Ria's good-bye to Malona

Good-bye to Malona

Ria and I had a nice final dinner in the little town of Psinthos, at a taverna entirely empty save for us, attended to cheerfully by a motherly woman who prepared a meal for us based on my request that she serve us “the best food.” We didn’t use the menus at all, and the meal was quite good. 

Instead of flying back, we have abandoned our tickets and are taking an overnight ferry to Pireas, a port outside of Athens. Here's a last shot of Malona: the priest (in his robes, riding a tractor in the town square), the church, and the graveyard — an interesting variety of grave sites.

Making friends

Ria and I stopped at a panoramic pullout on the side of the road to get something to eat from a food cart there (called a Kantina here). A group of locals — friends and family of the woman running the cantina — was gathered there, sitting at a table on the edge of a cliff overlooking a roiling sea. One of the children invited Ria to play ("Gabriella, come to playing with us?") and one of the men invited me to come and drink ("Parakalo?"). Ria and four children played for an hour, and while the adults and I drank a local drink, tsipouro (which sounds a bit like "giggalo" when pronounced) and we all chatted in a mixture of English and Greek.

One man left the table, walked across the turnout, and disappeared behind a large rock for a while. I thought it was fairly obvious what he'd gone to do. But as soon as he reappeared, a massive cloud of smoke erupted from behind the rock. In shock, I said to the table, "I thought he'd gone back there to pee; what are we drinking?!" One man actually fell over in his chair laughing so hard, a combination of having been drinking all day and the fact that he grasped enough English to get the joke. More drinks all around ...

I saw a strange thing among the Greek men: they were vaping, smoking e-cigarettes (and one e-pipe). But this was in between real cigarettes (hand rolled, no filters). Their cardiologists must be having their own heart attacks.

Ria, Gavriel (9), and Maria (11)

The beach at Archangelos

The Castle at Archangelos

Just down the hill from Malona, on the coast, sits the rather touristy town of Archangelos. Above it looms a mammoth castle, and on a moody, mercurial day, Ria and I parked and scaled the grassy and rocky hill to it, crossing a wire fence on the way. (When the German women we met declared that the fence must be meant for goats not people, we agreed. Germans are not notorious lawbreakers, after all.) It was a bit of a scramble, over rocks and through fields scattered with spiky plants (painful for Ria in her flip flops), past horned goats and over piles of rubble. And all so worth it — the magnificent view, the grandeur of the space, the commanding feeling of being in such a defensible position. As we started to descend, a massive rain storm soaked us, and left the rocks glittering in the patches of sun streaming through holes in the clouds.

The church at Lindos

In a lovely little courtyard sits this pretty little church.

Spring is in the air

Spring has recently made a dramatic entry, and, as I was taught in the various Shakespeare courses I took at Reed, it manifests as sex and death.

Mating bugs

Ria named this egg Opal, and the other one she found Owen. Both were in the river, the victims of terribly poor nest siting by their mother ducks. 

More mating bugs

Goat on the beach

A crucifixion? 

More from the Archeology Museum

The Archaeology Museum in Greece

We'd saved this for a rainy day, but much of it is outside, so the fact that it only seemed to rain on Mondays, when the museum was closed, turned out not to be a cruel joke but a happy thing.

I was completely impressed and amazed by how good this museum is, and we enjoyed it so much that we came back a second day, two days later, to see more of it.

Shadow games

On the beach, rather obviously...