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One of the finest flowers seen in Crete is the wild Cretan poppy. So many people see so many flowers that the poppy is often ignored in favour of the wonderful orchids and the myriads of stunning flowers that are seen here. But I love the poppy. It is straight, wild and serene. It is…
Owls are lovely creatures. They fly at night and eat up rats and mice. You hardly see them in Crete although they can be heard hooting from time to time. But recently I met a baby owl near the road. Here he is: My Little Cretan Owl. Cute Cretan baby owl I snapped this picture…
Today is the nutty season in Crete. Perhaps we are all nuts for living on such a beautiful island, but I would live nowhere else. But now nuts are the thing. The lovely chestnut trees are disgorging their wonderful nut for us all to pick up. The nuts are wonderful. They appear in October just…
On Saint George’s day in the village of Asigonia in Crete, the shepherds bring all of the herds down from the mountains to have them milked. Shepherds milking sheep From the other side, it looks just like this: Five sheep at a time Then, of course, the milk has to be pasteurised: Pasteurisation Then the…
Nikos Kazantzakis was probably the greatest author to be born on the island of Crete. His books included Zorba the Greek to Freedom or Death. His book, The Last Temptation, was banned by the Pope and his writings in general led to his being excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox Church. He thus could not be…
Whoopa . . . I really love this clip from Zorba the Greek. It is the final moments in the film following the enormous disaster that Zorba caused running logs from the monastery on top of the hill down to the sea. They took the clip on Stavros Bay in the Akrotiri peninsular. Anthony Quinn…
High in the mountains of Crete, there is a plateau that once, some years ago, was famous for windmills. The scene of so many fluttering windmills was a sight to see. It used to look exactly like this. Lasithi Windmills as they used to be In fact, these were not so much windmills, but windpumps….
The monastery of Panagia Chrisoskalitissa, Our Lady of the Golden Step in English, is in the remote southwest of Crete just six Kilometres from the lovely lagoon beach of Elafonisi. And it is glorious. Panagia Chrisoskalitissa Monastery I took this photograph when the sunset happened and thank heavens I had my camera to hand for…
Kalamaki, a village just north of Matala on the Messara coastline of Crete is a place that we have known for many years. Just over twenty years ago we, my wife and I, were there visiting one of the two very small tavernas that were on the beach. There were a few other buildings, but…
Here in Crete, we have a relatively large collection of incredible jalopies – most still on the road. Some of them go back forty years and consist basically of a rotovator without the blades with a seat and trailer on the back. Later they joined the front engine to the trailer and then we had,…
Rebetika is one of those Greek words that has no translation in English. We have referred to it as ‘Greek blues music’ except that it differs from what we call blues music in English. Today we can go into a Greek record shop and see rebetika music either in its section or scattered around as ‘laika‘ or…
You may remember me writing about the new dam that is designed to provide water for Rethymnon. Well, now, at least for about a month or two, the new Potamoi Dam is closed, and the water has risen. It has risen slowly so that they can continue rearranging the roads that will soon be flooded. Not just…
