain depicting slavery and a monument to celebrate the naval battle of Lepanto that took place on 7th October 1571 when a fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of Catholic maritime states, decisively defeated the main fleet of the Ottoman Empire. I’m not sure what it was doing here in this provincial town? We were still looking for Christine’s souvenirs so we left the square and walked along a main street which looked promising but proved fruitless.

Marino was clearly not a tourist place but instead a traditional Italian living and working town with shabby narrow streets, care worn but brightly colour- washed buildings with washing lines strung outside windows and across the streets dripping and flapping above little shops and small bars. In the heat the atmosphere was slow and lazy and no one appeared to be rushing to do anything very much at all. The greatest activity was at the bottom of the hill where there was a small market with a few stalls selling fruit and vegetables where there was a bit of trade but a lot more conversation.

We returned to the square on the main road where, although we couldn’t be certain, because there was no timetable, we estimated that if buses ran every hour from Frascati then one would be due in twenty minutes or so from now so we found a bar with a clear view of the road where we could keep look out and ordered some drinks from a waitress who seemed surprised to see English visitors in town on this Tuesday morning.

A couple of blue and white buses came and went but these were not ours and twenty minutes came and went and we began to wonder if we had guessed correctly as a further ten minutes passed by and we started looking around for a taxi rank. The waitress had no idea of bus times so we waited a few minutes longer and then finally a bus for Albano came along the main road and we hailed it to stop and jumped on board back to the town.

After we had collected our bags we needed another bus, this time to the airport. Micky and I were all for getting a taxi but at €50 but Kim considered this excessive and I have to say that she was correct because a ticket to Ciampino was only €1 each and a bus arrived and took us the twenty minute journey to the entrance to the airport and, if we hadn’t worked it out before, we knew then that we had been ripped off by the taxi driver when we arrived on Saturday morning.

Ciampino turned out not to be the best airport in the world but the flight was almost on time and we didn’t have long to sit and reflect on four excellent days in Italy and the wonderful city of Rome. It had been busy, it had been rushed and it had been hot but we had enjoyed every single minute of it.